“Peace and assurance come from a personal knowledge of the God who rules the times and the seasons. Church: if we have an inordinate desire to know how everything is going to fit together in what the bible is not clear about, then we need to come back to a knowledge of our personal Saviour. Because it is trust in Him that will give us the peace and hope and joy of the Christian life. Not that its wrong to nerd out a little bit and figure out what this might mean — but what will ultimately give us peace is the God of peace.”

“May we all join with Paul his prayer in Colossians 1:29: ‘For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.’… And so church: May we each be equipped to walk in such a way that we would be considered worthy of the kingdom of God. May we each desire to experience the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might. May we be strengthened for steadfastness with the knowledge that God’s enemies will be afflicted with eternal destruction, away from all that is God’s goodness. May God make you worthy of his calling and fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“That God calls here is in the present tense, stressing that God does not merely call Christians once and then leave them on their own. Instead He continues to call the followers of Christ to salvation. But it is important to note that the life of faith is not a striving for more. Rather, it is living more fully in what has already been given, knowing that even efforts to live more appropriately as saints depend upon God who sanctifies. The morality of the Bible is always ‘be who you are’, as we are called to daily work out the reality of our salvation.”

“Now, let me begin by giving praise to God, that his expressed will, the moral requirements to which he calls his people, is as wonderful as rejoicing, thanksgiving, and intimate communication, trusting in the goodness of God towards us in both plan and action. These are commands which reflect the amazing position of grace in which God has placed us through the finished work of Christ Jesus. It is like if someone rich and powerful gave you a credit card with no limit, on the one condition that you enjoy yourself and call on them if you run into any trouble. And that extreme example doesn’t even begin to compare to the joyous position we have in Christ. What God commands is always aligned with your greatest joy and fulfillment, and all of what God forbids is of letting ourselves be sidetracked by seeking contentment in lesser joys.”

“If God himself sets the example for our behavior, it is also God’s mercy towards us that motivates and empowers our reciprocation. In the cross of Christ, God carried out the greatest act of mercy towards the undeserving, and at the same time executed severe and uncompromising justice upon the sins of humanity. Now you might ask: How can I reciprocate the mercy of God? Which is a good question, since Christ will never be in need of your kindness, gentleness, patience, and especially not your mercy. But Jesus regularly directly linked the treatment of his body, the church, with the way that we are treating him : ‘...as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

The way we treat the image bearers of Christ — no matter how poorly they reflect that image at times — is literally how we are treating the one who gave his life for us.”

“…Paul lays the responsibility for the whole community on the community itself. Each member, and not the leaders alone, must be aware of his or her responsibility for others and seek to help them. At no stage can the ordinary member lean back and say or think, ‘This is the task of the leaders alone.’ Paul knows nothing of an inert mass, the congregation, on which the ministry operates…In short, Paul is trying to develop in the entire congregation a sense of pastoral responsibility…”

“The peace that the apostle has in mind is not merely the absence of conflict… but the presence of positive, healthy relationships. These do not come as a result of superficial harmony, where we are nice to each other and coexist without open conflict, but genuine peace is the result of following the guidelines of Matthew 18:15 and going to those who sin or offend us in loving confrontation. We Canadians so highly value the kinds “niceness” and “politeness” that take us far afield from genuine kindness and peace which are fruits of the Spirit …People who do not “care enough to confront” are no more loving than leaders who will not admonish.”

“Believers are adopted into the family of God by grace alone, through the finished work and sacrifice of Christ, but their existence as children of the light, children of the day, has moral implications, The Thessalonian Christians did not need to be reminded of the facts, but they are being reminded here of the implications these facts held for their actions. They are already day people, but they are being reminded to live as such!”

“The goal of this whole passage is quite simple and clear, although it has unfortunately also been the source of a great deal of end times speculation that is quite unrelated to Paul’s own interests. Paul’s expressed goal is ‘that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope,’ or to state it positively, that our hope would be so grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, that our whole understanding of death, the future and the fate of all believers would be profoundly different from the world that does not have Christ.”