Verse 11
11. Study to be quiet A slight caution against what has perhaps alloyed the purity or endangered the continuance of this love. Harmonious love cannot well endure and abound unless each one keeps his place and performs well each his respective part. Love can hardly exist among a community of idlers, and pauper parasites upon others’ bounty.
Do your own business It would seem as if some of the Church imposed upon the liberality of others, neglecting industry, and looking in some degree to donations for a support. Lunemann objects that this supposes the Church divided into two classes of givers and takers. But it only implies that there were some known to Timothy who negligently depended too much on the liberality of their brethren, and so endangered the harmony and love of the Church. There is no allusion, either here or in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12, to any influence derived from the expectation of the immediate advent of Christ as producing this neglect of business. At the time of writing this first epistle, indeed, it does not appear that Paul understood that there was any commotion about the immediate Coming. Evidently Timothy had brought him no such information. On the contrary, the excitement therefrom arose after this epistle, and not from St. Paul’s previous preaching, but from causes detailed in the second chapter of the second epistle.
With your own hands As Auberlen (in Lange’s Bibel-Werk) suggests, the Thessalonians were doubtless mostly handicraftsmen. And we may add the idlers, predisposed to live upon others, were, no doubt, all hand workers. Paul, therefore, here utters no rebuke on brain workers, who are as truly workers as mechanics are.
As we commanded you And set the example. 2 Thessalonians 3:8-10.
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