2 Thessalonians 1

The coming of Christ again is not entirely good news for everyone. In fact one of the encouragements of the Lord to His persecuted people is that the Lord will one day afflict those who have afflicted the church. The church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ was severely afflicted, almost from the moment that Paul began to preach the message of Jesus Christ in the synagogue in Thessalonica. It was within this landscape of tribulation that the faithfulness of the new Christians in this important city was shining so brightly. They faced horribly unjust judgments and attacks from those around them, yet from the Lord they received grace and peace, and they flourished.

Paul was especially thankful to God for this church for the way that they shined in the midst of cruel assaults. Their faith was growing through trial, and that true faith was expressed and made visible with deeds of love for one another. That love was increasing, and had caused the apostle to boast to other churches concerning the life of love among these believers in Thessalonica. The kinds of persecutions and afflictions that they had endured might have caused many to drift away from each other in fear, since gathering together might have seemed too dangerous. Instead they had become evidence of the abounding grace of God in a difficult life situation.

When we seem to be singled out for providential bad news, and this is how churches may feel when they have seen their property destroyed and their lives threatened, it is easy to begin to wonder whether having trial upon trial is a sign of God’s displeasure with this gathering of worshippers. This is not the right way to understand what has happened in Thessalonica. Their response to their difficulties is the evidence of something that we would be afraid to say were it not in God’s Word, that they are “worthy of the kingdom of God” for which they have been suffering.

We know that there is one sense in which we could never be considered worthy of the Lord’s kingdom. We cannot satisfy all the righteous demands of God’s Law. This is the question of our justification, or legal standing, before the Almighty. That legal standing is based entirely on the perfect works of our Redeemer. Yet as those who have been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, there is a life of steadfast faith and love that is consistent with this work of God’s grace, even proving the genuineness of it. This is what Paul is referring to here, that their good works under fire are evidence of something real among them, and is behavior appropriate to those who claim to be the people of the One who died for our sins on the cross.

For these beloved children of God, affliction is not a sign of God’s displeasure, but a privilege entrusted to them. They have an opportunity to stand firm in the truth they believe at a cost. They suffer now, and those who afflict them may seem to be strong, but a day of reversal is coming soon, most supremely at the return of Christ. On that day those who have afflicted them will be repaid by God with affliction, and His suffering people will be given the fullness of relief.

When did this actually happen for the church at Thessalonica. When we go to be with the Lord at our death, we enter into His paradise, but the persecutors of the church begin to face His indignation. This will be supremely and finally displayed when Christ returns, but all of the faithful from the churches Paul wrote to have already entered into the place of heavenly blessing, and Christ has not yet returned for the final Day of Judgment.

One day He will return, together with the inhabitants of heaven. Then His vengeance will be most fully displayed in the sight of all. Those who do not know God, and who do not obey the good news of our Lord Jesus will suffer something that words cannot adequately convey, a destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might consistent with a continuing existence that is called in an another place, everlasting destruction, and in still another place, the second death. Yet those who have called on the name of the Lord with a sincere heart shall be saved. His coming will be very bad news for those who face His wrath, but the best possible news of resurrection glory in the presence of the Lord Jesus for those who have believed the apostolic testimony.

A crucial part of that apostolic testimony is the cross of Christ. It is in God’s revelation of final judgment that we can have a deeper appreciation of the Lord’s death. All that the enemies of the church will one day face testifies to us of our Lord’s suffering for us many centuries ago. We deserved the second death, this everlasting destruction, because of our sin against God. Christ has taken this for us on the cross. Something of the horror of what He faced was, in a sense, obscured from the view of those who saw Him suffer that day. The Day is coming when the extent of that loss will be more visible, but not upon Him, for His suffering was finished long ago, but upon the troublers of His people. May we walk in the grace of God now, and pray for one another, that the Lord would grant us strength to fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith to the glory of the Triune God.