We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.
3 To give thanks. He begins with commendation, that he may have occasion to pass on to exhortation, for in this way we have more success among those who have already entered upon the course, when without passing over in silence their former progress, we remind them how far distant they are as yet from the goal, and stir them up to make progress.
Here we have, I. The introduction (Th2 1:1, Th2 1:2), in the same words as in the former epistle, from which we may observe that as this apostle did not count it grievous to him to write the same things (Phi 3:1) in his epistles that he had delivered in preaching, so he willingly wrote the same things to one church that he did to another.
Commenting on 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4
We are bound to thank God,.... Since all blessings, temporal and spiritual, come from him: and that always: seeing he is ever giving out fresh favours, or continuing former ones; and because those, especially which are of a spiritual nature, always abide, such as faith and love; which the apostle particularly takes notice of, the members of this Church had, and were increasing in them...