1 Thessalonians 2:14 – Suffered the Same Things

14 For you became imitators, brethren, of the ecclesias of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you suffered the same, even you by your own fellowtribesmen, according as they also by the Jews,

Again Paul calls the Thessalonians “imitators.” Earlier they had become imitators of Paul and the Lord by receiving the word “in much affliction” (1 Thess. 1:6). Now they also prove to be imitators of the ecclesias in Judea. Not because they consciously copied them, but because they went the same way: faith in God’s word brought affliction with it.

Those ecclesias were geographically “in Judea” and at the same time “in Christ Jesus.” That is remarkable. They had not come into being through Paul’s ministry, but from “the evangel of the Circumcision” (Gal. 2:7). Yet Paul calls them without reservation “ecclesias of God” and “in Christ Jesus.” The Thessalonians had even become their imitators. A difference in ministry and background therefore did not prevent Paul from acknowledging their connection in Christ.

And remarkably, in both cases the opposition came from their own surroundings. The Thessalonians suffered at the hands of their “own fellowtribesmen,” just as the ecclesias in Judea did at the hands of the Jews. Precisely people with whom they shared descent and society turned against them. But the opposition from those around them did nothing to diminish what they had received. The Word of God remained operative in those who believed!

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