Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Work of Faith, Labor of Love
1 Thessalonians 1:2-3
2 We always give thanks to God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers, · WEB
Paul remembers them by a triad that pairs each virtue with what it produced.
We always give thanks to God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. The thanksgiving is unqualified — all of you — from a man who left the city under duress and had no idea until recently how many were left.
Then the triad, and it is the first appearance in Scripture of the sequence that becomes Paul's signature: faith, love, hope. He uses it again at the letter's most anxious point 1 Thessalonians 5:8 and famously at the close of the great chapter on love 1 Corinthians 13:13.
What is distinctive here is that each is joined to an output. Not faith but the work of faith. Not love but the labor of love — a word for toil that leaves a person tired. Not hope but the perseverance of hope, which is what hope looks like when it has to last.
So the abstractions are never left standing alone. Paul is remembering three things he watched them do, and he names the doing rather than the disposition. The order is also fixed: hope comes last and produces endurance, which is exactly the letter's subject.
settled What this mark means