THE THESSALONIANS’ LOVE CONFIRMED, 1:9c Their labor of love in disseminating the Gospel is confirmed in the phrase “to serve the living and true God”(KJV). “Serve” really means to serve as a slave, and the Old Testament picture of the perpetual bondslave is in Deuteronomy 15:16ff. In our Lord’s humiliation, He took “the form of a bond-servant” (Phil. 2:7), and Paul too delights to call himself a slave of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:1). Truly these Thessalonians did become followers of him and of the Lord (v. 6) in willing slavery to Christ, their Master.
©1959, 1987, 2001 by
CHARLES C. RYRIE
