The 1st letter that Paul wrote to the Christians at Thessalonica
(The book in the Holy Bible called 1 Thessalonians)
About this letter
Paul wrote this letter about 2,000 years ago, about 20 years after Jesus went back to heaven, and it is now in the Holy Bible.
God sent Paul to lots of countries and lots of towns to tell people about Jesus. One of those towns was Thessalonica (see Acts 17:1-9). It was a big town in the country called Greece, where the Greek people come from, and it is still there today. Sometimes people now call that town Salonica.
When Paul went to Thessalonica some people believed in Jesus and became Christians, but others didn’t like what he was saying, and they made trouble for him. So he could not stay there very long. Soon after that he sent his friend Timothy back to Thessalonica to find out how those new Christians were going, and to help them be strong for Jesus. After Timothy came back and told him how they were going, Paul wrote them this letter. Paul’s 2 friends, Silas and Timothy, they helped him write this letter. This was the 1st letter that Paul wrote to them. He wrote them another letter about 6 months later.
In this letter Paul wrote about the time when Jesus will come back from heaven, and he said other important things too. So today we have to take notice of what Paul wrote to the Christians at Thessalonica.
1
1 I am Paul, and this letter is from me. Silas and Timothy are here with me, and they are helping me write this letter.
We are sending this letter to you Christians that are in God’s church, in the town called Thessalonica. You belong to God our father and to Jesus Christ our leader.
We are asking God and Jesus to be good to you, and to make you feel happy and quiet inside yourselves.*
People at Thessalonica properly believed in Jesus
2 We pray for you mob all the time, and we always thank God for you. 3 Whenever we talk about you to God, our father, we remember the good things that you do. You properly believe in Jesus Christ, and you love him very much, so you do those good things. And you love other people too, so you work hard to help them. You are really sure that our leader, Jesus Christ, will come back for you, so you keep on following him, no matter what other people do to you.
4 Christian friends, we know that God loves you, and he picked you to be his own people. 5 Remember the time when we told you the good news about Jesus. We told you the message with our words, but the Holy Spirit made us sure that we were telling the true story, and he gave us his power to show you that God was with us. And remember the sort of people we were at the time when we were with you there. We showed you the good way to live. 6 So you changed the way you live, and you lived the same way that we lived, like the way that Jesus, our leader, lived. You believed the message about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit made you really happy. Other people gave you a lot of trouble, but you were happy anyway.* 7 You showed all the other Christians there in Macedonia country the right way to live. And you did that too for the Christians in the country to the south of you, called Akaya.
8-9 And now people in lots of places have heard about Jesus. You see, other people told them about you. They told them that you listened to us when we came to your town, and that you turned away from the gods that are not real, and that now you only work for the true God, the one that is properly alive. And it’s not only the people in Macedonia and Akaya that have heard that story. Everywhere we go we find people that tell us about you, so we know that story has gone around to lots of places. We don’t have to tell anyone about you. They have already heard the story. 10 And they say that you are waiting for God’s son to come back from heaven. His son is Jesus. Jesus died, but God made him alive again. And you know, God will judge everybody one day. Everybody has done bad things, and that makes God angry. But Jesus will save his people, so God will not be angry with you, and he will not be angry with us.
* 1:1 Acts 17:1 * 1:6 Acts 17:5-9