Paul’s Joy and Crown

Devotion by NT Wright

As for us, my dear family, we were snatched away from you for a short time, in person though not in heart. We longed eagerly, with a great desire, to see you face to face. That’s why we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but the satan got in our way. Don’t you see? When our Lord Jesus is present once more, what is my hope, my joy, the crown of my boasting before him? It’s you! Yes: you are our glory and our joy. -1 Thessalonians 2:17-20

There were tear-jerking scenes on the television last night. Twin baby girls had been adopted by a couple from another country, who had found the children being advertised for adoption over the Internet. But another couple, from the children’s own country, thought the twins had been promised to them. Meanwhile the children’s natural mother changed her mind and said she wanted them back. Then, apparently to protect the babies from any more exposure to the bright lights of the media, officials from the government’s social agency took the children away for their own protection, and gave them into the care of foster parents. It was a legal, moral and emotional nightmare for all concerned.

For a little baby, to be taken away from a parent is often traumatic—though, in the televised case, the babies seemed to be the least upset of all the people involved. For a parent, to have a child taken away is agony. Even in the animal kingdom, the mother will often make a great fuss about losing a baby; how much more in the human world.

That is the image Paul uses for how he felt about having to leave the Thessalonians, once his presence in their city looked like precipitating another riot. These verses, and the whole of the next chapter, grow out of his sense of deep bonding with them, like a mother with the baby she has begun to feed. He has been snatched away from them, and his whole heart and being yearns to be face to face with them again. This entire section, from 1:2 right through to 3:13, is framed by thanksgiving and prayer, and Paul here expresses his deepest emotions in the presence of God. Any idea that he was a cerebral theologian only, organizing his ideas into neat patterns without being caught up in the power and glory, and the emotional ties, of the gospel, is completely ruled out by this passage.

Like an anxious parent, Paul’s every thought has been how to get back to see his beloved (and, he fears, endangered) children again. As he journeys south, to Beroea, Athens and then Corinth, at every turn he is trying to work out ways of going back north to them once more. But of course if Paul had always been with his churches we would never have had his letters. His letters are a substitute for his personal presence, binding him and the churches together in a fellowship which, though not face to face as they would have liked, is nevertheless a fellowship of heart and mind. Underneath the opposition of ‘satan’ we may sometimes discern the strange providence of God. This does not rob the ‘satanic’ opposition of danger or threat, but reminds us that God remains sovereign even over present dark frustrations.

Paul’s reason for longing to see them is not simply that they have become very dear to him. It also has a forward look. From this point on the letter increasingly looks ahead to the great coming day, the day when Jesus will be revealed once more and so will be personally present with his people, and as Lord of the world. Each pastor and teacher should look to the future, and see those in their charge as their potential joy, hope and crown. And each congregation should recognize that this is how they will appear on the last day. Both should be challenged and encouraged, by this forward look, to learn and live the faith, to celebrate the hope, to consolidate and practise the love revealed in the gospel.