But when he adds in Christ Jesus, then his word takes on binding force. Whoever believes in Christ the Lord and loves Him reverently receives everything offered in His name and submits to it without contradiction. The Apostle speaks as one devoted to the Lord, who has dedicated his life to Him, to those likewise devoted to the Lord and who in conscience have accepted the obligation to live according to His will.
In another place he expresses the same thing thus: "Therefore we entreat on behalf of Christ" (2 Cor 5:20). This is an exhortation against which no believing heart can stand. We entreat you by Christ God. For Christ's sake, do this and that. By satisfying our request, you will not do what is pleasing to us, but what is pleasing to Christ Jesus the Lord.
"In Christ Jesus we entreat you by God" (Chrysostom). "See what humility. He does not consider himself worthy of belief, even in matters of exhortation, but offers the word from Christ. By Christ, he says, I entreat you" (Oecumenius).
As you received from us means: as you were taught by us and learned from us. "Received refers not only to words, but also to deeds" (Chrysostom). So we too say: to receive and to learn by imitation. The Apostle says: as you received from us through the words of preaching and as you learned by imitation from our life.
"How the Apostles themselves lived became a pattern for the Thessalonians" (Oecumenius). Everywhere the Apostles immediately ordered the lives of the newly converted, giving them the necessary rules. They took into account the character of the people and the customs established among them, approving some things and setting others aside.
They did this so that faith would not remain bare faith even for a moment, but would at once pass into life, changing and transforming it according to its own spirit. The Apostle now reminds them of these arrangements.
How you ought to walk and to please God. "How you ought to walk indicates the whole manner of life" (Chrysostom). To walk and to please stand in sequence as inseparable companions. In practice, pleasing God is inseparable from walking rightly before Him, because the former is the goal of the latter.
To walk embraces particular deeds, actions, and conduct. To please indicates what must be in the heart during them. The one is the body of life, and the other is its spirit. One is practice, the other the moving force.
Together it means this: to walk while pleasing God, always having God before one's eyes, directing one's steps with all attention, circumspection, and reverence, fearing to offend Him in anything, and taking care to do everything according to His will. Here the same thing is said as before: to walk worthy of God (1 Thess 2:12).
And this is where all the Apostles directed men. A correct life is maintained not for its own sake, but for pleasing God. The Apostles themselves did everything not as pleasing men, but God who tests the hearts (1 Thess 2:4).
As indeed you walk. He says the same to them below: "for you do this" (1 Thess 4:10), and further on: "as indeed you do" (1 Thess 5:11). He considered it necessary to inspire them by the beginnings of corrected life that had already appeared, and therefore he speaks this way. Or he spoke this way so that his lessons would not seem like a reproach for disorder.
In every respect these words are in place here and should not be omitted, as was done in the Russian translation. Besides the fact that they are read in the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, and in many others, without them that you may abound is not fully consistent with the movement of the speech.
That you may abound more, that you may progress more and more in the God-pleasing life you have begun, and appear more perfect from day to day. It is not proper to Christians to stand in one place, but always to ascend higher and higher, from strength to strength (Ps 83:8). By their calling they are zealots for good works (Tit 2:14), created in Christ Jesus for good works, that they should walk in them (Eph 2:10).
Moreover, Christian life is of such a kind that one cannot immediately assimilate it and quickly express it in deeds. It gradually fills the heart, until, having transformed the whole heart according to its own spirit, it makes it an inexhaustible source of God-pleasing deeds.
The path to this is the fulfillment of particular commandments. From habituation in them, a good disposition of heart is formed as the person's constant character. One who reaches this no longer needs prescriptions and orders.
Saint Chrysostom says: "That you may abound, that is, so that with the increase of zeal in you, you would not stop at the fulfillment of the commandments, but ascend higher and higher. In the preceding chapter he praises the firmness of their faith, while here he teaches them to progress in the virtuous life.
Progress consists in doing more than the commandments and ordinances require. For then everything is no longer done by compulsion from the teacher, but by one's own free will."
THEOSIS