1 Thessalonians 5:12-15

§ 10. 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15. The Church’s Internal Discipline

The specific ὑστερήματα of this Church’s faith (1 Thessalonians 3:10) are now made good, in ch. 1 Thessalonians 4:1 to 1 Thessalonians 5:11, so far as they can be by Apostolic admonition and comfort. On the basis of the instruction thus given, the readers were urged to “encourage” and to “edify one another” (1 Thessalonians 4:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:11). But (δέ, 1 Thessalonians 5:12) the office of exhortation, while devolving on any Christian brother who can speak a word of comfort to the sorrowing or of help to the feeble and timid, falls chiefly on the leaders of the community (οἱ προϊστάμενοι, 1 Thessalonians 5:12). Thus the writers, in drawing their Letter to a close, find occasion to speak of these, (a) bidding the Church recognize their position and lovingly appreciate their work (1 Thessalonians 5:12 f.). Having commended to the goodwill of the Church its officers, the Apostles (b) turn to the latter and charge them, on their side, to be faithful, helpful, and patient toward the more troublesome or weak members of Christ’s flock, to prevent the retaliation of evil and to promote every kind of well-doing, both within and without the Christian fellowship (1 Thessalonians 5:14 f.). The distinction just drawn between (a) and (b), which is insisted on by the Greek interpreters and recognized by the paragraph-division of WH, is indeed doubtful; but the varied expression, ἐρωτῶμεν δὲ ὑμᾶς and παρακαλοῦμεν δὲ ὑμᾶς, of 1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:14 is best explained by supposing that the writers appeal, with conversational freedom, first to the Church at large respecting its προϊστάμενοι, and then to the latter respecting the difficult part of their duties to the former. This tacit distinction between the ὑμᾶς of 1 Thessalonians 5:14 and that of 1 Thessalonians 5:12 accounts for the formal repetition of phrase with which the two short sections are introduced; the νουθετεῖν, moreover, required in 1 Thessalonians 5:14, should, in consistency, be expected from the νουθετοῦντες of 1 Thessalonians 5:12. The four hortatory offices prescribed in 1 Thessalonians 5:14 would, in the nature of the case, devolve chiefly, through not exclusively, on the προϊστάμενοι. In 1 Thessalonians 5:15 the exhortation reverts without formal transition to the body of the Church addressed throughout the Letter. At the same time, the whole of 1 Thessalonians 5:14 f. might be addressed suitably to “the brethren” at large; in favour of this construction the repeated, and unqualified, ἀδελφοί of 1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:14 seems to speak. Upon this view of the connexion—preferred by recent interpreters—1 Thessalonians 5:14 resumes, after the introductory reference to the Church-officers in 1 Thessalonians 5:12 f., and particularizes the παρακαλεῖτε κ. οἰκοδομεῖτε of 1 Thessalonians 5:11, as though the Apostles wrote: “Now while we bid you respect your Church leaders, &c., we urge you on your own part to admonish the disorderly and console the sad, &c., amongst yourselves”; but would not αὐτοί, or the like, have been attached to νουθετεῖτε (by way of distinction from νουθετοῦντας, 1 Thessalonians 5:13) in this case? See the discussion of Bornemann on the connexion of thought, in pp. 228–231 of Meyer’s Kommentar6. On this section see Hort’s Christian Ecclesia, pp. 125 ff.