1 Thessalonians 3:5 – To Know of Your Faith

5 Therefore, when I also could by no means longer refrain, I send to know of your faith, lest somehow the trier tries you and our toil may be coming to be for naught.

“Therefore … I send,” Paul writes. With this, he reaches back to what preceded. Precisely because the Thessalonians were under affliction and could thereby be swayed, he wanted to know how their faith was doing. He could no longer bear the uncertainty about it. His concern was not whether the opposition had meanwhile diminished, but about their faith.

There was, after all, a real danger: “lest somehow the trier tries you.” The afflictions could be used to sway them. Opposition could easily raise the question of whether the message they had received was actually true. The trial was thus directed at their faith: despite everything, would they continue to stand by what had been proclaimed to them?

Paul’s own labor was connected with this as well. He feared that “our toil may be coming to be for naught.” Not because the evangel itself could fail, but because his labor among them could remain without the intended fruit. For Paul, coming to faith was not an endpoint, but a beginning. Faith was to be established and continue to grow.

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