1 Thessalonians 1:4

knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God Better, following the A. V. marginand R. V., knowing, brethren beloved by God, your election: comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:13, "brethren beloved by the Lord."

The Apostle thinks of his readers as brethren, for he has just been carrying them in his thoughts in prayer "before our God and Father." The knowledge that God their Father loves them and has chosen them for His own, gives confidence to the Apostle's prayers for them and inexpressible joy to his thanksgivings. Comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:13: "We are bound to give thanks always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you," &c.; and Ephesians 1:3-5, "Blessed be God …, Who blessed us in every spiritual blessing, … according as He chose us in Christ," &c.

The participle "beloved" is not however present in tense, as though the Thessalonians were simply loved now, in consequence of their newly-acquired Christian worth; it is in the Greek perfect tense, signifying a love existing in the past and realised in the present, the antecedent and foundation of their goodness. So in 1 John 3:1: "Behold what manner of love the Father hath givenus, that we should be called sons of God!"

The Christian excellence of the Thessalonians, therefore, moved the Apostle and his companions to thanksgiving (1 Thessalonians 1:2), not simply on its own account, but because it marked them out as the objects of God's loving choice. The word election, here occurring for the first time in St Paul's Epistles, and expressing one of his most important doctrines, needs to be carefully studied. The N. T. use of the word originates in the O. T. idea of Israel as God's "peculiar possession," "the people whom He chose for His inheritance" (see Psalms 33:12; Psalms 135:4; Deuteronomy 14:2; Isaiah 43:1-7; &c.). Such "election" implies two things (1) selection out of others, nations or men, who are not thus chosen "the rest" (ch. 1 Thessalonians 4:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:6); and (2) appropriation by Godfor His own love and service. Since Israel as a people now rejected Christ, St Paul was compelled to distinguish between national Israel and the true "election," the spiritual kernel of the chosen people, who were the real objects of God's favour: "the election obtained what Israel seeks after, but the rest were hardened" (Romans 11:7). With this true election, through Christ all believing Gentiles are identified "wild olive shoots, grafted into the good olive-tree" (Romans 11:17-24). So the national gives place to a spiritual electionthe "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16); and the Apostle Paul applies the term, as in this place, to Jewish and Gentile members of the Church indiscriminately. This transference is strikingly expressed in 1 Peter 2:9: "You (who believe in Christ) are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." God's election no longer marks out a nation or body of men as such, but it concerns individuals, each believer in Christ being the personal object of this loving choice the "election of grace" (Romans 11:5). The endfor which God in His grace so chooses men, appears in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, "God chose yon unto salvation," i.e. final deliverance from death and all evil, to be brought about by the return of Christ from heaven (1 Thessalonians 1:10): the same end is set forth in the words of 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 "God calleth you to His own kingdom and glory;" He "appointed you not to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him." And the meanstoward this end are stated in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, "in sanctification of spirit and faith in the truth" (see note ad loc.). Similarly in Ephesians 1:4, "He chose us to be holy and without blemish before Him." In later Epistles (Romans 8:28-30; Ephesians 1:4-5) St Paul's teaching on this subject receives two further extensions: (1) it is to sonshiptoward God that Christian believers are predestined; and (2) their election is carried back to eternity, "before the foundation of the world." It is questionable whether "from the beginning" in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 points back so far as this (see note ad loc.) The "election" of Thessalonian believers goes back at any rate as far as the Divine love of which they are the objects "beloved by God." But the Apostle's mind is occupied with the event of the conversion of his readers, when God's love to them and choice of them were practically manifest.

God'schoice of men for His purposes must, of course, precede theirchoice of Him and of His salvation; but it in no way precludes human choice and freedom of will nay rather anticipates and prepares for our free volition (comp. Romans 8:28-30), and invites us to be "workers together" with it for our salvation: "work out your own salvation, … for it is God that worketh in you" (Philippians 2:12-13). It rests on the Divine foreknowledgeof men ("whom He foreknew, He foreordained"), and seeks from their coming into life its destined objects (see Galatians 1:15-16). But "Prescience, as prescience, hath in itself no causing efficacy" (Hooker). Observe that Scripture does not speak of any choice of men to believe in Christ, but of the choice of(assumed) believers to receive salvation. The consistency of man's free-will with God's sovereignty forms an insoluble mystery, which does not belong to the doctrine of election alone, but runs through the whole of life and religion.

The Apostle writes "knowingyour election," not that he is absolutely sure of the final salvation of every one to whom he writes ch. 1 Thessalonians 3:5 speaks otherwise; but from what he knows and remembers of them, he is practically certain that the circle of his readers belongs to God's elect and that they will attain Christ's heavenly kingdom (see ch. 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:8-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:24).

The evidence of this to his mind was twofold, lying (1) in the powergiven to himself and his companions in preaching at Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 1:5), and (2) in the zeal and devotionwith which the Thessalonians had embraced the gospel (1 Thessalonians 1:6).