<p>3:9- see on Eph. 1:4; 1 Thess. 2:19,20.</p><p><em>For what thanksgiving can we render again to God for you, for all the joy with which we rejoice for your sakes before our God</em>- We noted on 2:19,20 that their acceptance in the Kingdom would be his eternal joy as they stood &quot;before God&quot; at the last day. But in prayer likewise &quot;before God&quot; he rejoiced in their faith (1:2,3). We are to live now the kind of life we shall eternally live; in this sense we &quot;have eternal life&quot;. And so Paul rejoiced that if the Lord were to return, or they were to die, at that moment... they would be saved. He didn't allow the understandable worry about the possibility of living longer and falling away to cloud his present joy. He lived not as a naive short termist thinker, but as rejoicing in what Peter terms &quot;the present truth&quot; (2 Pet. 1:12), the reality which is gloriously true at this moment.</p>