1 Thessalonians 2:1-20
2 For you yourselves, brothers, know about our entrance to you, that it was not a failure,
2 but after we had suffered beforehand and been outrageously treated, as you know, at Philippi, we were bold enough in our God to speak God’s gospel to you in a hard struggle.
3 For our exhortation is not a result of crankiness nor of uncleanness, nor by way of a trick;
4 but as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel message, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who assays our hearts.
5 For we never dealt in flattering talk, as you know, nor in excuses for moneymaking, God knows,
6 nor tried to get glory from men, either you or others, when we could have made ourselves important as apostles of Christ,
7 ** but behaved gently in your midst; as a woman cherishes her own children,
8 so yearning over you we were willing to pass out to you not only the gospel of God, but our own lives too, because you had become darlings of ours.
9 For you remember, brothers, our toil and trouble: it was while working night and day so as not to be burdensome to any of you that we proclaimed God’s gospel among you.
10 * You are witnesses, and so is God, in what godly and honest and irreproachable fashion we behaved toward you who believe,—
11 you know how it was,—animating each one of you as a father would his own children and comforting you and admonishing you
12 that you should walk worthily of the God who is calling you to his own reign and glory.
13 And for this reason we too thank God continually, that when you had from us a hearsay report of God you received it as not men’s word but, as it positively is, God’s, the same that is taking effect in you believers;
14 for you, brothers, showed yourselves imitators of the churches of God that there are in Palestine in Christ Jesus, because you too suffered the same things from the men of your own race as did they from the Jews,
15 those who both killed the Lord Jesus and drove us out, and do not please God and are in opposition to all men,
16 * forbidding us to speak to the foreigners that they may be saved, so as to fill up their sins always. But wrath has overtaken them, absolutely.
17 But we, brothers, bereaved of you for a moment’s space in face, not in heart, made it our very special concern, with strong desire, to see your faces;
18 because we did mean to come to you—I, Paul, once and twice too—and Satan blocked us.
19 For what is our hope or joy or wreath of triumph, or are you not such, before our Lord Jesus at his coming?
20 for you are our glory and joy.
Footnotes
^ 2:7 Var. behaved as babes
^ 2:7 Lit. as a nurse (or one who has nursed) cherishes her own
^ 2:10 [-11] Lit. believe, as you know; animating
^ 2:16 The Greek words would more naturally mean wrath has burst upon them in the end. If we understand it so, we should guess that these last words, or the whole of verses 15-16, were not written by Paul but added in copying
