Yet he expresses this not directly, but by setting forth the general renown of their lofty patience and the praise it receives from all. Its fame is everywhere, so that its reflection falls even upon us. We cannot restrain ourselves. Carried along by the common praise of you, we too begin to boast of you. Thus the thought of this passage is to indicate the exceeding growth of patience. All the other expressions serve as a fitting setting for this chief thought. We ourselves boast of you. Perhaps this thought is also present here: because of your lofty patience, the report of which has gone everywhere, we too are praised, and great honor is paid to us in all the Churches. But the generally accepted understanding is that the Apostles themselves boast of the Thessalonians' patient faithfulness to the faith amid all attacks upon them. We ourselves boast. It is not our custom to boast, but the greatness of your patience makes us forget our restraint. Or thus: others praise you. This was not enough. We ourselves could not restrain ourselves, and began to boast of you, counting your firmness in the faith as an honor for ourselves. The Apostle had already called them his crown of boasting, but before the Lord at His coming (1 Thess 2:19). Now he boasts of them even here, though certainly not in the literal sense: behold what our disciples are like. Rather, he hints at it in every way. He does this not to exalt himself, but to exalt the power of evangelical truth and the grace of God. These show such dominion over the heart that, for their sake, believers are ready for every deprivation. He also has in mind to encourage and inspire others to the same thing by their example (Ambrosiaster). That the Apostle praises not himself but grace, we may be assured by his confession that by the grace of God he is what he is (1 Cor 15:10). He who forbids boasting in anything except the Lord (1 Cor 1:31; 1 Cor 3:21) is certainly boasting here in the Lord. He shows what the Lord has done and is doing in the Thessalonians, and how He displays them by His grace. One may therefore boast without offending God. This is a boast free from pride, attributing every good thing to the grace of God. It alone accomplishes in men, amid all their personal labors, every true good that has worth before God. In the Churches of God means those around Corinth, for example in Athens, and in other places. When writing the second epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle mentions the many saints who are in Achaia (2 Cor 1:1). The field of the Apostle Paul's activity, during his year and a half in Corinth, surely was not limited to Corinth alone. Concerning your patience and faith. Here he indicates that much time had already passed since the beginning of their sufferings. Patience becomes evident over a long period, not in two or three days. Nor does he speak simply of patience alone. Of course, patience is already shown when a man does not enjoy the promised blessings. But in the present case he speaks of a greater patience. What kind is this? The kind born of persecutions. That he is hinting precisely at this is clear from what he adds next, saying: in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure (Chrysostom). There is patience also when the promised blessing is not soon received. But patience in temptations and tribulations is higher and more wondrous (Oecumenius). The height of patience lies in this: despite calamities, all stand firm in the confession they have received. Therefore, under patience the Apostle also sees faith. He indicates both why they suffer and from what source they draw strength to suffer. You endure, yet you keep the faith. You have loved it and have been convinced that it is the one true faith. From this conviction you draw the impulse to endure, and by it you attract from above the strength for endurance. The Apostle has already mentioned above the exceeding growth of the Thessalonians' faith. Here, of course, he points to those aspects of faith by which patience is especially sustained. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and by the grace received from Him, God became their God, and they became God's own. They received power to become children of God. Therefore they stand in God's special mercy and under His guardianship. If they do not enjoy happiness here, it is so that the true eternal blessedness awaiting them in heaven may be increased through this. It may therefore be said that patience and faith in this passage are the same as the patience of hope in the first epistle (1 Thess 1:3). By the word faith, the Apostle indicated the spirit of patience. For patience is not precious in God's eyes in itself, but according to the disposition with which one endures. Persecutions and tribulations embrace the outward and inward side of the Thessalonians' distressed condition. Persecutions press from without. Here are various displeasures and oppressions in daily affairs, loss of their former standing in society, seizure of property, and the like. Since the Thessalonians suffered all this not for any fault, but solely for the faith, they could not fail to feel that they were suffering wrongfully. The feeling of wrongful suffering makes deprivations most painful. The Apostle does not suggest that they remained insensible to these deprivations. He saw that they grieved, yet they did not fall in spirit because of grief. They overcame it by faith, and amid all misfortune they remained cheerful. Because of this cheerfulness, which swallowed up external hardships, the Apostle neither grieves nor laments over the Thessalonians' sufferings, though he loved them as a father. Rather, he boasts of this before others. He writes about it to the Thessalonians themselves in order to inspire them still more to firmness in the faith. They should be convinced that this is praiseworthy not only for them, but also for their teachers and for Christianity itself. By this he suggests that, if they weaken, they will cast a shadow upon the Gospel itself, and through it upon the Lord Himself. On the other hand, he also suggests that sufferings are not humiliating in every respect. If the Apostle values them so highly, much more does God. There is an Eye that always looks with favor upon those who sorrow, praising and strengthening them. The words that ye endure make it understood that the sorrows were still continuing when the Apostle wrote this epistle. They also show that the Thessalonians bore them willingly. They did not evade them or resist them, but consented to them with desire. By this they might have disarmed their enemies, but those enemies proved insatiable. Saint Chrysostom writes: They lived constantly among enemies who tried to harm them from every side. Despite this, they showed unbending and unshaken patience. Therefore, he adds, let those be ashamed who change their convictions for the sake of human patronage. For at the very beginning of the evangelical preaching, poor men who lived by daily labor entered into struggle with men who governed the state and held the first places in it. This happened when not one king and not one governor was yet numbered among the believers. They endured irreconcilable enmity and, despite this, did not renounce their convictions.
THEOSIS