Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Thessalonians 4:9 - 4:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Our apostle proceeds from an exhortation to chastity and justice, to press that of love, called here brotherly love, because it has all Christians, all our fellow-members in Christ for its object; and he persuades to the practice of it by a winning insinuation that he need not say much upon this argument, because they were taught of God, that is, by the gospel of God, and influenced by the Spirit of God, to love one another.
And observe we farther, the extensiveness of their love. It was not confined to a party, only to them in Thessalonica, but throughout all Macedonia; however, he desires them to extend it still farther, to abound more and more; that is, first, in the extent of it, let it reach not only the saints throughtout all Macedonia, but even to them at the ends of the earth: secondly, in the measure of it, to excel even themselves in the degrees of their love.
Learn hence, that neither brotherly love, nor any other Christian grace, doth advance to such a height in any saint here, but it is still capable of farther augmentation and increase, both intensively, by advancing to further measures and higher degrees of perfection, and extensively, reaching to more objects, who ought to be sharers in our love.