The last part of 1 Thessalonians 2:6 clarifies Paul’s unshaken sense of identity. It was “as an apostle of Christ” that Paul was a mother and father to the church. He took his orders from the Lord of the church, and the content of his pastoral work came from his Lord. He was motherly in the way that the Christ who sent him was gentle. He was fatherly in the way that his Lord taught and trained his disciples. Paul’s pastoral person and pastoral work were rooted in the Son of God. Paul’s model for pastoral parent did not come from his human experience but from God as revealed in Jesus Christ (for more on this see chapter 8 below).