The Message Remix (356 page)

INTRODUCTION
01//02THESSALONIANS

 

The way we conceive the future sculpts the present, gives contour and
tone to nearly every action and thought through the day. If our sense of future is weak, we live listlessly.
Much emotional and mental illness and most suicides occur among men and women who feel that they “have no future.”

The Christian faith has always been characterized by a strong and focused sense of future, with belief in the Second Coming of Jesus as the most distinctive detail. From the day Jesus ascended into heaven, his followers lived in expectancy of his return. He told them he was coming back. They believed he was coming back. They continue to believe it. For Christians, it is the most important thing to know and believe about the future.

The practical effect of this belief is to charge each moment of the present with hope. For if the future is dominated by the coming again of Jesus, there is little room left on the screen for projecting our anxieties and fantasies. It takes the clutter out of our lives. We’re far more free to respond spontaneously to the freedom of God.

All the same, the belief can be misconceived so that it results in paralyzing fear for some, shiftless indolence in others. Paul’s two letters to the Christians in Thessalonica, among much else, correct such debilitating misconceptions, prodding us to continue to live forward in taut and joyful expectancy for what God will do next in Jesus.

 

 

From:
Paul grew up in Tarsus, a city on the trade route between Syria and Turkey. His family were strictly observant Jews, but his father was prominent enough among the city’s non-Jews to have acquired Roman citizenship. You didn’t have to be Italian to have Roman citizenship, but you did have to have money or fight in the army. Citizens were supposed to get special treatment when arrested. Paul got arrested more than once for disturbing the peace with his talk of Jesus, but sometimes the authorities beat him up first and found out about his rights later. Or, as happened in Thessalonica, an enraged mob broke into the house where he was staying, and Paul narrowly escaped lynching before he was smuggled out of town.

 

To:
Thessalonica was a major seaport in the province north of Greece. It had a small Jewish community that welcomed non-Jews to explore the One God and the Jewish way of life. When Paul arrived in the synagogue and announced that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, many of these non-Jewish sympathizers found his arguments persuasive. But they barely had time to declare their faith before the Jewish community erupted in controversy and Paul’s team had to flee for their lives. There was so much Paul hadn’t had time to teach them, so his colleague Timothy traveled back and forth with letters and questions.

 

Re:
Roughly A.D. 50-51. Claudius was a frail, bookish fifty-year-old when he became emperor in A.D. 41. His nephew had been assassinated, and the imperial guard elevated him as the last of Augustus Caesar’s line. This proved that emperors held power not on the basis of law but by the will of the army. By A.D. 50 his second wife, Agrippina, was pulling the strings at court. She maneuvered Claudius into adopting her son Nero, after which she poisoned Claudius.