John Calvin Commentary 1 Thessalonians 3:8

"for now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord." — 1 Thessalonians 3:8 (ASV)

For now we live. Here it appears even more clearly that Paul almost forgot himself for the sake of the Thessalonians, or, at least, making regard for himself a mere secondary consideration, devoted his first and chief thoughts to them. At the same time, he did not do that so much from affection for people as from a desire for the Lord’s glory.

For zeal for God and Christ glowed in his holy breast to such a degree that it, as it were, swallowed up all other anxieties. “We live,” he says, “that is, we are in good health, if you persevere in the Lord.” And under the adverb now, he repeats what he had previously stated, that he had been greatly pressed down by affliction and necessity; yet he declares that whatever evil he endures personally does not hinder his joy.

“Though in myself I am dead, yet in your welfare I live.” By this, all pastors are admonished what sort of connection ought to exist between them and the Church—that they consider themselves happy when it goes well with the Church, although they should be in other respects encompassed with many miseries; and, on the other hand, that they pine away with grief and sorrow if they see the building which they have constructed in a state of decay, although other matters should be joyful and prosperous.