Page 11 - Pauline Epistles Student Textbook

Paul’s other colleague was young Timothy. Paul first met Timothy at Lystra on the first missionary
journey about 47 AD, where Timothy was converted to Christ under Paul’s ministry. He was the son
of a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father. Two years later, He journeyed with Paul to Philippi
and apparently was left behind in Thessalonica when Paul had to flee the town. Since his name is
not included in the account of the founding of the church there, he probably joined Paul and Silas
later. Timothy was Paul’s “true son in the faith.” (I Cor. 4:17). He said of Timothy, “he has proved
himself, because as a son with his father he has served me in the work of the Gospel” (Phil. 2:22).

This letter is sent to the church in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:1). The derivation for the word church is a
Greek word “ἐκκλησίᾳ” (ekklesia or ecclesia) which has a range of meanings determined by the
context. Ekklesia is a noun whose verbal cognate (the object of a verb with the same root) is a
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compound word ἐκκαλέω (ekkaleō). Ἐκ (ek) means “out of,” and καλέω (kaleō), means “calling.”
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So, ecclesia means to be called out of for a specific mission or task. The meaning of the word can be
completely determined by reading in context what precedes and follows the word. So, assembly or
in our translations above, church, is derived from ekklesia. In Greek, it “was used of a summoned
assembly, for example, a regularly summoned political body.” In the LXX (Greek version of the Old
Testament [OT]), the word was used for the solemn assemblage of the people of Israel as a sacred
gathering (Deut. 9:10; 18:6; 31:30; Judges 20:2;1 Kings 8:14). Being taken over by Paul, it designated
“any local Christian community” comprised of “the new people of God” who repeatedly gathered for
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“worship and fellowship (cf. 1 Cor. 4:17; Gal 1:22).” This assembly for Christians was not limited to
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only a local church but applicable also to “the wider Christian community ” (Acts 9:31; 1 Cor. 6:4;
12:28; Eph. 1:22; 3:10).

Caution should be exercised in determining of the meaning for ekklesia. Not every passage in the
Bible with that word denotes the assembly of Christians or church. In some passages, it meant the
gathering of the political body (cf. Acts 19:32, 39, 41). So, ekklesia, when used for a Christian
community as it is in 1 Thess. 1:1, does not mean a building or temple, but a group of people who
have been called out from the penalty of sin “by grace. . . through faith” (Eph. 2:8). Therefore, the
readers of that letter were not just an assembly, but ones who had a personal relationship with the
promised Messiah for both the Jews and all the nations (Gen 12:2-4).

The church in Thessalonica was “in” God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 1:1). The
preposition “in” is derived from a Greek word “ἐν.” Depending on the context and the words
surrounding it (in our context, subsequent words are in datives), ἐν + dative can mean
to/for/in/among/with/by means of. Usually, when the subsequent words for “ἐν” are in dative
forms (e.g., God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ), then, as Daniel B. Wallace suggests, it could
either express “means” or “agency” and denotes a “personal agent by whom something is done.”
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16 Frederick William Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian
Literature, 3 ed. (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 295.
rd
17 John D. Harvey, Greek Is Good Grief: Laying the Foundation for Exegesis and Exposition (Eugene, OR:
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2007), 66.

18 Wanamaker, The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Epistles to the
Thessalonians, 70.

19 Ibid.
20 Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 373.

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