<p>4:11- see on 1 Cor. 1:26-28.</p><p><i>May you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you</i>- &quot;That ye <i>study</i> (be ambitious) to be <i>quiet</i>&quot; (AV) presents a powerful opposition of ideas;&nbsp;to have heroic ambition to be quiet;&nbsp;to be self-controlled, living a blameless spiritual life in everyday things (:12; this is what the idiom of &quot;walk&quot; refers to). In 2 Thess. 3:12,13, Paul returns to this idea: He tells them once again to live a <i>quiet</i>&nbsp;life, and says in that context: &quot;Be not weary in (such) well doing&quot;. Yet he asks them in 1 Thess. 4:11 to be ambitious to be quiet. By encouraging them to keep on being &quot;quiet&quot; he is encouraging them not to be weary in living a life of such ambition. And this is not the only reference to ambition in Thessalonians. Paul praises them for the brotherly love which they undoubtedly had. But he doesn't just say 'Keep it up'. He exhorts them to increase in it, more and more (1 Thess. 4:10).</p><p>Paul's &quot;command&quot; to &quot;work with your own hands&quot; was backed up by his own example in the three weeks he was amongst them (see on 1:9). There was a congruence between his teaching and example; a word made flesh. &quot;Mind your own business&quot; may seem superfluous, but in illiterate urban society, with people living and working on top of each other, gossip and over involvement in the lives of others was a problem major enough to split a church. They were to aspire, or be ambitious, not to be like that. And we can take the exhortation too. For the world of social media today is little different in essence.</p>