Second Thessalonians 2:16 and 17 say, “Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal encouragement and good hope in grace, encourage your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.” Here we see that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father establish the believers in every good work and word. This establishing takes place as the believers experience the dispensing of the divine Trinity. In what we do and say we are being established by the dispensing Triune God.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:20 and 21 Paul says, “Do not despise prophecies; but prove all things; hold fast what is good.” To despise here is to count as nothing, lightly esteem. The prophecies in verse 20 refer mainly to prophesying, to prophetic speech from a revelation. This does not need to be a prediction. To prophesy is to speak for the Lord and to speak forth the Lord. Only a small percentage of prophecy is related to prediction. We should not despise this kind of speaking. To prove all things includes to discern the prophecies (1 Cor. 14:29), to discern the spirits (1 Cor. 12:10), to test the spirits (1 John 4:1), to prove what is the will of God (Rom. 12:2), and to prove what is well-pleasing to the Lord (Eph. 5:10). On the one hand, we should not despise prophecies; on the other hand, we should not follow blindly. We need to prove things, to test them, and then hold fast what is good. We need to have the habit of proving everything that we intend to do and then to hold fast what is good.
First Thessalonians 5:22 says, “Abstain from every form of evil.” The King James Version of this verse says, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” Using this translation, a number of Bible teachers have misunderstood this verse, thinking that it tells us to avoid not only evil but even the appearance of evil, anything that may be suspected of being evil. However, if we consider the meaning of the Greek word rendered “form,” we shall have the proper understanding of this verse. Literally, the word is species, as subordinated to the genus; hence, kind. It denotes anything in view, anything in perception; hence, a sight. It does not refer to the appearance of evil, but the kind, the form, the shape, the sight, of evil. The believers who live in the divine dispensing should abstain from evil in any form and of any kind.
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