AP

2 Thessalonians 3:6-7 In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.  For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example.  We were not idle when we were with you, …

Paul’s use of ‘command’ is quite strong.  He uses the same word four times in this chapter (4, 6, 10, 12), and is obviously very concerned about the harmful influence being exerted in the Church by people who profess to be followers of Christ but whose lives do not align well with their profession.

Paul would be fully aware of his own past as a Pharisee in Judaism, and that Jesus frequent referred to them as ‘hypocrites’, very influential people whose ‘walk’ fails to match their ‘talk’!  In the Thessalonian context, the hypocrisy is in reference to comfortable, entrenched laziness, but the warning applies to any habitual falling short of the claims of the Gospel on a believer’s life and attitude.

The Apostle clearly makes sincerity a matter of conscious commitment, because he is happy to make the example of his own behaviour a benchmark for his readers.  How important it is that we follow his example.

In our attempts to be relevant to our culture today, there is a danger of allowing our testimony to become more aligned with our culture than is healthy if we are to serve effectively as the salt and light Jesus calls and requires us to be.  There is obviously a ‘yeast’ effect in this danger: “Everyone else is doing it, it must be okay”.  

Paul’s commanding, rather than just ‘suggesting, or even ‘instructing’, obviously recognises this ‘yeast-type’ danger.  Let us be deliberately zealous in our attention to the regular reading of God’s Word and sitting under its faithful preaching so that we don’t drift imperceptibly away from ‘the teaching we receive from [it]”.

– Bruce Christian