As you know how we exhorted, comforted, and implored every one of you, as a father does his own children,
every one of you: Paul’s preaching is not en masse, but personal. He is not just preaching to the public at large but to individuals. There could be a reference here to the kind of private teaching Paul had done at Ephesus (Acts 20:20). "The minister, if he would be useful must not deal merely in generalities, but must individualize and particularize" (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown 386).