The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians takes up another difficulty. It was written in view of another abuse of the truth of the Lord’s coming—a danger that threatened the saints. As the first epistle was intended to guard the saints from an error about the dead, the second epistle was more particularly meant to correct them about the living. They were distressed at finding that some of their brethren died before the Lord came. So filled were they with the constant expectation of Christ from heaven, that it never occurred to them that a single Christian might depart from the world before His return. How they must have realized, in their habitual waiting, the nearness of that blessed hope! They now learned that they need not sorrow on such a score; for the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then we, the living at His coming, shall be caught up with them to join the Lord together. But the second epistle grew out of another and more serious error. We have seen that they were greatly alarmed and agitated. The Apostle was really uneasy about them lest the tempter should tempt them, and his labor come to naught—lest, moved by their sore affliction, they should fall into fear about the awful day of the Lord, which the enemy knows well how to use.
Everybody who has read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the lesser prophets knows what they tell us of the horrors for men when the day of Jehovah comes upon the earth, that it will be a day of dismay and darkness, when all earthly things are utterly confused, and the people of God seem about to be swallowed up by their enemies. False doctrine ever sets one truth against another; and it was not wanting among the Thessalonians at this time. For some sought to persuade them that the day of the Lord was even then arrived. They probably argued that their troubles were part of the circumstances of that day. Certainly they sought to shake them by pretending that the day of the Lord was actually there. There was such fearful persecution and trouble among them that this might be plausibly enough mixed up as supporting the idea that the day of the Lord was begun. For this false rumor seems to imply that they must have given some sort of figurative color to “that day” (as it was certainly so used in Old Testament prophecy). At any rate, they must have supposed that “The day of the Lord” did not necessarily require the presence of the Lord Himself. In other words, they might think, as many Christians since have imagined, that a dreadful time of trouble must befall the world before the Lord comes to receive His own to Himself above.
This second epistle was written to disabuse the minds of the Thessalonian saints; and indeed it directly tends to set all Christians free from any anxiety of the kind, though, of course, there may be persecution again, as there was then, and repeatedly afterward, especially from Pagan and from Papal Rome. But this is wholly different from the dread which the enemy sought to infuse among the Thessalonians. The Apostle accordingly sets himself to this task. First of all, he comforts them.
“Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth; so that we ourselves glory in you.” It may be noticed that he leaves out “the patience of hope.” How comes this? It was exactly the hope that was no longer bright in their hearts. So far the enemy had succeeded. They had been comforted, but they had lost somewhat of the light and joy of the hope. They were moved more or less by their tribulation; not perhaps so much by the outward pressure as by the insinuation of Satan through false teaching, which is a far more dangerous thing for the child of God. It is plain that the Apostle merely mentions their faith growing, and their love increasing. He no longer praises nor names their patience of hope, but rather prays for them in chapter 3 in such a way as to show there was a lack in this respect. That is, he takes up two of the qualities mentioned in the first epistle, and not the third. This, which was bound up with the whole structure of the first epistle, is left out of the second. There was too good reason for it. For the time they had let it slip, as I have just explained. It is true that the Apostle tells them, “We glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith” (he does not speak of their “patience of hope”) “in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure.” They were holding on, and not giving up Christ; but their souls had not the former spring through Christ their hope. We shall have the evidence of this more fully soon.
There was “A manifest token,” says he, “Of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer.” So far it was well. “Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Observe the reason why he brings in “that day.” It was a false doctrine about the day, which draws out an explanation of its nature and its relation to the coming of the Lord. When that day comes, it will not fall with its troubles on the children of God. In truth the Lord will then execute judgment on their enemies—I do not mean on the dead till the close, but on the quick or living. It will be no more in some figurative and preparatory sense of exceeding affliction, or of natural overthrow; but its description here is the Lord Jesus revealed from heaven in flaming fire. There will be no doubt about its nature or effects. Every eye shall see Him.
That is, even 2 Thessalonians 1 plainly prepares us for the complete discomfiture of the illusory and alarming dreams which these false teachers had been foisting in under false colors among the Thessalonian saints. But he pursues the matter farther. He will take vengeance on two classes—on those that know not God, and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These seem the Gentiles and the Jews respectively; but why do not we find here some allusion to the third class—His relation to the church of God? Because those who compose the church are no longer here.
Thus it is shown that the Lord will deal with all on earth,—not merged in one, but discriminated; for He executes judgment, and hence does not confound those who differ in a common class. There is thus a definite distinction drawn; but this so much the more precisely leaves out the Christian. Its force is more understood the more it is weighed. The Apostle does not declare all at once, but prepares the way with much circumspection. When he says “them that know not God,” he means the idolatrous Gentiles. Then he adds with another article, “And those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (not, as we have it in English here, “And that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus”; as if all were one and the same class). There are two classes, and therefore accuracy would seem to call on us to make the sense more definite—“and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” At all events, whatever mode of rendering may be preferred, I have no hesitation in saying that such is the sense of the Greek, and nothing else. They are the Gentiles, who knew not God, (or, as Bengel has it, “qui in ethnica ignorantia de Deo versantur,”) and the Jews, who might know God after a sort and to a certain point beyond Gentiles, but who did not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. (“ Judaeis maxime, quibus evangelium de Christ praedicatum fuerat.”) For unbelief is always convicted by the test that God employs; and the day of the Lord will deal with every form. The Gentiles that know not God will be punished, and the Jews that abuse the forms of Old Testament revelation to disobey the gospel will not escape, still less nominal and apostate Christendom.
The reason why no notice is taken of Christians as then on earth we shall see assigned a little lower down: I merely now remark that he could not put himself in either of those two classes. It is evident that on whomsoever that day is to fall it has no bearing on such. If therefore the Christians were troubled now, it was in no way the same character of trouble as that which shall be in the day of the Lord. The teaching of those who had spread this impression was utterly false; and if they claimed the highest sanction for it, they were worse than mistaken—they were the guilty tools of Satan. But as to both the classes we have seen described by the Apostle, they “shall be punished with everlasting destruction,” both “from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believed” for this is the full force of it.
In the new age people will be blessed abundantly; but the blessing of the millennium does not exactly take the shape of belief. They shall behold the glory of the Lord. Such is their form as assigned by Scripture. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge—not with the faith, but with the knowledge—of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. It will be in countless cases the fruit of true divine teaching; but knowledge describes it better than faith; and we may easily understand the difference. They will behold the glory, they will look upon the Lord, no longer hidden but displayed. The blessed spoken of in our chapter are clearly those that have already believed. So indeed the Apostle states: “Wherefore we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of the calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power; that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”