Verse 5
Let your forbearance be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
"Moderation" is a better word than "forbearance" here, because it covers a lot more ground. The Christian is to be moderate in all things, acting with restraint, and without bigotry, avoiding all excesses and extremes of every kind. The Christian community should be known "unto all men," not for demanding their rights, but for their moderation.
The Lord is at hand ... As Foulkes said, "This may refer to the nearness of the Lord to the believer, or to the nearness of his coming."[17] Since the inspired apostle deliberately chose words that may thus have a double meaning, it is only a crooked exegesis which can latch onto one or another of these, insisting that invariably it has this or that meaning. The scholars who are diligent to prove the holy apostles "mistaken" about the soon-coming of the Lord invariably make such an expression as this, or the Maranatha of 1 Corinthians 16:23, a flat declaration that Christ was soon to appear in the Second Advent. The careful student of God's word should avoid either extreme, always making allowances for the fact that inspiration gave us an expression capable of two meanings. Could this have been otherwise than by deliberate design?
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