Paul reminded his readers how they had welcomed the gospel message to vindicate further his own ministry and to emphasize the importance of proclaiming this message. He did this so the Thessalonians would continue to herald it abroad as they had been doing.
"This section of the letter begins with the second thanksgiving in a series of three (1:2-5; 2:13; 3:9-13) that dominate the tone of the first three chapters."48
2:13 Previously Paul thanked God for the way these believers were bearing the fruit of righteousness in their own lives (1:3). Now he thanked God for the way they responded when he had preached the gospel to them the first time. They sensed that it was a divine revelation rather than a human philosophy, and they believed it. Because they received that divine message, it had done a mighty work of transformation in their lives as God's Holy Spirit used it.
2:14 By believing the gospel the Thessalonians had followed in the train of many others who, when they believed the truth, also found that they attracted enemies.
"Persecution inevitably arises from the outside when a Christian patterns his life after the Lord."49
2:15-16 The Thessalonians' opponents seem to have been mainly Jews (v. 14). Paul desperately wanted unbelieving Jews to come to faith in Christ (Rom. 9:1-3; 10:1). Yet they were some of his most antagonistic persecutors (cf. 2 Cor. 11:24, 26). Their actions were not pleasing to God and were not in the best interests of all men who need to hear the gospel. By their opposition the enemies of the gospel added more transgressions on their own heads with the result that they hastened God's judgment of them (cf. Gen. 15:16). God had already focused His wrath on them for their serious sin.50They not only rejected the gospel themselves, but they also discouraged others from accepting it. It was only a matter of time before God would pour out His wrath in judgment. In view of the eschatological emphasis of the letter, Paul seems to be alluding primarily to the judgment coming on unbelievers during the Tribulation.51
Why did Paul describe this outpouring of divine wrath as past ("has come,"aorist tense ephthasen) if it was future? Jesus spoke of the arrival of His kingdom in comparable terminology (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20). The verb connotes "arrival upon the threshold of fulfilment and accessible experience, notthe entrance into that experience."52The messianic kingdom was present in Jesus' day in that the King had arrived and could have established it then, but the Jews did not enter into it because they rejected Him. Likewise God's wrath had come on the Jews to the utmost in Paul's day for their rejection of Messiah, but they had not entered into it's full manifestation yet, namely the Tribulation.
"This indictment implies that Paul saw a continuity in the pattern of Jewish rejection of God's agents from OT times to his own."53
"The Thessalonians' persecution lasted a long time, and so did their steadfastness. Some six years later Paul can still speak of the churches of Macedonia (not least, the church of Thessalonica) as enduring a severe test of affliction' and continuing to give evidence of the reality of their faith in that their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality' (2 Cor 8:1, 2). The extreme poverty' might well have been the result of mob violence and looting; elsewhere in the NT members of another Christian group are reminded how, in the early days of their faith, they joyfully accepted' the plundering of their property in addition to other forms of brutal maltreatment (Heb 10:32-34)."54
