Bible Commentaries
2 Thessalonians 1

Verses 1-12

2 THESSALONIANS

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INTRODUCTION AND EXPOSITION TO 2 THESSALONIANS

2 Thessalonians 1:1-12.

We commence this discussion with an outline of 2 Thessalonians and then we will give an exposition of chapter I of the book.

OUTLINE
1. The occasion of this second letter to the Thessalonians. – After writing the first letter, tidings had been received concerning the reception of the first letter and concerning the state of affairs in that church. These things particularly he had learned:

(1) That the persecution was more violent than when he was there; that their love and their faith increased with the persecution.

(2) That a report was circulated as coming from one with miraculous gifts that Paul himself, either by word or letter, had taught that the day of Christ’s second coming was close at hand.

(3) That in consequence of believing this report, some of these Thessalonians quit every other business. The merchant dropped his yardstick; the blacksmith threw down his hammer; the farmer left his plow in the field, and all stood around with nothing else to do except talk about the ascension to heaven. You see why it was that Paul told them to prove those prophesyings.

2. The time and the place. – The place was Corinth. It was from Corinth that he wrote the first letter. The time is somewhat uncertain. Paul remained at Corinth, as we know from Acts, for eighteen months, and it may have been as much as a year between the two letters. The outline itself consists of all the points:

(1) Salutation like the first letter.

(2) New ground for thanksgiving.

(3) Another view of our Lord’s second advent.

(4) Paul’s prayer for them.

(5) His correction of the misapprehension of the time of the advent, showing in his correction that two things must precede that advent: (a) the great apostasy, and (b) the revelation of the man of sin.

(6) The plan of salvation: how that plan conduces to steadfastness, and in view of that plan, what things to hold fast.

(7) Another prayer for them.

(8) He asks their prayers for him.

(9) Directions for corrective discipline in the church.

(10) In view of reported letters from him which he did not write, he adopts for the future a method of authenticating his letters. Paul was nearly blind, and usually dictated his letters, but from now on he signs his letters with his own hand, all except one, Hebrews, and I will explain why he did not sign that when we get to it.

(11) An orderly arrangement of every passage that bears upon the second coming of Christ, with the analysis of those several statements showing the sum of the teachings of them.

The first item of the analysis of this letter is the salutation, but I have no remarks to make on the salutation contained in this second letter to the Thessalonians because everything necessary has been said on the similar one in the first letter. But in the thanksgiving that follows the salutation there is this new element: Their faith, hope, and love increased in proportion to their afflictions. That is a fine testimony. Many Christian people, depressed by afflictions, say if they had an easier time they could exercise more faith and love. But these Thessalonians increased in faith and love as their tribulations increased.

We now come to the important part of the second letter. Here is a new viewpoint on the day of our Lord – the second coming of Christ. The closing paragraph of 1 Thessalonians 4 and the first paragraph of 1 Thessalonians 5, present the second coming of our Lord with reference to the Christian people, giving up some incidents, to wit: That Jesus will bring with him the spirits of all Christians who have died, and that their bodies will be raised before the living Christians are changed. In 1 Thessalonians 5 he adds that on the wicked, that day will come like a thief in the night, and their destruction will be wholly unanticipated. But he has very little to say about the wicked there. Here he deals with the result of the second coming just as much on the wicked as on the righteous. He does not re-open the discussion of the resurrection, which has already been clearly set forth in the first letter, but presents the doctrine of the judgment that follows the coming of our Lord. We are always to understand that there will be first a resurrection, and then a judgment. We are now to look at the judgment part of this letter.

The first thought concerns the earth. This is the language, referring to the increase of their patience and faith in all their persecutions and afflictions: "Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God," that is, here in this world when good people, pious and God-fearing, are crushed under persecutions, the mind begins to inquire, why does not God punish the wicked? Is there divine justice? Paul says the fact that these Christians bear with love and patience the wrongs put upon them is a token of the righteous judgment of God. It proves that if exact justice is not meted out in this world it will be in the world to come. When we see the good down, and evil on top, and that state continues for a great length of time, it is a token that there must be a judgment hereafter to right that wrong, or else one must doubt the justice of God.

The next thought is, that when Jesus comes he will recompense rest to the afflicted people, and afflictions to those that afflict them. Both take place when Jesus comes. There will be no difference in time, no gap between these two. It is a mistaken interpretation of the word of God that judgment on the righteous will be separated by any great lapse of time from judgment on the wicked. The double judgment takes place at the same time. Let us see if that point is not clear: "If so be that it is a righteous thing with God to recompense affliction to them that afflict you, and to you that are afflicted rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus: who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed."

As this is the letter that discusses the second coming of Christ as no other part of God’s Word, giving such a comprehensive view of it, great weight should be attached to every statement in it.

No public teacher is excusable who fails to see in many perfectly plain, literal, unfigurative teachings of God’s Word that the resurrection is a general resurrection, and the judgment is a general judgment, and that the two classes come before the Lord at the same time.

Particularly, note the remarkable prophecy of our Lord in Matthew 25:31, where he says, "When the Son of man shall come in his glory [in his first advent he came in humiliation], and all his holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them as a man separates the goats from the sheep. And he shall say to those on the left hand, ’Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,’ and to those on the right hand, ’Come, ye blessed of my Father.’ "

That is not allegory, parable, symbol, nor vision, but plain, literal teaching.

That is in perfect accord with his other teaching where he says that the Ninevites that were converted in the time of Jonah should rise up in the judgment with this generation. Here were converted and unconverted people rising up in the judgment together. That is exactly as he states it in the next paragraph, when he says, "The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it." It is in exact accord with the literal part of Revelation, commencing at Revelation 20:11, where the white throne appears, and him that sat thereon, and where all the dead, great and small, are brought before him for judgment, and the books are opened. Those that are found written in the Lamb’s Book of Life are saved, and those not found written in that book are cast into the lake of fire.

I emphasize the teaching of many plain, literal passages – that when Jesus comes the whole world will stand before him, all the angels good and bad, and judgment will be rendered to all angels and all men at the same time.

The evil angels have already received their punishment for leaving their first estate, but there is new matter for judgment in the treatment which they gave to the cause of Christ and his people. If the good angels have been ministering spirits to them that are the heirs of salvation, they will be so confirmed that it will never be possible for another angel to fall, and if the evil angels have hindered the cause of Christ they will be cast into the eternal hell prepared for them.

The judgment rendered upon good and bad is an eternal judgment. Listen at this language "Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might."

When the saints are glorified, when their souls and bodies are reunited, there will never be any possibility for one of them to incur a future judgment, because it will be impossible for them in their new condition to sin.

Not only is the destiny eternal, but it is expressly called "punishment," and not "consequence" in the case of the wicked. There are some people whose sensibilities shrink from the thought of anyone’s suffering eternal punishment. They certainly have not studied the Bible. Even here on this earth if a man become incorrigible in wickedness, we stop him by eternal laws so far as our power can go, from doing further harm. If he be not executed on the gallows, he is at least imprisoned for life. It is the love of God that inflicts that punishment and makes it eternal. See a parent awaking in the night and beholding a wolf about to seize the baby lying on the floor asleep. Do the mother and father fold their hands and say, "Oh, it is cruel to hurt anything! Go away, Mr. Wolf, I won’t hurt you"? Or does the love of that parent prompt to strike fast, hit hard, and hit to kill?

When for thousands of years the wicked have been opposing God’s people, ridiculing them, inflicting wrong after wrong, and when age after age God’s people have prayed, "Come, Lord Jesus," and the souls of God’s saints under the altar have cried out, "How long O Lord, holy and true, wilt thou not avenge us upon our adversaries?" there must come a time when God hears that prayer and puts it forever out of the power of the wicked to oppress his people.

There is always a tendency to fixedness of type. Man after a while becomes so wicked, waxing worse and worse, that his character crystallizes. That man hates light, and he would be in hell if he were in heaven. I am not right sure but heaven would be more painful to him than hell, because he would have no sympathy with anything there. He would have only hatred and antagonism toward it. Science unites with revelation in that fixity of type. Science tells us that the tendency toward fixedness of type will bring crystallization of character that cannot change and is without remedy.

Then take this thought: What is ’it that keeps men here on earth from becoming totally bad? It is the restraining presence of human law, the light of religion, the illustrious examples of the saints, the preaching of the word of God, and the Holy Spirit. Hundreds of thousands of loving fathers and mothers of Christian people are working for their salvation, but when Jesus comes, preaching stops, praying for the lost stops, and in the place to which they go, they may indeed pray, but not be heard; their tears may fall, but not in mercy’s sight. There is no gospel preached to them. The Spirit dispensation is ended, and without the power of the Spirit they could not be converted, and thus the means of salvation are withdrawn. That alone would make their status eternal.

The eye of every Christian should be fixed on the second coming of the Lord in view of the judgment that will follow that coming, and his heart should turn to the fact that with that day everything that goes wrong in time will be righted. I do not suppose that there was ever a man on earth, good or bad, but who some time or other in his life has asked for a general judgment in the world to come. Every wicked man will tell about certain wrongs he has suffered, and these wrongs here have never been righted, and the consciousness of his wrongs has made him appeal to the final arbitrament of their cases and to a decision that will be both righteous and inexorable.

There is here a thought of marvelous beauty -to which I wish to call attention: "When he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be marvelled at in all them that believed." The thought is that the power of any man and the benevolence of his intelligence are estimated by the greatest product of his mind and hand.

Sir Christopher Wren is glorified in Westminster Abbey, which was the greatest work of his genius, and as one steps into the abbey he passed under a sentence which reads, "Whoever wishes to see the monument of the architect, let him look around."

The illustration helps us to see what will be the character of the glory of Jesus Christ in his people. When he saw them they were utterly lost, their nature depraved, under condemnation, without a friend, sinking down beneath the righteous frown of God. He came to save them, some of them drunkards, some of them whore-mongers, some robbers, some murderers, and commencing the good work in them by regeneration, and continuing it by sanctification, until their spirits were perfected, and consummating it by the resurrection and glorification of their bodies so that these that had been drunkards, liars, thieves, murderers, adulterers, stand there on that day in his own glorious image. Who did this? What mighty architect? It was Jesus. Jesus will be glorified in his people just as the sculptor will be glorified in the statue that comes from the skill of his hands and the thought of his mind. The sculptor looks on a piece of rough, unhewn marble, that a thousand people can see nothing in but marble, but with his eye of genius he sees in it the angel that can be carved from it. He begins to chip and chisel until, at last, form and outline appear. The rough outline assumes symmetry; the face takes on ’expression, the eyes seem to glow with fire, and as the finishing touch is put upon the statue, we marvel at the artist in his work. In that way Christ will be glorified in his people. This is the last thought in chapter 1.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the occasion of the second letter to the Thessalonians, when and where written?

2. What is the analysis of the letter, seriatim?

3. What new ground for thanksgiving?

4. What advance in the discussion of the second advent here?

5. How does the patient endurance of the Thessalonians under persecution become a token of future and final judgment of God?

6. What does Paul teach in this letter as to the effect of Christ’s coming on the wicked and the righteous?

7. What is the teaching of our Lord on the same point?

8. What is the teaching of Revelation on this same point?

9. What new matter for judgment relative to the angels?

10. What is the nature of the judgment discussed here, and the proof?

11. What is the nature of the destiny of the wicked as revealed in this letter?

12. What the relation between God’s love and the punishment of the wicked? Illustrate.

13. What tendency of human nature here pointed out? Illustrate.

14. What keeps men here on earth from becoming totally bad?

15. Why should the Christian have his eye fixed on the second coming of our Lord?

16. How will Christ at his second coming be glorified in his saints? Illustrate.