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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Calvin Complete Commentary - 1 Thessalonians 3:8 - 3:8
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8For now we live. Here it appears still more clearly that Paul almost forgot himself for the sake of the Thessalonians, or, at least, making regard for himself a mere secondary consideration, devoted his first and chief thoughts to them. At the same time he did not do that so much from affection to men as from a desire for the Lord’ glory. For zeal for God and Christ glowed in his holy breast to such a degree that it in a manner swallowed up all other anxieties. “We live, ” says he, that is, “ are in good health, if you persevere in the Lord. ” And under the adverb now, he repeats what he had formerly stated, that he had been greatly pressed down by affliction and necessity; yet he declares that whatever evil he endures in his own person does not hinder his joy. “ in myself I am dead, yet in your welfare I live. ” By this all pastors are admonished what sort of connection ought to subsist between them and the Church — that they reckon themselves happy when it goes well with the Church, although they should be in other respects encompassed with many miseries, and, on the other hand, that they pine away with grief and sorrow if they see the building which they have constructed in a state of decay, although matters otherwise should be joyful and prosperous.