1:10
Jesus will return to be glorified in His Holy People. We need to realise how central we are to God’s plans. Now we need to be careful about this, because the human tendency is to imagine that we are important apart from God. Apart from God we are nothing. The wrong reaction to this is to then downplay our importance. We might say things like “it’s not about me, it’s about Christ”. Up To a point this is ok, but a more accurate statement might be “it’s about me in Christ”. Christ will be glorified in His people, and His holy people. A holy people are a people who have been justified by Christ and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.And on that day we will marvel at Christ, we will be filled with wonder at what Christ has done, at last seeing the full extent of that work. Paul then assures his readers that they are included in all this, because they believe the gospel.
1:11,12
Paul then turns to what his response is to all this. He prays for the Thessalonians, and prays that God would make them worthy. The gospel involved a change in our lives, a continual and ongoing change. It is the power of God that brings to fruition our good desires for goodness and fruitfulness. So we do change, but the change is all down to God. It all happens according to the grace of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul prays for this so that Christ’s name may be glorified in us.
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