What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:12 Mean?

(12) We now come to minor details of instruction, no doubt suggested by observation of manifest defects in the Thessalonian Church. These details show us still further the mixture of restless ungoverned zeal with gloomy forebodings and discontents. **To know them which labour.**—A command to enter into the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline. The persons meant are not simply the hard-working laity, contrasted with the idlers of 1Thessalonians 4:11 and 2Thessalonians 3:11, but those who performed the laborious office of the priesthood, as the words subsequent show. And “knowing” them is hardly to be limited either to the sense of “recognising their position,” *i.e., *“not ignoring them,” or, on the other hand, to the sense of “being on terms of familiar intercourse with them.” The Greek word indicates *appreciation;* they are bidden to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the presbyter and his work, and to endeavour to understand his teaching, and to value his example. The logical connection of this verse with the preceding is that of course the main endeavours to “edify” the brethren were made by the presbytery; and the command to edify involves the command to accept edification. **Are over you in the Lord.**—This is the primitive idea of the priest in the Church: he is not a member of a sacerdotal caste, ministering to an outer world, but a *superior officer* in a spiritual society consisting of nothing but priests (Revelation 1:6, where the right reading is, “Made us a kingdom of priests”). It is specially interesting to notice how much *power* is given to the presbytery in this earliest writing of the New Testament, and how carefully St. Paul seems to have organised his churches, and that at the very foundation of them. It is only “in the Lord” that the presbytery are over men, that is, in spiritual matters. **Admonish you.**—The presbytery are not only organisers, managers of the corporate affairs of their Church, but also spiritual guides to give practical advice to individual Christians. These are the two senses in which they are “over you.”