1 Thessalonians 2:3-6 For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile:… Said a converted Hindoo, addressing a number of his countrymen, "I am by birth a man of low and despised caste — and yet God has called me not only to know His gospel, but to teach it to others. Do you know why He did so? I will tell you. If God had selected one of you learned Brahmins, and made you His preacher, and you were successful in winning converts, the bystanders would have said, 'It is the amazing learning of the Brahmin, the Brahmin's influence, the Brahmin's great weight of character that has done this;' but now, when hearers are convinced and brought to the truth by my instrumentality, nobody thinks of the preacher, and God gets all the glory." When we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ — This has been referred in different senses either to what precedes or to what follows. In the first case the sense would be, although we might have been oppressive to you with our glorying and claims. But even though the words be thus humoured, the antithesis is not quite sound. Without wholly losing sight of what has preceded, it is better to connect them with what follows. The Apostle means to say that he might have oppressed them with apostolic claims and pretensions. He might have commanded where he entreated; he might have "come to them with a rod," and he came to them "in love and in the spirit of meekness" (1 Corinthians 4:21); he might have claimed the right of support from them as an apostle of Christ, and he waives it for their sake (comp. 1 Corinthians 9). It is true that this last point is not referred to until ver. 9. But nothing is more in the Apostle's manner than to drop a thought and then resume it. (Prof. Jowett.) Parallel Verses KJV: For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile:WEB: For our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in deception. |
    |