Why are we attracted to people who are genuinely grateful? Why are ingrates so repellent? In short, it is because we recognize our purpose and design when we see it shine in the lives and attitudes of other people. Most humans have no idea why these virtues instinctively resonate with us, but the Bible has the unequivocal answer.  This week we celebrate Thanksgiving, and the holiday itself is another reason to thank God for the United States of America. Why should we be thankful for the day on which “We the People” give thanks?

Historically, we are a people who place a high premium on real virtue, which is nothing less than God’s character reflected in man’s thinking. Thanksgiving would never have caught on if we had called it “Feast and Football Day.” While humans tend to look for any excuse to throw a party or indulge in all sorts of gratifying pursuits, we still sense fragments of that national gratitude which produced our day of Thanksgiving, an American original.

Thankfully, this American cultural expression stands as a stark, historical reminder to our founding Virtue, the “fear of the Lord.” Sure, many men and women today would strangle our national, unifying Virtue in the service of its antithesis. They will doubtless continue to do so, but think on this: the scoffer will have to scoff while acknowledging that we as a nation take off work and travel to be with family on November 25th this year.

The Command

“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NAS)

Context is always important, especially for commands that assign responsibility to those who would serve the Lord. Fearing the Lord means taking care to behave in a way that pleases Him. Of course. However this command is clear and stands alone as a one-verse requirement for every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. The broad context: this is Paul’s second earliest epistle in the Bible to a spiritually young audience of believers in the Roman province of Macedonia. We find the fundamentals of the Christian Faith in First Thessalonians, and this is a great example of the basic attitude and action of an advancing believer.

The command itself needs some close attention. In Greek it reads like this:

ἐν παντὶ εὐχαριστεῖτε· τοῦτο γὰρ θέλημα θεοῦ ἐν χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ εἰς ὑμᾶς.

“In everything be giving thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

In Everything

Paul makes a sweeping summary statement in this closing section of short, summary commands. The phrase “in everything” bears some thoughtful reflection. Here’s a valuable test on whether we’re really humbling ourselves before the Living God. Is it ALL about Him? Can you thank Him for everything? This command gets at what I and others observe to be the counter-intuitive nature of the Faith. When we hurt we so often think something other than “Thank God for the opportunity to glorify Him despite the suffering.”

Our typical response to suffering is “incurvature.” When pressure mounts from without, the response of the sin nature within is to focus on ourselves and what we want or prefer. Too much attention to self usually draws us into irrationality and thoughts about what we “deserve,” with never the slightest thought to what we actually do deserve as sinners before our Righteous Creator.

After some reflection, I think believers can agree that the big picture is the solution to our suffering-inflamed myopia. Bible Doctrine, the teaching of the Lord Jesus, the Word of God gives us the perspective that makes rejoicing in all things an absolute necessity. When you “consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart,” it is easy to give thanks even when you hurt. It takes some direct revelation from God, which we find in the Bible, mixed with some faith from us–faith both in God who said the words and then in the very words He said. So yes it hurts. But no, it is nothing compared to the suffering of the Cross. So the setback disappoints and somehow frustrates our plans; there is no disappointment or frustration of God’s perfect, eternal plan for us in Christ Jesus. By adopting an eternal perspective about ourselves and our relationship with God, we not only can weather the storm, we can give thanks for it.

There is even more here about our motivation to be thankful for suffering. We can give thanks for suffering particularly because it becomes a source of blessing and communion with Jesus Christ. He tells us to leap for joy over suffering for the sake of righteousness because it means great reward in Heaven (Mt 5:11-12). Jesus told the first leaders of the Church (before there was the Church) that worthiness of Him meant a willingness to suffer in His pattern (Mt 10:38, Lk 9:23, 14:27).

For this is the Will of God

In our command we have a great blessing that few seem to appreciate: clarity on what God expects. The straining and second-guessing are over in the quest to find God’s Will. He wants you to be thankful in everything. The crowning motivation of the Christian life is what Paul provides here: God wants it, so we should want it. The scoffer revolts precisely at this point. We were made for a personal relationship with our Creator, and the relationship was never about peers on equal footing. God is God, man is His creature. There is an infinite gap between us, and we are in the infinitely subordinate position. A little child’s loving father wants him to think rightly, to correspond to the truth, to be careful around traffic and have a healthy respect for things that are dangerous. So it is with God’s will for us.  Because He loves us He tells us what He wants us to do. Give thanks, for the search for the will of God is over.

In Christ Jesus

This phrase should always shock us back into recognition of our identity before God. We are “in Christ Jesus,” the highest possible calling. With our identity in Christ comes the highest privileges, the greatest hopes, and consequently the weightiest expectations. Because of Christ we can say, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed to us.”

Such was the attitude of the people of the United States in the generations prior to and for awhile after the ratification of our Constitution.

Three Thoughts

1. We are commanded to constant giving of thanks to God for all things.

2. This is God’s will for us; to reject the command is to miss the blessing for which we were designed.

3. The best motivation we will ever know is personal relationship with God. If He wants it, we want it.

Passage to Pray

2 Samuel 22

Memory Verse

“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NAS)