4:1
“We instructed you how to live in order to please God”. So often we want to live in order to please ourselves, or to please other people. Our prime goal should be to live in order to please God. Moreover, our teaching and leading of the church should be to help people to live for God. If we seek to help them to live to please the current culture then we are badly mistaken. Paul did not think that the Thessalonians were no aiming to please God, but he was encouraging them to do this all the more so. We must never rest on our laurels, for we all have much more progress to make.
4:2
Paul and his companions had given the Thessalonians clear instructions. Sometimes we can be too gentle with people, prone to sugar-coating things. That is not something we find either in Jesus or in the New Testament letters. And we give this clear Biblical teaching by the authority of Jesus. In order to do this we have to be under His authority ourselves and we must always check ourselves to see if we are straying in the wrong direction. Teaching with the authority of Jesus is definitely not a licence to exert or exalt ourselves. It is an authority to teach the word of God. So we must be under authority, and we must lead with authority.
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