2 Thessalonians 3:6

2 Thessalonians 3:6. Now we command you. ‘In what follows, the exhortations of the former Epistle (chap. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:14) are repeated and expanded with more studied distinctness of language, it being probable that the evils previously alluded to had advanced among some members of this church to a still more perilous height' (Ellicott).

Brethren. The injunction to withdraw or separate is given not to the presbyters or office-bearers, but to the whole church; and this not only because in these days excommunication was the act of the congregation (see 1 Corinthians 5), but because the social and individual treatment of the offender is as present to Paul's mind as the ecclesiastical.

That walketh disorderly. This is further defined in the 11th verse as a condition of fussy, noisy idleness. There were some in Thessalonica who had merely caught the new phrases, the kingdom of Christ, His speedy coming, universal brotherhood, citizenship of heaven, and being carried away by some vague idea of an immediate termination not only of the old life of sin, but of the whole existing order of things, they abandoned their own ordinary employments, and lived upon the kindness of their brethren.