1 Thessalonians 1:10

In preaching to pagans, the leaders of the primitive Christian mission put the wrath and judgment of God in the forefront (cf. Sabatier's Paul, 98 f.), making a sharp appeal to the moral sense, and denouncing idolatry (cf. Sap., 14, 12 f., 22 f.). Hence the revival they set on foot. They sought to set pagans straight, and to keep them straight, by means of moral fear as well as of hope. Paul preached at Thessalonica as he did at Athens (Acts 17:29-31; see Harnack's Expansion of Christianity, i. 108 f.) and the substance of his mission-message on the wrath of God is preserved in Romans 1:18 to Romans 2:16. The living God is manifested by His raising of Jesus from the dead, His awakening of faith in Christians, and His readiness to judge human sin in the hereafter. Seeberg (der Katechismus der Urchristenheit, 82 85) finds here an echo of some primitive Christian formula of faith, but his proofs are very precarious. τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ. This marked them out from Jewish proselytes, who might also be said to have turned from idols to serve the living God. The quiet combination of monotheism and a divine position of Jesus is striking (cf. Kattenbusch, op. cit., ii. 550 f.). ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν … ἐκ τ. νεκρῶν, both the hope and the historical fact lay outside the experience of the Thessalonians, but both were assured to them by their experience of the Spirit which the risen Jesus had bestowed, and which guaranteed His final work. Were it not for touches like the deeper sense of δουλεύειν, the celestial origin of Jesus, and the eschatological definition of ὀργή, one might be tempted to trace a specious resemblance between this two-fold description of Christianity at Thessalonica and the two cardinal factors in early Greek religion, viz., the service of the Olympian deities (θεραπεύειν) and the rites of aversion (ἀποπομπαί) which were designed to deprecate the dark and hostile powers of evil. Paul preached like the Baptist judgment to come. But his gospel embraced One who baptised with the Spirit and with the fire of enthusiastic hope (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:7).