1 Thessalonians 2:17-20

1 Thessalonians 2:17

I. The Thessalonian Christians were peculiarly the Apostle's hope, being regarded by him, not simply as a conspicuous part of the reward in glory which was in store for him, but also his hope in connection with his present earthly work. Their conversion, their steadfastness in the faith, was largely that on which he built his hopes, under God, of the further progress of the Gospel in Europe. He hoped that yet increasingly from them would sound out the word of the Lord. They were, further, his joy, inasmuch as in their conversion and consistent Christian conduct he saw the evidence that his own labour had not been in vain in the Lord. They were a credit to him in the sight of God and men. Hence, amid all his sorrows, he felt that in them he could find his joy. They were even more to him. They were his crown of holy boasting, for they would prove at last his wreath of victory, his chaplet of ceaseless rejoicing.

II. In the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming, Paul's crown of a good name in the presence of Christ Jesus was his converts those who by his instrumentality had been brought to a knowledge of the truth. The same crown is offered to us all, and is in keeping for us all, if we be but faithful. History tells us that when in Philip II's reign a rebel claimed and gained the crown of Granada, he bore at the ceremony of coronation in his right hand a banner bearing the inscription: "More I could not desire, less would not have contented me." These words cease to be presumptuous and become the utterance of truest wisdom only when they are the Christian's, and refer to the crown of heavenly rejoicing, and when they are the legend of the banner under which he fights, in "the sacramental host of God's elect."

J. Hutchison, Lectures on Thessalonians,p. 94.