Monday 3rd February
Read 1 Thessalonians 1:1
“Paul, Silas and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace and peace to you.” (NIVUK)
We skip over the introduction to these ancient letters to early churches quite quickly, eager to get onto the better stuff. These words though are likely the very first recorded Christian words. Many scholars believe the letter to the Thessalonian believers is the oldest surviving letter, which makes this verse the first of an entirely New Testament. The early church, when putting together the canon, didn’t place as much weight on ‘oldest’ as we might today. They rightly considered the gospels rather significant! Yet these words, likely written less than 20 years after Jesus rose from the dead, are just as revolutionary in their own way.
Consider what they say and how early they were written. Within 20 years Paul, and those with him, could write a letter (an entirely new genre of ancient literature – but that is a separate story) addressed to a ‘church’. A distinct community of people who identified with ‘God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’. Jesus was not simply a random Palestinian Jew to these mostly Gentile believers. He was named in the same breath as God the Father. Jesus and God were identified together in the very first words of the New Testament. Belief in the deity of Jesus was not some late invention – it was the grounds upon which the faith of early Christians rested. They were identified by it.
In a sense these introductory words as theologically rich as the words of the angel to Mary announcing she would give birth to the Messiah. They changed the world. “The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:28) (NIVUK). The angel too announced that Mary had been ‘graced’. We know how that turned out. One wonders if those words to Mary inspired Paul’s words to the many communities of believers who would follow the Messiah announced to Mary? Because we too are ‘graced’.
