1. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 (ESV)
  2. Application

The Word of God for us today

1 Thessalonians 2:13 (ESV)

13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

It should be quite obvious that the application of this passage revolves around our acceptance of God’s word as it actually is: the word of God, not the word of man. But in order to make this application we need to understand what the word of God is for us. In the case of the Thessalonians, the word of God was the message preached by Paul and his coworkers. What is it for us in the twenty-first century?

This question becomes particularly important in the light of the claims we so often hear regarding what God has said. Some believe they have the gift of prophecy and are able to deliver the word of the Lord. Prominent church leaders can be heard telling their congregations that God has revealed certain things to them. What does 1 Thessalonians—and the rest of Scripture—teach us in this regard?

One of the pillars of our faith is that, for us, God’s word is found in the Bible, which we refer to as Holy Scripture. We do not seek God’s word in dreams, in visions, or in our own subjective impressions; we hear God speaking to us in Scripture. It is helpful here to recap briefly our understanding of Scripture: why we believe it is God’s word and how the apostles’ teaching, referred to in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, relates to Scripture. Overall, the reasoning is as follows:

  • God spoke to his people through the prophets in Old Testament times.

  • These words of God were written down in documents that came to be accepted as the Hebrew Scriptures. This is what we call the Old Testament today.

  • Jesus and the apostles accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative and as the word of God, not only for the past, but for their own day as well.

  • With the coming of Christ, God spoke again. The apostles were commissioned by Christ to give an authoritative proclamation and interpretation of the life and work of Christ.

  • The apostles wrote much of their teaching down, as did the prophets in Old Testament times. The writings of the apostles came to be accepted as Scripture, alongside the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament. These writings are known today as the New Testament.

  • As Jesus and the apostles received the Hebrew Scriptures as their Bible—as God’s authoritative word for them—so we receive both Old and New Testaments as God’s authoritative word to us.


Let us now consider the biblical substantiation for each of these assertions.

God spoke through the prophets in Old Testament times

We are reminded in Hebrews 1:1 that Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. When considering who these prophets were, we should think not only of those who wrote the prophetic books (Isaiah to Malachi) and others who were widely known as prophets (e.g., Elijah and Elisha), but of all those who were given the task of delivering God’s word to his people. This would include such men as Moses and Samuel (see Deuteronomy 18:18; 1 Samuel 3:19–21).1

The essence of prophecy was that the prophet spoke God’s words to God’s people. Although the prophet had thought about what he was saying, and was convinced of the truth of what he said, it was understood that the words he spoke were the words of God; God had placed his own words into the prophet’s mouth. This is affirmed by passages such as Deuteronomy 18:18 and Jeremiah 1:9 as well as the language in which the prophet delivered his message. Throughout the prophetic writings we find the prophet using the phrase, Thus says the Lord (and similar forms of expression). The fact that the prophets’ words were to be understood as God’s words is confirmed by 2 Peter 1:21: men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The words of the prophets were committed to writing

From the earliest times, the words of the prophets—not all their words, but those words which needed to be preserved for future generations—were written down. Evidence for this writing process is found, for example, in Deuteronomy 17:18 (where it is assumed that the king will be able to access a written copy of the Mosaic law), and in Jeremiah 36:1–32 (where Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, writes down the words dictated to him by Jeremiah).

By the time of Christ, there was a recognizable body of documents that had been collected together and was known as Scripture. These Scriptures were known and recognized by the Lord Jesus and the apostles.

Jesus and the apostles accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative and as the word of God

It is remarkable to observe how highly Jesus regarded the Hebrew Scriptures. Notice, firstly, how Jesus could quote the words of Moses and then refer to those words as the word of God:

"And he said to them: ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, 'Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do" (Mark 7:9–13, emphasis added).

(See also Matthew 19:4–6; Mark 10:6–9; Mark 12:36.)

Secondly, notice how Jesus assumed that the Hebrew Scriptures were authoritative. He used them to silence the devil (Matthew 4:1–11); he took them as God’s final answer on the purpose of his own life and ministry, including his death (Luke 24:25–27); he accepted their historicity and used them to refute his opponents (Matthew 12:3; Matthew 22:29–32; Mark 12:24–27, Mark 12:35–37; Luke 11:29–32; Luke 17:26–28); he stated categorically that Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35).2

Jesus’ view of the Hebrew Scripture was shared by the apostles. Notice how, in the book of Acts, they assume (a) that the Holy Spirit spoke through the writers of the Old Testament; and (b) that those words had to be fulfilled. For example:

In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 'Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry (Acts 1:15–17).

(See also Acts 3:21; Acts 4:24–26; Acts 7:48–50; Acts 13:22 Acts 13:33–35, Acts 13:47; Acts 28:25–27.)

For the writers of the New Testament, God continued to speak to his people through the Hebrew Scriptures; his voice was present and active in their own day. Note how the writer to the Hebrews introduces quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures with statements like, The Holy Spirit says [present tense] (Hebrews 3:7; Hebrews 10:15, emphasis added).

After the coming of Christ, God spoke again through the apostles

From the time of Malachi (about 400 years before Christ) to the coming of Christ, there is no recorded prophecy. This period is sometimes referred to as the 400 years of silence. God was certainly at work among his people during this time, although there were no new acts of salvation history (historical acts of God which carried his overall plan of salvation forward). However, God acted again in a radical new way with the coming of Jesus. These new acts of God in Christ had to be interpreted and explained, and the apostles were commissioned to explain these things to the world.

This commission is recorded in Jesus’ farewell discourse to the eleven disciples on the night before his crucifixion (John 14:1 – 16:33). Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would remind them of everything he had taught them (John 14:26), and instructed them to bear witness about him (John 15:26–27). After the resurrection, Jesus sent them out with the statement, As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you (John 20:21). The commission is reflected in Acts 1:21–22, where Peter called on the disciples to appoint a replacement for Judas; the appointed person would be a witness to Jesus’ resurrection, thus completing the Twelve.

Paul received a special commission from Christ to bear witness, alongside the twelve apostles, to his life, death, and resurrection (Acts 9:15; Acts 26:16–18; Romans 1:1, Romans 1:5). Others, in addition to Paul and the Twelve, also received this commission, as is indicated by Paul’s use of the word apostle when referring to them (1 Corinthians 9:1–6; 1 Corinthians 15:5–8; 1 Thessalonians 2:7).

The Day of Pentecost provides a good example of how the apostles bore witness to Jesus. Notice how they told the people about the mighty works of God (Acts 2:11). Notice also how Peter had to explain to the people how God had worked through Jesus. They had seen Jesus before—and had called for his death—but it was only after Peter’s explanation that they understood how God had acted in the life and death of Jesus (Acts 2:22–37).

As in the case of the Old Testament prophets, the apostles were deeply conscious that they were speaking the word of God. This is true for Paul (1 Corinthians 2:12–13; Galatians 1:11–12; 1 Thessalonians 2:13), for Peter (2 Peter 1:16–21), and for John (Revelation 1:1–2, Revelation 1:10–11). It is attested by the writer to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:1–4).

The words of the apostles, like the words of the prophets, were committed to writing, thus creating the New Testament

The New Testament shows that the apostles deliberately committed their words to writing and expected the resulting written documents to function in an authoritative way in the churches.

This process is illustrated in 1 Thessalonians, where Paul not only identified his oral teaching with the word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:1–13), but also issued a solemn charge that his letter should be read out in the Christian assembly of Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 5:27). In Colossians 4:16, Paul instructed the churches in Colossae and Laodicea (which were not very far away from each other) to exchange and read out in their assemblies the letters he had sent to each of them.

Peter, likewise, made sure that his words would be preserved in writing so that the churches would be able to refer to them after his death: I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things (2 Peter 1:15).

We see from 2 Peter 3:15–16 that Paul’s letters were in circulation and well known by the time Peter wrote his second letter (probably during the AD 60s). Interestingly, Peter observes that Paul wrote some things that are difficult to understand(!), but note that Peter puts Paul’s writings on the same level as the Old Testament Scriptures: There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures (2 Peter 3:16, emphasis added). By putting Scripture (the Old Testament Scripture) alongside Paul’s letters and calling it the other Scriptures, Peter implies that he regards Paul’s letters as Scripture.

For us, the Old and New Testaments constitute the word of God to us—the Holy Scripture

God revealed himself progressively to humankind over a long period of time. God’s verbal revelation was always linked to his redemptive acts in history, and served to explain and interpret these acts.

God caused his revelation to be preserved in a permanent form by having the prophets and apostles write it down. Not all of God’s revelation was preserved in this way (the prophets and apostles said more than they wrote), but everything needed for future generations was indeed preserved.

In this way, God gave us the Scriptures, consisting of the Old and New Testaments. We receive them not as the word of man, but as they really are—the word of God. And they are not merely a record of what God said to his people long ago, for in them the Holy Spirit continues to speak to us!