Exhort, encourage, charge (1 Thessalonians 2:10-12)

Posted on October 8, 2017 Updated on October 6, 2017

For you know how, like a father with his children, ¹² we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. – ESV

And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. ¹² We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory. – NLT

Not all things in life have equal value.  Friends who’ve watched a good film might encourage other to do so themselves.  It’s not life altering, just a suggestion of something that might be nice.  While a parent or a mentor might exhort or even plead with a young person to avoid certain places or people for their life’s sake or might even charge them to promise that they won’t do something or will do something of great importance…

The more important something is, the more urgent the appeals tend to become and the urgency of the appeals reveal something of the perceived importance of the matter to the person speaking.

So what is worth someone’s exhortation, pleading, encouraging, urging even their charging others?

Paul uses three phrases all in one sentence, translated as we ‘exhorted’, ‘encouraged’ and even ‘charged’, to stress how important this thing is that he wants to emphasise for them to make a priority in their lives….so what is it?

Paul is urgently insistent that the Thessalonian believers, that we ourselves would live our lives in such a way that God would consider those lives worthy of God’s having called us and saved us.

He feels like a dad as he says this.  As a dad it’s a terrible thing when I see my kids taking something for granted, not valuing what they have been given, seeing them ignoring something incredible they’ve been blessed with, seeing no gratitude in their response.

The Christian life is a response.  It’s a response to the wonder and mystery of the goodness and kindness and mercy of God’s saving love for us.  The more we see the magnitude of what God’s done for us in sending Jesus to die in our place for our sin, the more we will respond with a life fuelled by gratitude expressed towards God who has loved us so incredibly.  And that life will be a God-pleasing life!  A life that is worthy, is an appropriate response, considering what God has done for us.

The Christian life is a response of whole life worship (Romans 12:1-2), not just 1-2hrs on a Sunday, but 24/7 worship of God in all and through all you do and say.  That’s the type of life that Jesus’ gift to you and to me is worthy of.

So, how’s your life response, is it a worthy one?

What might you want to change?

What might God want you to change?

We love Jesus back by living our lives as a wholehearted response to His wholehearted giving of Himself for us.  We do so not out of a sense of debt and trying to pay Jesus back but rather out of gratitude for who He is and what He has done for us  – we respond by loving Jesus back with our whole lives.

And this is worth exhorting, encouraging & charging others with!