2 Thessalonians 2

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

Division 2. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12.)The wicked one and the deliverance. The apostle now proceeds to put before the Thessalonians the character of that “day of the Lord,” which it had been sought to persuade them had already come; to show them what would introduce it, and that there was a present hindrance; though the mystery of lawlessness was indeed already working, which would bring in the judgment upon it, in which man’s day would end. He shows the apostasy which would be from Christianity, and the rise of Antichrist, the great apostate; in whom Satan would work in the display of miraculous power, such as once heralded the truth, but which now as “lying wonders,” would be permitted to ensnare those who, having had the truth presented to them, had not the love of it, but rejected that which would have been their salvation. In this last Antichrist the Jewish and Christian forms of unbelief would come together; rising to a height of arrogancy and defiance of the living God, which would bring down the open judgment of God in the destruction of the blasphemer, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of His mouth, and bring to nought by the manifestation of His Presence. With him his deluded, followers will receive their judgment, and the earth be liberated from the oppressive power of evil.

1. The apostle beseeches them not to be shaken or troubled by the statement, however it might seem authenticated, and even though it might purport to be from himself, that the day of the Lord had come. Taking their view of the coming of the Lord largely, and of necessity, from the Old Testament, the day of the Lord would seem to precede what they had been taught continually to expect as the coming of the Lord. The New Testament distinguishes between two phases of this, -His coming to receive His people to Himself, as the first epistle pictures it, the dead raised and the living changed, and both caught up together to meet Him in the air. When He appears, (to the world) “then shall we appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). Thus His descent into the air and our gathering together unto Him are not the same as, but preparatory to, His appearing and our appearing with Him.

This does not indeed imply any appreciable interval between them; but it leaves room for it; and we have seen elsewhere that such an interval there is, comprising, at least, the whole last week of Daniel’s seventy (Daniel 9:27) -the “end of the age” of the Lord’s prophecy on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:1-51); and which has been there shown to be the cut-off end of the Jewish age, and not a Christian one. Christianity is then gone from the earth, with the departure of Christians to be with their Lord, and Israel is now again in the fore-front, the Lord’s thoughts again centering upon her.

Thus in this prophecy we find Him once more recognizing as His disciples Jewish saints in connection with the temple as of old, and a revived worship there. This has, as we shall see, an important bearing on the chapter before us. It accounts also for the character, so generally misunderstood, of a large part of the book of Revelation; in which, after the addresses to the seven churches, -a necessarily veiled prophecy of the Church’s history till the coming of the Lord, the apostle is in the Spirit caught up to heaven, as in fact we shall be, and there beholds the redeemed glorified and enthroned around the throne of God. The book of the divine counsels is then put into the hands of One who, though seen as a Lamb slain, is now declared to be the Lion of the tribe of Judah; that is, the King of the Jews. Accordingly, when now the scene returns to earth, we find no more the Church, but Israel and the Gentiles once again distinct (Revelation 7:1-17), and in the temple of God the ark of His covenant (Revelation 11:19). By and by the Lamb Himself stands upon Mount Zion, and with Him the sealed remnant of the tribes of Israel, seen before (Revelation 14:1). All this has been hidden as to its true meaning from the mass of Christians -through the common confusion between Israel and the Church, and the assumption of the heirship of the latter to all Israel’s promises. It is even counted “judaizing” to take passages like these in their plain sense. Those who do so are accused of robbing the Church of her just due, as well as largely depriving Scripture of its present interest for us. In fact, it is the very opposite; but here is not the place to discuss such matters, which must be fully examined in the book of Revelation itself, -of which we can know little aright if they are unknown. The interval, moreover, of which we have been speaking, is a period of the greatest importance in the history of the world, as the period of its permitted development apart from the restraint under which it has been from God; and in which, therefore, its character is fully manifested. Until this is done the final judgment cannot take place; and this character of the day of manifestation must needs make it of the deepest interest for every one who desires to be with God in the present time. As presently we shall find Paul saying, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” All around us, therefore, that is going on which will be fully disclosed to all in the near future, but which God would already reveal to His people, that they may be delivered from any complicity with it, and be kept in communion with Himself. If this was true in the apostles’ days, how much fuller must be its significance for days when the evil has been so long working. We need not forget that there is a present hindrance; which, moreover, we can trace, as it is most instructive to trace it, in the pages of history. What would it be for us, to acquire in this way the true history of the world as the scene of a warfare between good and evil, in the midst of which we still find ourselves; and when now approaching the crisis, as it surely is, -the forces gathering for the last, decisive conflict. What will prophecy become to us when we read it with such an application, as the living word of our glorious Captain of salvation, -the unfailing guidance of Him who seeth the end from the beginning, and whose heart is pledged to us in His cross of shame. We are prepared now to understand the force of the apostle’s adjuration “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him,” not to be troubled by any assertion, however loudly or confidently made, that the day of the Lord was already come. It would be equally correct, as far as language is concerned, to say “in behalf of,” as “by.” In either case there is seen the apostle’s earnest solicitude, and to which he hopes and expects response from those he is addressing, that the coming of the Lord should be free from distortions which would hinder its due effect upon the soul. The thought of the day of the Lord as to precede it would in different ways be a real distortion and distraction of heart from the simple expectancy of the Lord from heaven. The day of the Lord belongs to Jewish prophecy and times not Christian. It would set them necessarily, therefore, upon the hunt for dates and calculation of times, which have been so fruitful a cause of disappointment to multitudes at various periods. The Lord had said to His apostles after His resurrection, that it was not for them to know times and seasons, which the Father had placed under His own authority (Acts 1:7).

That which will be unfolded to the “wise” in Israel in the due time of their need (Daniel 12:9-11) was expressly hidden from the leaders in the new dispensation. And so the apostle has already told the Thessalonians that of the times and seasons he had no need to write to them (1 Thessalonians 5:1). The gathering of Christians to their Lord is the natural and necessary end of Christianity -of what is called the Christian dispensation. The “end of the age” which follows is, as already said, the end of another age -Jewish, and not Christian. The disciples are again in connection with the Jewish temple and worship, yet owned by the Lord. This means that, according to Micah’s prophecy (Micah 5:3), “the remnant of His brethren” are returned to the children of Israel. There is no fusion, as some would have it, of times so different. It is when darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the peoples, that the Lord arises upon Israel (Isaiah 60:2); and this can only be when He shall have gathered the saints of the present to Himself.

And thus He promises the Philadelphian overcomers that He will keep them out of the hour of trial that shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Immediately He follows this with, “Behold, I come quickly” (Revelation 3:10-11); and what else can deliver His own from the very “hour” of a world-wide trouble, but His own coming to gather them to Himself? Nothing but trouble is connected with this thought of the day of the Lord being come. It is not the excitement of a vain hope that the apostle would repress, but the depression resulting from dread of that from which the Lord pledges His word to the Philadelphian saints, that they shall be delivered. It is not something, as some imagine, to be desired to pass through for the glory of Christ, and in testimony to Him. It is a time of judgment for iniquity, although it is true that the mercy of God makes it also a time of new birth for Israel, and for multitudes among the Gentiles also. But it is “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time” (Daniel 12:1); and which the Lord emphatically reiterates as to be “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world unto this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). The Thessalonians are in danger of being “shaken in their mind,” or, more literally, “from their understanding,” at the false announcement; which the apostle beseeches them in behalf of truths so precious as the coming of the Lord and the gathering of His own to Him, not to heed. Even at so early a day in the Church’s history, we see moreover, that the enemy was at work; and that in places where we should have little expected to find him. Thus the saints are warned that this falsehood may be put forth by persons assuming to speak under the guidance of the Spirit of God, or as a report of some oral statement of the apostle, or even by an epistle forged in his name. The variety of methods warned against show, at least, how far he believed deception might be carried; and probably from knowledge of what had been done elsewhere. At any rate, he knew full well the boldness and the craft of the great adversary of Christ and of His people, and the weakness and folly to be found among Christians, so ready to be caught by a plausibility, or daunted by an assumption of spiritual power. Is it not so still? and can we expect it to be otherwise now, than what we find in the very earliest epistles of Paul, when he, and such as he, were yet living to confront the error? 2. But he goes on now to show them how, in fact, the day of the Lord would be ushered in, and the magnitude of the evil which would necessitate the judgments characterizing it: evil which was indeed already at work, but upon which there was the restraint as yet from God, which hindered its full development. Before the revelation of Christ, there must be the revelation of Antichrist, the “wicked one” who will then be consumed by the breath of His mouth, and brought to nought by the manifestation of His presence. This man of sin, moreover, would be the issue of an apostasy from the ranks of professing Christians themselves, and unite the treachery of a Judas (the son of perdition, John 17:12) with Jewish unbelief; yet still transcending this, in a blasphemous exaltation of himself in the very temple itself, challenging even Israel’s Most High in the place claimed by Him as His earthly throne, and exalting himself as supreme above every god whatever, named among men. It is plainly the most pretentious and insolent defiance of God that can be even imagined; and yet with such imposing display of power that the masses of those once enjoying the light of revelation (Jewish or Christian) will be carried captive by it. For all the power of Satan, freed from restraint on God’s part, will be let loose in it; and God will be giving over to believe a lie those who, having once been solicited by the truth, have made a fearful and deliberate choice of error in its stead. At the first statement of such an appalling diabolism as this impending, one would say, Here is something that has never been yet; something that would need no argument to convince us of its existence, if it did exist: and this is, surely, what would be the judgment formed upon the most thorough and profound examination of it in connection with all kindred passages. Here, we should say, is certainly the apostle John’s great “Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son,” -the Christian revelation, on the one side; as on the other, he is “the liar, who denieth that Jesus is the Christ,” -the Jewish form of unbelief. It is needless, at present, to go further. In its character, as marked with such absolute distinctness, as well as in the time of the revelation, (just before that appearing of Christ, which brings the wicked one to an end,) and in its result, as carrying away the mass of unbelieving Christendom, as well as in its being given as an unmistakable sign of the day of the Lord, this devil-inspired power is guarded, as it would seem, from all possibility of being misapprehended, and decisively determined to be even yet in the future to us,however near. As we know, it has indeed been taken to be the papacy; and this was perhaps the universal belief of the Reformers; with whom, naturally enough, the evil shadow which brooded ominously over so much of the professing Church, suffered them to look no further for the full development of Antichrist. Nor were they mistaken in seeing features of this kind in one in whom the mystery of lawlessness assuredly has manifested itself in a manner so conspicuous.

If, as the fruit of its working, the apostle John could already in his day declare that there were “many antichrists,” and saw in this the character of the “last time,” (1 John 2:18,) how clearly might it be expected that here was now the fruit, much more developed, and at least approaching its full ripeness. Did not the pope claim honors really divine? and did he not sit in this godless affectation of supremacy in the Church, the true temple of God? How could one look for plainer evidence? Yet, however natural the error was in their time, there is one consideration which is by itself amply sufficient to prevent our following them. If Antichrist were already manifested over three centuries ago, the apostle’s statement has for all this time ceased to have the significance he attached to it, as what would be an indication of the nearness of the day of the Lord. Now it is quite true that, for the Thessalonians, if we are only to think of these, it would still be a sufficient guard against any mistake such as he feared they might be making; for them the papal Antichrist would be yet far off. But to accept this as sufficient would be to say that the apostle wrote only for current needs, and did not know enough to give what would provide against such a mistake in the future. We may dismiss it, therefore, from our thoughts. Moreover, the same consideration tells against the “man of sin” being, as this view would make him, a succession of individuals, instead of the one person, which really the whole prophecy suggests. Otherwise the sign would be insignificant, or, at least, its significance would be very much reduced. Nor can we imagine that this open defiance of God, which in fact brings in the long impending judgment, could be yet allowed to go on for generations more, unsmitten by it. It is the climax of insult and outrage, after all God’s grace has been manifested in vain for salvation, -and, with the exception of a remnant preserved of God for Himself, the world of professed Christianity has gone after the devil’s candidate and king. The final conflict is commenced, and the issue cannot long be in suspense: the battle is that of the great day of God Almighty. While there may be lesser antichrists many, the definition of the Antichrist marked out by prophecy is, according to the apostle John, such as to describe, not a concealed, but an open enemy. “Who is the liar,” he asks, “but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is the Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). Thus there is no pretence of Christianity whatever, even the least orthodox. The pope does not deny, -he affirms, -that Jesus is the Christ: be never pretended to be the Christ, but only His vicar. Antichrist is, according to the full meaning of the word, “one in the place of Christ,” but not His vicar: he is himself the Christ, and denies that Jesus is; and so denieth the Father and the Son, -the Christian revelation in its whole extent. Thus he does not, in the common idea of this, sit in the temple of God at all; for in the Church he is not, even by profession. The papacy, for all these reasons, cannot be the “man of sin;” the pope is only one who exhibits certain similar features, and thus foreshadows the great apostate. This leads us further to realize what the sitting in the temple of God must mean. If the Church of Christ be necessarily excluded, then there is but one other temple of which we can think; and that is the temple at Jerusalem. For the present it does not exist; and by many it is still believed to have passed away for ever. It is useless to show them the plainest statements of the Old Testament; for these they take as merely Jewish symbolism, to be applied in spirit, not in letter, to the Christian Church. But they cannot doubt that when the Lord, in His prophecy upon the Mount of Olives, speaks of “the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place,” He is speaking of that very temple which was then before Him. The temple then existing, of course suffered destruction at the hands of the Romans, and according to the Lord’s own prophecy; but the application of His words as given in Matthew to anything that happened before or at that time -to the standards, for instance, planted on the site of the already desolate sanctuary, is entirely set aside by the connection in which He places it.

For the abomination is the sign at which His disciples are to flee, and then follows a tribulation so great that, except the days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; immediately after which the sun and moon are darkened, the stars fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens are shaken; and “then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” The Lord then speaks of angels sent forth to gather His elect from the four winds, of the going forth of the wise virgins (His true saints) to meet Him; of His sitting on the throne, and the nations being gathered before Him for judgment, when He separates between the sheep and the goats, and the latter depart into everlasting fire. It is with a violent wrench, indeed, that these things can be torn apart from one another; while by no possibility can they all be made to have taken place at the destruction of Jerusalem, now more than 1800 years ago. They undoubtedly all concur at the time for which the Thessalonian saints were looking, and for which after this long delay, that the longsuffering of the Lord might be salvation, we are looking still. (See notes to Matthew 24:1-51; Matthew 25:1-46.) But thus we see how there can and will be, in the last days, a revival of Jerusalem and Jewish worship there, which now becomes continually easier to anticipate, with the increasing Zionite movement, and the actual increase of the Jews in the land, which Scripture assures us again will be their own. That they are going back still in unbelief makes the temple worship easier to understand. It would be more difficult to see the connection of those disciples with Jewish worship in the days contemplated, (whom yet the Lord evidently owns as His own, and listening to His voice,) if we had not the knowledge of that coming of our Lord into the air, and our gathering to Him there, which precedes His appearing, and which the apostle is in earnest that we should not confound with the day of the Lord. If once we see the interval which elapses between our gathering to Him, (which ends Christianity, in the sense we attach to it ordinarily, upon the earth,) and His appearing with us, which brings in the blessing for Israel and the world at large, things are in the main clear to us. The brethren of the Lord have returned to the children of Israel (Micah 5:3). They are very much in the position of the disciples while the Lord was yet with them, and which continued for some time after the resurrection, while, acknowledging Jesus as their Messiah, they were “daily with one accord in the temple,” and were “all zealous of the law” (Acts 2:46; Acts 21:20). Of such the apostles at the time of the prophecy we have referred to, were fitting representatives. Among Israel, then, back in their own land, and obeying the voice of the Lord their God as made known to them by Moses’ law (Deuteronomy 30:2-3), there will arise the dark and terrible figure of the last antichrist, the outgrowth of Jewish unbelief and consummated apostasy in which Christendom will end. The prophecies of Daniel regarding the abomination of desolation and the wilful king enlarge and confirm our knowledge of what is here; which the book of Revelation completes for us on both sides, the Jewish and the Christian. The figure in Daniel (11: 36, 37) can scarcely be mistaken, of the king who “shall do according to his will, and shall exalt himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished.” Here he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth that he is God. The simple placing in juxtaposition of these prophecies delivers us from all uncertainty as to the application here. 3. The apostle had already told them, -not some other things which would enable them to understand these (as many take it,) but these very things. The Thessalonians had forgotten already instruction they had received: a forcible reminder of the need on our part of that written Word which God in anticipation of it has provided for us. How it becomes us, in every detail, to make sure that we have the exact statements of Scripture to build our souls upon. The careless quotation of it from memory, which so often for many does duty for the real, words, is a very positive injury to us, in clothing with the authority of inspiration what are the fallible conceptions of men. While, for exact, trustworthy memories, it is of course a first requisite that we exactly scrutinize the text which we store up in them; that the very perfection of our memories may not make perfect a delusion, which every recurrence of it to our minds shall only the more stamp there. But now they knew what was keeping back the development of this wickedness so that it should only be revealed at the time ordained for it. For, though the mystery of lawlessness was already at work, there was One who held it back, and would do so, until He should be out from the midst. There is no reason to doubt, although He be unnamed, who this power restraining is. It is evident that the apostle expects the Thessalonians to have this knowledge; and if it were not from other instruction than his epistle furnished, then we too ought to be able to gather from it what they should. And indeed there seems no great difficulty, when once we have recognized the character of the evil, in recognizing the power which holds it back. The “mystery of lawlessness” is not the mere fact of its existence: it has existed since ever the world was. Man doing his own will is, alas, too common a thing to excite any wonder; the wonder is when the grace of God delivers him from this madness and misery of his fallen nature. The “mystery of lawlessness” ceases, as such, in its manifestation. The special form of the mystery is then revealed in an open opposition to God and His Christ, which is developed out of the bosom of Christendom itself; setting up a false god and a false christ, to give the world its long-sought liberty from, divine restraint, and bring its vaunted progress to perfection, which under Christianity it has found it impossible to attain. In fact, already the failure of Christianity is proclaimed; and already there are incipient attempts to provide a substitute, not always covered even with a Christian dress. It will be noticed, also, how largely these lay claim to the supernatural, or what has been accounted such, and live in the borderlands of the unseen and “occult.” The craving for knowledge, which is to turn to sight a faith too much given to be credulous, finds here broad fields which, being outside of Scripture, cannot invite credulity! The gains of science have been continually at the cost of the miraculous; and its marvels reveal it as the most practical friend of man. What may not the new century add to its conquests? while Scripture is constantly paling before it, or frowning on men with an oft-repeated story of a judgment continually deferred. What hinders the outbreak of this spirit of lawlessness, which is indeed more and more declaring itself in every sphere today? It is nothing, and can be nothing but the strong hand of God repressing it, whatever may be the means or instruments He uses. But the prophecy before us speaks of One who is in the midst: until He be out from the midst, there will be a restraint upon the evil. Such an One it is not hard to recognize; nay, it would be hard not to recognize Him who is here to maintain the interests of the absent Christ, and here in that Church which is thus the House and Temple of God. When the Church is taken away to be with her Lord, then will He be also out of the midst; the Pentecostal dispensation, which began with His descent from heaven, will be at an end with His return to it. And this unites with what we have had before, to assure us that, Christianity being past, the only temple of God on earth will be, strange as it may seem to many now, the old temple at Jerusalem, so long forsaken, but where He will yet display Himself in more than all His glory of old time.

The time of Antichrist will not, of course, be yet the time in which that glory shall return; but return it will; and the same prophet who saw its departure has seen and described its return, to depart no more (Ezekiel 1:1-28; Ezekiel 2:1-10; Ezekiel 3:1-27; Ezekiel 4:1-17; Ezekiel 5:1-17): -a prophecy by the very terms of it never yet accomplished, but which, as God is true, must be therefore in the future, now surely near. So long as we fail to see this, what the apostle speaks of here will surely be misinterpreted by us, as it has been by so many. Once let us see this, and Daniel, Matthew, Revelation unite with Thessalonians in one clear, intelligible announcement which makes how much else clear as to the days at hand. The Church must depart before the lawless one can be revealed; the light that is yet in the world must depart, and darkness cover the earth, -yea, gross darkness the peoples; and then “the Lord shall arise on” Israel, “and His glory shall be seen upon” her. When that glory arises, its first act will be the smiting down of the powers of the earth, then combined against Him who made them. Israel is thus freed from the hand of her persecutors, and of the man of sin, with his standard of defiance unfurled in the very place of His throne. The words of the apostle here are but the application of the words of the prophet (Isaiah 11:1-5): “He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked (one).” In Revelation also (Revelation 19:15), “out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations; and He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” Certainly it is an extreme of spiritualistic misinterpretation which here can see only the destruction of error by the preached gospel! The time of the manifestation of His presence will be the time of judgment for His gospel rejected; and the man of sin and his followers will not be converted, but slain. The redemption accomplished when He “treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” will not be a redemption by sacrifice, Himself bearing the wrath, as so many have taken it, but the redemption of His people by power out of the hands of their enemies. The iron rod is still indeed the shepherd’s rod, but it is used in the defence of the flock; and so the Lord says of His saints, as associated with Him at that time: “And he that overcometh, and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to pieces even as I received of My Father” (Revelation 2:26-27; Psalms 2:8-9). Thus alone will the world come under the dominion of the saints. 4. The apostle goes on to show what the Lord speaks of as “the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth (Revelation 3:10). Scientific infidelity now avouches with a sneer that we never see a miracle, and Hume’s argument against all evidence in favor of such is its contradiction of universal experience. But it is soon to he matter of extensive experience that miracles there are; only in a very opposite interest to that of Christianity. These things are even now showing themselves in a more or less tentative and doubtful way; they are yet to throw off all reserve, and challenge the faith of the world. “Powers and signs and wonders” are the threefold designation of miracles in Scripture: “wonders,” which excite attention and admiration; “signs,” or timings that have meaning and doctrine; “powers,” that are evidently beyond human. These have borne witness in past time to the truth; -never proved it, apart from the truth itself with which they were connected: and this is the mistake of so many at all times, that a real miracle -something that could be rightly spoken of as all these -is an absolute guarantee of the message that it brings.

Thus they are ready at any time to follow what is thus supported. Yet, if there are heavenly beings, -“angels that excel in strength,” -it is evident that, if permitted, and if evil enough to attempt it, they could at any time lead us thus according to their mind. Now that is the very thing which God has declared He will permit, when the time shall have arrived. When men have shown that they desire the truth no longer, and the patient longsuffering of God has, at last, no justification further, that will have come to pass for the professing Christian world which we recognize as coming to pass in the history of individuals: God will say again, “Ephraim is joined to his idols: let him alone.” And then will rise up one “whose coming is according to the energy of Satan, with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood,” -no longer in the interests of truth, but of a lie, -“and in all deceit of unrighteousness for those that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” Dangerous would it be, as well as foolish, to assert that this is of the past, and not the future; -that it has been fulfilled in Romanism, or in any like way. Has the power of Rome, whatever its pretension to fabulous miracle may be, exhibited itself after this fashion? No doubt, there is a class at all times ready to be duped in this way, as we see in the rapid progress of such transparent absurdities as, for instance, “Christian Science;” but in all this there is only the feeble anticipation of a delusion which will yet carry away the multitudes of unbelieving profession. The arch deceiver is not in the Vatican, nor elsewhere at the present time: he is to be revealed in his time. And yet we may indeed discern the foreshadows of this tremendous iniquity, and realize that his way is being prepared in many events and movements that are taking place under our eyes. 5. The apostle closes here with the assurance of a holy, divine government working in all this; the worst form of evil will become (while remaining evil no less in itself) the meting out of righteous recompense to the rejectors of the truth. Indeed the very motives which lead men to the rejection of Christ lead them of necessity to the reception of Antichrist. “I am come in My Father’s name, and ye receive Me not; if another come in his own name, him ye will receive.” That which is according to their own taste they are permitted at last to have; and we need not doubt that it will present itself with abundance of pretentious claims, and decorated with all the taking titles of liberty, equality and fraternity, which have already proved their power to deceive the masses, and in the name of which, about a century ago, the blood of multitudes ran copiously in the streets, to the frantic delight of the onlookers. Still that which hath been is that which shall be -only with increase of malignancy in an incurable evil, for which not even a palliative any longer exists. The light will have departed which can make vice any longer ashamed, and from the restraint of all but the lusts of those as reprobate as themselves, men shall at last be free. The earth owes this spectacle yet to the patient heavens; and it will be given: sin allowed to be its own terrible witness against itself, -a witness at which eternity will shudder. Let us beware also, Christians as we may be, how we treat the truth which God has entrusted to us. Here also the rule works surely, that every bit of truth rejected delivers us up to error; and on the coin for which we sell the truth there is at all times, faint as it may be, the image of Antichrist. What debtors are we to divine grace! May we be kept in the sense of our need of it, in the salutary humility which will make us ever afraid most of all of our own wills. Alas, “we had turned every one to his own way” but let it suffice us now: “Jehovah hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.”

2 Thessalonians 2:13-3

Division 3. (2 Thessalonians 2:13-17; 2 Thessalonians 3:1-18.)Separation to God the manifestation of the saint. The doctrine of the epistle ends here; and the apostle, after his constant manner, closes with exhortation. Sin, the world, the power of the enemy, are yet to manifest themselves in a horrible unity which shall be a lesson for all time. The principles are all at work around us, though the restraint of God’s hand is upon their working. The saint is, therefore, one separated from the world with a far more than outward separation: he is set apart in his very nature to God, in whose service he finds freedom in communion with whom is his deepest possible delight. As the Lord could in every sense say, so can the believer say, in so far as his new nature is concerned, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” Just on this account, however, he is conscious that there is still within him a world that would link him with, and claim him for, that outside world from which God has separated him. And because of this, self-judgment is a constant necessity to him.

He has a self of which he can yet say, through grace, that it is not himself. He is delivered from it, and yet has to abide in the power of his deliverance. He is exercised as to good and evil after a manner which no other being knows; painfully, and yet most healthfully. He is qualifying indeed for companionship with Him who for him has felt the horror of sin, -not in Him, but upon Him. Abundant provision has there been made for him, that he may grow into communion with his Lord. For him all the history of the past as God reads it has been written out, in what becomes in the divine wisdom types and parables of the present; while he is set in a place which lifts him above the whole sphere of seductive self-interest into that new creation scene where Christ is all and in all, and in whose light he finds light.

In abiding in Christ, in the joy of what He is, and thus finding everything his, the power and so the manifestation of the saint are found.

1. What has saved us from the awful tyranny of evil in a world whose self-chosen prince is Satan, and not Christ? From first to last salvation is the work of divine love, which has from the beginning chosen us to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. Out of the whole region of falsehood the sovereignty of truth has rescued us, making way for itself by the sweet enfranchising glad tidings of grace which is in Christ, and which leads us on a path brightened by the beckoning glory. The first exhortation, therefore, is to stand fast and hold fast the truth. There were already adversaries, as the epistle itself shows; and they need a strength beyond their own, which he prays the God they knew so well, and who was in such tender relationship with them, to minister abundantly.
2. He needs also their prayers himself, charged as he is with that gospel the power of which they had themselves proved, that it might run and be glorified in many like themselves, spite of the, opposition of unreasoning and evil men, in whom true reason would have led to the faith they had not. For them and for himself he can lean upon the Lord’s faithfulness; desiring that the Lord Himself direct their hearts into the love of God, and into that patience of Christ which yet went on untiringly for the accomplishment of men’s salvation.
3. Disorder within faced them more menacingly; and here grace did not suggest an easy toleration of the evil, but separation from if; not indeed the cutting off of the offender from the assembly at large, -a severity of dealing not yet required by the gravity of the case, but the lesser reproof of personal avoidance. It would be the destruction and not the maintenance of discipline to carry it beyond the end sought, which was in the first place restoration, where possible, and not cutting off. No doubt there are cases in which the sin is of a nature to destroy all present confidence, and then there is no other course but cutting off. In the one before us there is the lack of self-judgment, a spirit of self-indulgence, and spiritual conceit, in itself distressing and liable to be followed by some open fall; but as yet not without hope of recovery. Here was a call, therefore, for admonition, a testimony to the conscience, in which, of course, every one feeling rightly would coincide, but still individual.

Generally followed up, it would do much to prevent the possibility of continuance of an evil, of which the streams that fed it had to be found outside itself. Foolish talkers are maintained by the folly of hearers; and bread eaten without cost must find those ready to pay the cost. Here, indeed, a false liberality might do harm to many more than those who indulged it. How little is thought of the various ways in which we may become “partakers of other men’s sins!” How careful was the apostle, while having such a claim as few besides could urge, and none perhaps could refuse, still rather, for example’s sake, to forbear to act upon it, than furnish the least possible excuse for others in this way. Self-sacrificing love had marked the conduct of one who sought not theirs but themselves. And the rule for these disorderly ones was that they were to obey the general law of man’s existence, that if they did not work they should not eat. On the other hand, there must be care that there should be no harshness or unbrotherly conduct, which would destroy once more the effect of the discipline. Not harshness or legality could accomplish the end sought, but only love; the assurance of which would lay hold upon the offender; drawing, while enabling the admonition to obtain audience. Only at another’s feet can one wash them. The apostle closes his epistle, as usual, with salutations. He prays that they may abide constantly in peace; true as the ordering of the Lord of peace can make it. Peace is that to which all His ways tend ever, and which will be the final result of all. Creation, brought into complete subjection to Himself, will manifest in all its parts and relations the harmony of its complex and glorious unity. To this peace every step taken truly with God tends therefore also necessarily. And he who walks with God finds ever that, as His ways are holiness, so, spite of whatever opposition, all His paths are peace: the presence of the Lord with His people must needs ensure this. To guard them against such impositions as he was, at least, afraid of in their case, he tells them that his greeting, in his own handwriting, would be the token of a genuine communication from himself. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was, as we ever see, the inner token.