2 Thessalonians 3:2

and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and evil men; for all have not faith.

Unreasonable and evil men ... Moffatt suggested "That the general aim of this passage is to widen the horizon of the Thessalonians, by enlisting their sympathy and interest on the part of others."[5] They were not the only ones who needed encouragement and the prayers of fellow-Christians. The characters from whom Paul sought deliverance were doubtless those violent and fanatical opponents whom Gallio drove from his judgment seat in Corinth (Acts 18:12-17). Their unreasonableness was apparent in the fact of their beating the ruler of the synagogue, it not being clear whether or not he was a member of their own party!

For all have not faith ... Adam Clarke told it like it is with this word ([Greek: pistis]). He said:

The word here is without doubt to be taken for fidelity, or trust worthiness, and not for faith (in the subjective sense); and this is agreeable to the meaning given to it in the very next verse: "But the Lord is faithful."[6]

Furthermore, as George Howard of the University of Georgia affirmed in his treatise published in The Expository Times, April, 1974, "fidelity, or faithfulness is the usual sense of this word in the New Testament." See full discussion of this in my Commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, under Galatians 2:16. One must deplore the efforts of many modern scholars to edit fidelity out of the meaning of this word, as used in the New Testament, an effort which could have only one design, that being the strengthening of the "faith only" madness which has dominated Christian theology since the days of Luther.

[5] James Moffatt, The Expositor's Greek Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), Epistles to the Thessalonians, p. 51.

[6] Adam Clarke, op. cit., p. 575.