For they themselves show of us what manner of welcome we had unto you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;
All Commentaries on 1 Thessalonians 1:9 Go To 1 Thessalonians 1
Basil the Great
AD 379
By what means do we become Christians? Through our faith would be the universal answer. And in what way are we saved? Plainly because we were regenerated through the grace given to us in our baptism. How else could we be? And after recognizing that this salvation is established through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, shall we fling away “that form of doctrine” which we received? Would it not rather be grounds for great groaning if we are found now further off from our salvation “than when we first believed,” and deny now what we then received? … What if one does not always and everywhere keep to his initial confession and cling to it as a sure protection? … What if one, having been delivered “from the idols,” to the “living God,” now constitutes himself a “stranger” from the “promises” of God? He fights against his own handwriting, which he put on record when he professed the faith. To me my baptism was the beginning of life and that day of regeneration the first of days. It is plain that the utterance confessed in the grace of adoption is the most honorable of all.
