“So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.”
King James Version (KJV)
1:5 With power - Piercing the very heart with a sense of sin and deeply convincing you of your want of a Saviour from guilt, misery, and eternal ruin. With the Holy Ghost - Bearing an outward testimony, by miracles, to the truth of what we preached, and you felt: also by his descent through laying on of hands. With much assurance - Literally, with full assurance, and much of it: the Spirit bearing witness by shedding the love of God abroad in your hearts, which is the highest testimony that can be given. And these signs, if not the miraculous gifts, always attend the preaching of the gospel, unless it be in vain: neither are the extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost ever wholly withheld, where the gospel is preached with power, and men are alive to God. For your sake - Seeking your advantage, not our own.
1:6 Though in much affliction, yet with much joy.
1:8 For from you the word sounded forth - (Thessalonica being a city of great commerce.) Being echoed, as it were, from you. And your conversion was divulged far beyond Macedonia and Achaia. So that we need not speak anything - Concerning it.
1:9 For they themselves - The people wherever we come.
1Th 1:7 So that ye were ensamples to all that believe. Their earnestness was such that they were worthy of imitation by all who had become Christian. In Macedonia. The great Roman province, of which Thessalonica was the capital, lying north of the Aegean Sea. And Achaia. The Roman province of which Corinth was the capital. It embraced most of Greece.