Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 2 Thessalonians 1:3 - 1:3
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
We are bound (opheilomen). Paul feels a sense of obligation to keep on giving thanks to God (eucharistein tōi theōi, present infinitive with dative case) because of God’s continued blessings on the Thessalonians. He uses the same idiom again in 2Th 2:13 and nowhere else in his thanksgivings. It is not necessity (dei) that Paul here notes, but a sense of personal obligation as in 1Jo 2:6 (Milligan).
Even as it is meet (kathōs axion estin). Opheilomen points to the divine, axion to the human side of the obligation (Lightfoot), perhaps to cheer the fainthearted in a possible letter to him in reply to Paul’s First Thessalonian epistle (Milligan). This adjective axios is from agō, to drag down the scales, and so weighty, worthy, worthwhile, old word and appropriate here.
For that your faith groweth exceedingly (hoti huperauxanei hē pistis humōn). Causal use of hoti referring to the obligation stated in opheilomen. The verb huperauxanō is one of Paul’s frequent compounds in huper (hupeṙbainō, 1Th 4:6; hupeṙek̇teinō, 2Co 10:14; hupeṙeṅtugchanō, Rom 8:26; hupeṙnikaō, Rom 8:37; hupeṙpleonazō, 1Ti 1:14) and occurs only here in N.T. and rare elsewhere (Galen, Dio Cass.). Figure of the tree of faith growing above (huper) measure. Cf. parable of Jesus about faith-like a grain of mustard seed (Mat 13:31.).
Aboundeth (pleonazei). Same verb in 1Th 3:12, here a fulfilment of the prayer made there. Milligan finds diffusive growth of love in this word because of “each one” (henos hekastou). Frame finds in this fulfilment of the prayer of 1Th 3:12 one proof that II Thessalonians is later than I Thessalonians.