Therefore, brethren, we were encouraged over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith:
All Commentaries on 1 Thessalonians 3:7 Go To 1 Thessalonians 3
John Chrysostom
AD 407
For this cause, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our distress and affliction through your faith. For now we live if you stand fast in the Lord. What is comparable to Paul, who thought the salvation of his neighbors was his own, being so affected towards all, as really towards members? Who now would be able to break forth into such speech? Or rather, who will ever be able to have such a thought? He did not require them to be thankful to him for the trials which he suffered for them, but he was thankful to them that they were not moved on account of his trials. As if he had said, that to you rather than to us was injury done by those trials; you were tempted rather than we, you who suffered nothing, rather than we who suffered. Because, he says, Timothy brought us these good tidings, we feel nothing of our sorrows, but were comforted in all our affliction; not in this affliction only. For nothing besides can touch a good teacher, as long as the affairs of his disciples go on to his mind. Through you, he says, we were comforted; you confirmed us. And yet the reverse was the case. For that when suffering they did not yield, but stood manfully, was sufficient to confirm the disciples. But he reverses the whole matter, and turns the encomium over to them. You have anointed us, he says, you have caused us to breathe again; you have not suffered us to feel our trials. And he has not said, we breathe again, nor we are comforted, but what? Now we live, showing that he thinks nothing is either trial or death, but their stumbling, whereas their advancement was even life. How else could any one have set forth either the sorrow for the weakness of one's disciples, or the joy? He has not said we rejoice, but we live, the life to come.
So that without this we do not even think it life to live. So ought teachers to be affected, so disciples; and there will be nothing at any time amiss. Then further softening the expression, see what he says,
