Deeper Reflection
PAUL EXPRESSES HIS CONFIDENCE IN THE THESSALONIANS, “the church as a whole”⁴⁷ – “we have confidence about you” – that they are faithful to God in obeying “the things that we command” (v.4). Paul was confident about their present faithfulness – “you are doing” and their faithfulness in the future – “and will continue to do” (v.4, NIV).Paul’s “confidence” was not in himself, but “in the Lord” (v.4) – because “the Lord is faithful” to His commitment to those whom He has chosen and called in love (2 Thess 2:13-14) by strengthening and protecting them from “the evil one’s attempt to destroy their souls”⁴⁸ (v.3). Mark this theocentric cause-effect parallelism: “the Lord is faithful” and “confidence in the Lord”. Paul had this “confidence in the Lord” in his ministry because he understood that Christian ministry is fundamentally “the work of the Lord” and his “labour” was “in the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). Ministry “in the Lord” is we “toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within” us (Col 1:29). And out of this is our “confidence in the Lord”.Like Paul, we, too, can have this “confidence in the Lord” in our ministry of influencing lives for Christ. Let us take one step back. We can, by God’s grace, have “confidence in the Lord” about our own faithfulness to God. Paul could say, “The Lord considered me faithful” (1 Tim 1:12). And what about God’s confidence in us? It was with confidence in Job that God asked Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him…” (Job 1:8).

---

⁴⁷ John R. W. Stott, 190 ⁴⁸ G. K. Beale, 246