1st Thessalonians Chapter 5 verse 12 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - With this verse commences a new paragraph. The apostle adds in conclusion a few brief and somewhat miscellaneous exhortations. And we beseech you, brethren; an expression of earnestness and affection. To know; that is, to value, appreciate, and esteem. Them which labor among you. It was Paul's custom to organize the Churches which he had founded, and to appoint presbyters among them. Although the Church of Thessalonica had been so recently founded, yet it had its presbyters. And are over you. The presbyters, in virtue of their office, presided over the Christian assemblies. In the Lord; the sphere in which they were set over the Church; they were ordained to minister in sacred things. And admonish you. There are not three classes or orders of office-bearers here mentioned - those who labored among them, those who presided over them, and those who admonished them (Mac-knight); but all these duties belonged to one class, namely, the presbyters.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12) We now come to minor details of instruction, no doubt suggested by observation of manifest defects in the Thessalonian Church. These details show us still further the mixture of restless ungoverned zeal with gloomy forebodings and discontents.To know them which labour.--A command to enter into the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline. The persons meant are not simply the hard-working laity, contrasted with the idlers of 1Thessalonians 4:11 and 2Thessalonians 3:11, but those who performed the laborious office of the priesthood, as the words subsequent show. And "knowing" them is hardly to be limited either to the sense of "recognising their position," i.e., "not ignoring them," or, on the other hand, to the sense of "being on terms of familiar intercourse with them." The Greek word indicates appreciation; they are bidden to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the presbyter and his work, and to endeavour to understand his teaching, and to value his example. The logical connection of this verse with the preceding is that of course the main endeavours to "edify" the brethren were made by the presbytery; and the command to edify involves the command to accept edification.Are over you in the Lord.--This is the primitive idea of the priest in the Church: he is not a member of a sacerdotal caste, ministering to an outer world, but a superior officer in a spiritual society consisting of nothing but priests (Revelation 1:6, where the right reading is, "Made us a kingdom of priests"). It is specially interesting to notice how much power is given to the presbytery in this earliest writing of the New Testament, and how carefully St. Paul seems to have organised his churches, and that at the very foundation of them. It is only "in the Lord" that the presbytery are over men, that is, in spiritual matters.Admonish you.--The presbytery are not only organisers, managers of the corporate affairs of their Church, but also spiritual guides to give practical advice to individual Christians. These are the two senses in which they are "over you."