Now we really live. Really is implied, but most translators feel the need to add something to clarify the way in which Paul is using the word live. During the period in which he had no news from Thessalonica, his life in some sense went on; Paul is not denying this. Nor is he thinking of “eternal life,” which remained a foretaste even after Timothy’s return. Some commentators think that Paul mean “If I had gone any longer without news of you, the anxiety would have killed me,” but this interpretation is rather farfetched. Some translators (Luther 1984 Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch Bible de Jérusalem Bible en français courant Traduction œcuménique de la Bible Bijbel in Gewone Taal) add “again” or some equivalent after live, as if Paul had died during the period of his anxiety, but had now come to life again (cf. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “It is like new life for us, to know that you stand firm”; Jerusalem Bible, more weakly, “now we can breathe again”). The most likely explanation is that for Paul, as for Hebrew thought in general, life is not simply the opposite of death, just as peace is not simply the absence of war. There are degrees of being alive. Isolation from the community, like illness, can makes a person less alive. In many languages, such an expression is not understood as mere figurative speech or interpreted as “spiritual truth,” but as reality. Conversely, the renewal of a relationship, like the restoration of health, increases life and makes it full. So it was with the renewal, though Timothy, of Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians. Knox conveys this concept well: “it brings fresh life to us”; and so does Barclay: “it makes life worth living for us.” Paul’s life is bound up with that of the Christian communities he has helped to found.
The ways in which live is qualified in this kind of context differ widely from language to language. In some instances one may simply say “now it is good to live if you stand firm,” “now it means something for us to live if…,” or “now we are happy to live if….”
If you stand firm. Paul makes here what, in classical Greek, would have been a grammatical error (which the pedantic copyists of a few manuscripts have “corrected”) in order to express his confidence that the Thessalonians are in fact standing firm. The meaning is: “… if (as I know you are doing) you stand firm,” but of course to put this in a normal translation would be to overemphasize the point. Some translations therefore replace “if” by “since” (Bible de Jérusalem Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) or “as” (Jerusalem Bible). Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “to know that you stand firm” expresses Paul’s confidence well, but loses the conditional relation. Paul’s life (in the sense suggested in the last paragraph) depends on the stability of the Thessalonians’ faith.
Stand firm seems so understandable that translators may not recognize how misleading a literal rendering might be. An expression such as this may have nothing to do with consistency of behavior. Far more frequently one must use an expression such as “continue strong,” “remain hard,” “walk the same path,” or, negatively, “do not turn aside from” or “do not depart even a little from.”
In your life is added in translation, to explain in union with the Lord (literally “in Lord”), an expression which Paul uses very often to show the Christian’s relation of dependence on and belonging to Christ—the objective counterpart of the Christian’s faith (cf. 1.1). In general, life must be modified in terms of some special quality, for example, “good,” “real,” or “meaningful.”
“In the Lord” by itself has little impact in many languages, and may indeed be almost meaningless, at least to people outside church circles. There is no general solution to the problem of translating this expression, since its meaning varies somewhat according to the context. Barclay has “if you remain unshakably true to your Lord.” Bible en français courant, in similarity with Good News Translation, has “in your union with the Lord,” reflecting the view that “in the Lord” involves a (mystical and/or moral) identification of the Christian with Christ. In some languages it is meaningless to employ a phrase such as “in the Lord,” since there is simply no way in which one can conceive of a person’s being “in Christ” or “in the Lord.” However, one can speak about being “joined closely to the Lord” or even “living together with the Lord,” thus being in union with the Lord, and in some languages the closest equivalent is “your life for the Lord.”
Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .