What Does 1 Thessalonians 4:1 Mean?
Furthermore then, brothers, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you took from us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would overflow still more.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.THE KEY
What you are asked to increase is already in motion: the way you received is taking shape in the walk you are already walking.
THE MEANING
You have received a way of walking that takes its measure from pleasing God, and the verse recognizes that this walk is already underway. What has been received grows more fully in the way you walk.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that growth requires abandoning what you have already received is undone here: the verse calls for more of the walk already underway.
THE ROOT
περιπατεῖν
peripatein
GROWS FROM
πατέω
patéō
to tread, to step; in this compound, to walk about
The Greek verb is built on the action of treading or stepping; it can describe bodily walking and, by extension, the way a life is conducted. The verse makes the walk already being practiced the very thing that grows further.
ALSO GROWS
patéō: tread, step
πατέω
This is the footstep at the heart of the compound verb: what can sound metaphorical still names an embodied way of moving.
katapatéō: trample, tread down
καταπατέω
The same treading can be forceful and consequential; the word family remains rooted in actual steps, underscoring the concrete movement of the walk.
THE PATTERN
What is received takes visible form as a way of walking that continues to deepen.
And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.He has shown you, O human, what is good. And what does the LORD seek from you, but to do justice, and to hold fast to faithful love, and to walk low with your God?As you have therefore received the Anointed One, Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.THE THREAD
I therefore, the bound one in the Lord, urge you to walk in a way that matches the weight of the calling by which you were called.The verb translated “walk” belongs to the same Greek word family as the one in this verse. Here too, the appeal centers on the walk itself, opening “abound more and more” as a deepening of a lived way.
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