Laboring Under Difficulties
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“that we might not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have
not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.”
2 Thessalonians 3:8, 9
.
At Thessalonica Paul had met those who refused to work with
their hands. It was of this class that he afterward wrote: “There are
some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are
busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our
Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own
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bread.” While laboring in Thessalonica, Paul had been careful to set
before such ones a right example. “Even when we were with you,” he
wrote, “this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither
should he eat.”
Verses 11, 12, 10
.
In every age Satan has sought to impair the efforts of God’s servants
by introducing into the church a spirit of fanaticism. Thus it was in
Paul’s day, and thus it was in later centuries during the time of the
Reformation. Wycliffe, Luther, and many others who blessed the world
by their influence and their faith, encountered the wiles by which the
enemy seeks to lead into fanaticism overzealous, unbalanced, and
unsanctified minds. Misguided souls have taught that the attainment
of true holiness carries the mind above all earthly thoughts and leads
men to refrain wholly from labor. Others, taking extreme views of
certain texts of Scripture, have taught that it is a sin to work—that
Christians should take no thought concerning the temporal welfare of
themselves or their families, but should devote their lives wholly to
spiritual things. The teaching and example of the apostle Paul are a
rebuke to such extreme views.
Paul was not wholly dependent upon the labor of his hands for
support while at Thessalonica. Referring later to his experiences in
that city, he wrote to the Philippian believers in acknowledgment of
the gifts he had received from them while there, saying, “Even in
Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity.”
Philippians
4:16
. Notwithstanding the fact that he received this help he was careful
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to set before the Thessalonians an example of diligence, so that none
could rightfully accuse him of covetousness, and also that those who
held fanatical views regarding manual labor might be given a practical
rebuke.
When Paul first visited Corinth, he found himself among a people
who were suspicious of the motives of strangers. The Greeks on the