Love One Another
The Thessalonian believers were known by Paul to abound in love for one another. Not just locally, but in their entire region, they endeavored to care for their fellow believers.
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-10a
This is high praise! They were known throughout the whole region for their godly love. However, in this life we never stop learning. Paul decided in his letter to encourage them with some tips to help them to be even more capable of loving one another.
Industrious Charity
But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12
We live in a time when envy is normalized. It is not uncommon for people to consider a person who takes “minding their own affairs” seriously to be selfish. Instead of each person being independent of others, we are told, we care for each other by becoming knit together into a network of people who all benefit equally from our shared labor.
Paul argues the exact opposite here. That a person is in the best position to love others when they, themselves, are careful to tend their own business and are dependent upon no one. Instead of it being virtuous to be one part of a system, the goal of a believer should be to be self-sufficient (really depending upon only God) enough that we can not only care for our own household, but have enough left over to be charitable! This echoes his words to the Ephesians recorded in Acts.
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Acts 20:35
When Charity Isn’t
Charity comes from a person who labors diligently and gives generously to a person who finds himself in need. The goal of charity is always to help the one in need to recover from some loss in capacity to provide for himself.
Both the charitable giver and the person in need should aspire to be capable of providing enough for themselves that they have excess enough to care for others. The charitable man has achieved this and is now aiding the man in need to reach that level of independence as well.
But what about a system where everyone has their needs provided regardless of how much they are willing to work?
For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
2 Thessalonians 3:10
This may seem harsh but Paul had every reason to insist that their charity not become cause for some to grow slack in providing for themselves as they are able. In fact, is is unloving to enable sloth!
A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on.
Proverbs 16:26
It may seem paradoxical on the surface to say that the more independent believers become in their needs, the more charity will abound. However, it is true! When each sets about to provide sufficiently for his own needs, wealth increases and the means of caring for others follows right along with it.
That’s not to say that sinful men won’t be tempted to selfishly keep their excess but a society that sets as it’s default that everyone will have their needs provided will quickly find itself unable to provide at all. Robbing men of their motivations to provide, it quickly becomes a system of rationed care and eventually death.
God, knowing the nature of man better than we know ourselves, inspired Paul to write these instructions so that we can know how best to love one another and so we do not let sloth and envy drive us to hate our fellow man with a system that claims to be charity but actually kills it.
