1 Thessalonians 1:5,6 - In power and in the Holy Spirit

1:5

Paul then explains how he knows that God loves them and has chosen them. It is because the gospel came to them with words and power. The power aspect may have included miracles, though there is no clear reference to this in Acts 17. The key element of the evidence of power is the changing of men’s hearts. It was the Holy Spirit who brought the gospel with deep conviction in their hearts. We need to recognise that the power of the gospel is the Holy Spirit. It is He who convicts people and opens their eyes to see the truth of the gospel, it is not any gimmicks on our part, nor even eloquence. We should seek to present things clearly and well, but we always need to now that the work of new birth belongs to the Holy Spirit. Paul then refers to the lives they lived among them. So we have the centrality of the work of God, His sovereign choice, the power of the Spirit, and at the same time the quality of the lives of the evangelists. The two go together.

1:6

The Thessalonians had imitated Paul and his colleagues. Note that the attention was not drawn to Paul alone. Our witnessing is to be with both words and deeds. Why did they do this? Because they welcomed the message of the gospel with joy, and this was despite the suffering that they had to endure right from the outset. Contrast this with how we often view people making a “commitment” today. We seem to expect so little, and we rely on human methods. We need to be working much more closely with the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who gave joy to the Thessalonians, who enabled them to react in such a different way to the difficult conditions they were encountering.