1 Thessalonians 2:8-16: Love Is The Portal

Love is the portal that truth walks through.

In his insightful article "Effective Evangelism and the Art of the Turn" by Geoff Surratt, he analyzes the way in which we go to people and pitch our ideas, expressing interest in people in order to create an opening for some product or proposal. That is the "turn". How about the gospel? He notes: "I imagine when people see through a thinly veiled Gospel sales pitch they feel as frustrated as I do when I’m turned." Why? Because they feel that the details and concerns of their lives are unimportant to us, apart from how they respond to the "truth" we want to deliver.

Paul stresses authentic love as the bedrock of his relationship with the believers in Thessalonica. He draws on the language of families to emphasize the strength and warmth. They are his "brothers and sisters" (vs. 1) Then Paul and Silas are like children (vs. 8a). Now Paul switches to another relationship: mothers and their children.

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. 

There was no separation between sharing of lives and sharing of the gospel. They were the same love--the same delight. Nursing mothers do not begrudge the nourishment they give. For her, sleep is optional. For her, even eating is optional. But love is not optional (cf. Romans 13:8).

But Paul does not stop there. He continues with fathers and their children.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.

Whereas the mothers nurture, the fathers motivate. They motivate by example ("how...we were among you") and by guiding them in the way they should live, when they are unsure ("encouraging"), when they are hurt ("comforting") and when they need a kick in the pants ("urging").

These relational terms stress the love aspect of any truth telling. We don't stop loving our actual children or siblings when they don't respond to the gospel. We love them. We help fix tires, bind up wounds, comfort broken hearts, and invite them to dinner whether or not they continually do dumb things with their lives. Oh, they'll hear about it. But our love isn't tied to them obeying us. God's wasn't, for us (cf. Titus 3:3-4).

So don't tell people that Jesus loves them unless you're ready to love them too (Steve Camp). If we try to tell people the truth without the love, you leave that truth on barren soil, unlikely to sprout and thrive. But in the context of love, the truth has ample nutrition to become "rooted and established" (cf. Ephesians 3:17-18).

Look at what happened with Paul, according to the next verse:

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. 

With love, the word of God was welcomed. Not just in a "Hi, how are you doing" sort of way, but in a life transforming, pattern-of-life altering manner. In a way, it is the life that we have always wanted, to be a part of those big stories where the good guys undergo fights, deprivation and all sorts of troubles but emerge better, victorious people. It is also the life that terrifies us, because it involves the trouble, hostility, alienation, discomfort and possibly worse. Paul talks about it like this:

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

How do we decide to make the right choices, even when they are difficult? We can do it because there are those who have "parented" us properly, nurturing and motivating us. We can do it because there are those who have showed us, by their example, the way to handle it. We help others by doing the same for them.

It starts with authentic love. Nurturing. Motivating. That love is the portal that truth walks through (cf. Revelation 3:20)