Ver. 1. And to please God, so ye would abound more and more.—R.V. inserts “even as ye do walk after God.”
Ver. 2. What commandments.—R.V. “charge”; margin, “charges.” “The Greek word signifies an announcement, then a command or advice publicly delivered” (Findlay).
Ver. 3. Your sanctification, etc.—“The reception of Christianity never delivers, as with the stroke of a magician, from the wickedness and lusts of the heathen world which have become habitual; rather a long and constant fight is necessary for vanquishing them” (Huther). The sanctification here is first negative—abstinence.
Ver. 4. How to possess his vessel.—R.V. “to possess himself of his own vessel.” With the long list of names in view of those who interpret “vessel” as meaning “body,” it is almost daring to hint at another meaning. The list, however, is strong of those who regard the expression as a figurative designation for a wife, and 1 Pet. iii. 7 decides us.
Ver. 5. Not in the lust of concupiscence.—R.V. “not in the passion of lust.” “The word ‘passion’ signifies not so much a violent feeling as an overpowering feeling, one to which a man so yields himself that he is borne along by evil as if he were its passive instrument; he has lost the dignity of self-rule, and is the slave of his lower appetites” (Findlay).
Ver. 6. That no man go beyond and defraud.—R.V. “transgress, and wrong.” “More exactly, that none overreach and take advantage of his brother in the matter. ‘The matter’ of the last two verses. . . . The apostle sets the wrong in the strongest light; it is to cheat one’s brother, and that in what touches most nearly the sanctities of life” (Ibid.). The Lord is the avenger.—The heathen deities, so far as they were anything, were oftener patterns than avengers of such things, and they who made them were only too like them.
Ver. 8. He therefore that despiseth.—Margin and R.V. “rejecteth.” He who pushes aside sanctification in his preference for uncleanness will have to reckon with God Himself.
Ver. 9. Ye have no need that one write to you.—St. Paul admits the brotherly love amongst them. It was adroit on his part, therefore, to make uncleanness an offence against brotherly love. Taught of God.—Is an expression only found here in the New Testament. We are reminded of Isa. xxviii. 26. The mother-wit of the farmer who had no “school of agriculture” is traced by the prophet to God; he is God-taught to distinguish his methods. So these Thessalonians took to brotherly love naturally, as we say.
Ver. 10. We beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more.—Brotherly love is a good thing, of which St. Paul evidently thought too much could not be had.
Ver. 11. Study to be quiet.—R.V. margin, “Go: be ambitious.” “An example of St. Paul’s characteristic irony; the contrast between ambition and quiet, giving a sharper point to his exhortation, as though he said, ‘Make it your ambition to have no ambition!’ ” (Ibid.). To do your own business.—To be occupied with your own affairs.