What Does 1 Thessalonians 5:27 Mean?

(27) **I charge you.**—*Adjure* is much nearer the original word, which is as solemn as can be. What is the cause of such awful solemnity? The question has never been very satisfactorily answered. It certainly seems as if the contempt of discipline and partial alienation of clergy and laity implied in 1Thessalonians 5:12-13, might suggest to St. Paul a doubt whether his Epistle would reach *all* the Thessalonian Christians. At any rate, the adjuration marks his sense of the extreme *importance* of the letter; and perhaps the fact that this was his first pastoral letter may have made him more anxious to ensure its reception and success. It amounts to a claim to inspiration. (Comp. 1Thessalonians 4:15.) The emphasis seems to rest on the word “*all* (“*holy”* is an interpolation). The reading is of course a public reading in the celebration of the Communion, at which we know from several early Fathers that the writings of the Apostles were read aloud. (Comp. Colossians 4:16; 2Peter 3:15-16.) Baur thought the adjuration a mark of a forger, who wished to gain authority for his cento: Bishop Wordsworth well points out, on the contrary, what a splendid guarantee for the genuineness and integrity of the Epistles this constant recitation constituted.