These Epistles, which stand last among the ecclesiastical Epistles of St. Paul, according to our arrangement, are commonly supposed to have been the first in the order of time. I have not attempted to ascertain the chronology of the other Epistles, and I do not mean to enter into the proofs which have been urged and accepted in support of this opinion respecting these. The motive for placing them where we find them was probably a doctrinal one. The letters to the Thessalonians speak more distinctly of a judgment than any which have preceded them; therefore though they might be comparatively early writings of the Apostle, it appeared as if for purposes of theology and church-history they should be postponed to the rest.
The history of the foundation of this Church, in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is important for the illustration of the Epistles. The Apostle seems to have passed rapidly through other cities of Macedonia, because there were no synagogues in them. In Thessalonica he found one, and for three sabbath-days reasoned there out of the Scriptures. The subject of this discourse was entirely adapted to the Jewish state of feeling. He had not to prove that there was a Christ, but that the Christ must needs suffer and rise from the dead, and that Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified Man, was this Christ. A few, it appears, of the Jews believed the word, and consorted with Paul and Silas. But the great majority of their converts were from devout Greeks, — proselytes, apparently, who frequented the synagogue. Then began a fiercer opposition from the circumcised party than they had yet encountered. First, they sought to incite the populace against the new preachers, who assaulted the house of Paul’s entertainer. Then, they either in their own persons, or through “lewd fellows of the baser sort,” sought to alarm the representatives of the empire, by the old argument, “these men that have turned the world upside down, are come hither also; which all do contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying, that there is another king, one Jesus.” I call it an old argument because it is one which had been used against our Lord when He was brought before Pilate. But so far as St. Paul’s experience had gone, it was new. He had had the sharpest conflicts with his countrymen; but they had turned on the question whether Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. As yet they had not made use of the only plea against him which had any real weight with their masters. Here it was successful. The rulers were troubled, and took security of Jason and the others. Paul and Silas were sent away by night into Berœa.
Thus the ground of this Church was laid amidst more than usual persecution. The circumstances of its birth portended storms in its childhood and youth. There could be no doubt from what quarter the opposition would come, or what form it would take. A violent Jewish faction would denounce the notion that Jesus was the King whom their nation had been expecting, would avail themselves of the help of those whose dominion they most hated, to oppose His pretensions, would put forth an idea of the Christ as unlike as possible to that which was exhibited in Him, would be ready to welcome any person who embodied this idea. These were the symptoms which clearly foreshowed to the Apostle the coming ruin of his nation, the approach of the events which our Lord had said would take place before that generation had passed away. The thoughts of an Antichrist and of a judgment were thus forced upon St. Paul, by the circumstances of the Thessalonians, more distinctly and prominently than they were by those of any other Church. Nor could he help seeing, in those circumstances, an indication that there might be a strange blending of Gentile and Jewish maxims in the time that was at hand, that the new Christ might possibly be clothed with the purple, though he might also present himself in some form which should satisfy the ambition of those who sought for an heir of the house of David. The vision, in whichever way it was looked at, was most portentous. The Jew must more utterly and openly deny the God of Abraham than he had denied him yet, before he could quite bow down before an image that was directly opposed to that of a King reigning in righteousness. The tyranny of the Cæsars must become more utterly frightful, more entirely brutal and godless than it had yet been. Finally, the awful saying of Christ, that love of many would wax cold, that the false Christs might almost deceive the very elect, even if they had not been interpreted by the experience of the perils of the infant Churches, could not but suggest the fear that Christians would participate in all the temptations of the surrounding world, and that many of them would fall into an abyss as much deeper than that of Jews or Gentiles, as their exaltation had been greater. If one connects with these reflections the extreme tenderness and affection which the Apostle felt for this Church, a tenderness and affection like that of a mother for a child which is passing through the crisis of a disease, we shall be furnished with most of the data which we require for the interpretation of this Epistle.
Persecution would seem to be a condition so common to all Churches, that the reader may hardly be prepared to look at it specially in reference to the Thessalonians. But after going through so many of the Pauline Epistles, I may boldly say that persecution is not a leading topic in any one of them, except in that to the other Macedonian Church at Philippi. And in that society, the effects of persecution were evidently different from those which the Apostle discovered among the Thessalonians. These last do not seem to have been cast down or overwhelmed by the afflictions which they endured. Despondency was at any rate not their chief failing. The character of the opposition which they underwent apparently led the Apostle, while he was with them, to speak much of the coming day of the Lord, and to use the expectation of it as an encouragement to patience and hope. Such words were as easily perverted then as since. What need for men to toil and get their bread if some great event was at hand? Might it not take them away from all earthly things, or give them such a command of earthly things as they had never had before? With this kind of listlessness about the present, is apt to spring up an indifference to common earthly morality, not fully developed, but making itself apparent from time to time. Speculations about the future, about the nearness or distance of the events to which the Apostle had alluded, would occupy much of the minds of the Christians. All brightness being seen in the future, only a gloom resting on the past, the world before the time of Christ’s appearing would look very blank and dreary: how sad to have lived and died in that period! With these tendencies, which persecution is so likely to generate, would be mixed many of the graces and virtues which God uses it to call forth,—courage and endurance, with a brotherly affection and sympathy not wholly unaffected by the evil habits to which I have alluded, but still acquiring strength from the presence of the adversaries. It would be, not seldom, accompanied by a somewhat reckless defiance of them and a proud contempt of their opinion.
The mischievous influences which were at work in this Church, only reveal themselves gradually in the midst of the earnest thanksgivings of the Apostle to God for their work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope of our Lord Jesus Christ. He rejoices that they know their election of God; that His Gospel did not come to them in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit and much assurance; that they were imitators of him, and of the Lord, inasmuch as they had received the word amidst much tribulation with joy of the Holy Spirit; that they were examples to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia; that their faith in God was known everywhere; and that from them the word of the Lord had sounded forth far and wide. Again and again he commemorates the nature and depth of their conversion in the memorable and expressive words, that they had turned from idols to God, to serve a living and true God. Again and again he connects that service with the waiting for His Son from the Heavens whom he raised from the dead, Jesus the deliverer of us from the wrath that is coming.
These words may show that it is far enough from the Apostle’s intention to explain away the language of his discourses, or to alter the character of the teaching which had been so effectual at the first, in consequence of the discovery that it had been perverted. We ought carefully to remember that this is never his method, that he does not qualify the truths which he had thought necessary at a former time, or exchange them for others, but labors to bring them out in the fulness of their meaning, this being the right correction for any partial apprehensions of them. But first he enters with more than usual particularity into the manner of life of himself and his fellow-missionaries among them. He does not apparently introduce this topic for the reason which made it necessary among the Corinthians, because his objects had been misrepresented, or because other teachers were set up in rivalry against him. The Thessalonians, so far as we can gather from the letter, returned his affection to them, and had been from the first as much influenced by his life as by his words. For that reason he is the more anxious to recall to them what it was that they observed in him, which they recognized as coming from God, which at once found its way to their hearts. Was it not a watchful tender behavior towards them while they were yet Gentiles, a gentleness and tenderness which they saw was entirely free from flattery, was not prompted by any motive of covetousness? Was it not their labor and hardships, the toil with their own hands that they might not be chargeable to any, by which Paul and Silas had proved how dear they were to them? Was it not the continuance of holy and blameless behavior among those who had believed, the exhortations and warnings by which they showed them how much care they needed to keep the treasure which they had won, to walk worthy of the God who was calling them into His own kingdom and glory?
St. Paul could apply language of this kind as freely to himself as to any other man when it was called for and would do any good. The edge of the self-praise is all taken off in the next sentence, in which he thanks God that when they received the word of God from him and Silas, they received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which is energizing in us who believe it. The same word energized in the Thessalonians, for they became imitators of the Churches of God that were in Judæa in Christ Jesus. The reason for alluding specially to those Churches is given immediately after. The sufferings of the Thessalonians had been caused by the same persons who were the authors of their sufferings. Jews in Macedonia had proved their affinity with Jews in Palestine, who had persecuted the Lord Jesus and the Prophets, who had persecuted also the Apostles, forbidding them to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, so as to fill up their sins altogether. For the wrath had come upon them even to the end.
Both the allusions of the Apostle to his own life, and those to the Jewish enemies of the Thessalonians, have a reference to the infirmities which he had observed in them as well as to the hopes which they were indulging. Without telling them directly that they were not laboring with their own hands, not walking wisely towards their heathen neighbors, not careful in all their inner life to keep the light burning, in all their outward acts to let it shine before men, the example of what their first teachers had been, the recollection of the impression which this example had made upon them, would be the most effectual admonition that he could administer. And the hint about the Jews did not merely remind them that the Apostle was a much greater sufferer than they were from the same opponents; it told them what the cause of the Jewish hostility was, how it grew out of a godless and inhuman unwillingness that other men should share in their privileges. It reminded them that the day of redemption they were expecting, and had a right to expect, would be also a day of wrath which would not be accomplished till God’s own chosen people had suffered that tremendous downfall, which, as St. Paul told the Romans, he would have been himself accursed from Christ to avert.
The appearing of Christ then to which the Apostle had taught them to look forward, was connected with sorrow and tribulation both to themselves and to the world. It was not one which he or they dared look forward to as the accomplishment of any selfish dreams. He expresses the desire which he had felt to come to them, it would seem, for the very purpose of telling them this. “For,” he says, “are you not our joy and hope and crown of rejoicing before our Lord Jesus in His appearing?” The expression seems thrown in by the way, or rather it starts out from the fulness of the Apostle’s heart, without any reference to the subject which has occupied him. But the utterances of an inspired man, however little they may seem to belong to a dry argument, must illustrate and unfold the thought which is governing him. In telling them his own mind towards them, he has given them a whole volume of instruction respecting the day which he and they are to anticipate. It is one which he desires for their sakes, for the sake of the Church, because Christ will be glorified in them, because He will be manifested as the Lord both of Jew and Gentile.
As he could not go to them himself, he says he had sent Timothy to comfort them and strengthen them, that the tribulations which they suffered might not give occasion to the tempter, but that they might receive them as their natural and appointed discipline. The report of Timothy had cheered him. It had called forth fresh thanksgivings to God. For it had made him pray and desire more earnestly that he might see them. He trusted that God Himself, and the Lord Jesus would direct his way to them. But he trusted still more that God would make them to abound in love to each other and to all, so as to strengthen their hearts unblameable in holiness before God and our Father in the appearing of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Every one must perceive, from the way in which St. Paul recurs to this expression, that it is the cardinal one of this letter. How frequent it is in all his epistles we have perceived already. But it has not stood forth anywhere with the same distinctness as here. The Apostle has not yet set himself to remove perplexities that directly bore upon it, and to connect the life of the Church with it, as he does in writing to the Thessalonians. The next passage, with which we are all familiar as an independent exhortation, should never be disjoined from the words that precede it. The way to prepare for the appearing of Christ was to remember those ordinary vulgar precepts which the Apostle had given them, and which, in their eagerness and anxiety about that which was to be hereafter, they were forgetting. For though these moral rules might take a mere hard external shape, they were connected with the most profound theology, with the most mysterious spiritual principles. The precept to “abstain from fornication,” was grounded on the doctrine that “this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” The rule not to overreach one’s brother in any matter, was grounded on the truth that the Lord was the Judge. Both alike would be observed if they recollected that God had given to them the Holy Spirit. St. Paul was rejoiced to think that they did excel in love to the brethren both in their own city and in all Macedonia. But he would have them remember that they had a duty also to those who are without; that quietness, minding their own business, laboring with their own hands, were spiritual duties, part of their divine vocation.
Lessons of this kind, be it ever remembered, were expressly suggested by the Apostle’s belief, and his wish to impress his disciples with the belief, that the day of the Lord was at hand. In proportion as the impression of that day was deep and settled in their minds, would they be free from restlessness and anxiety, quiet in the midst of strife, attentive to all common duties, considerate of their fellow-men. But there was one cause of anxiety which was not selfish, and which seemed to have its root in the very expectation which the Apostle encouraged them to entertain. Their friends who had died and left the world, what had become of them? Was not it a sad calamity for any who had not survived till the Incarnation of their Lord? might it not be sad for those who should not survive till that appearing of which the Apostle spoke? The thought was a very natural one, more natural than we are exactly aware, who form theories about the state of the departed, and about our state, which have very little reference to any appearing or manifestation of Christ. Their minds, formed in the Apostolical school, could imagine no blessedness that was not associated with His appearing. The Apostle’s answer to their difficulty involved the clearest exposition of the nature of this appearing which he had yet given them. They were not to limit it by their notions respecting time or locality. If they believed that Christ had died and risen again, they believed in a union of both worlds, a breaking down of the barrier that separated the state before death from the state after death,—the visible and the invisible world. Such a belief, if they truly entertained it, would assure them that those whom they called dead had fallen asleep, but that Christ was as much with them as He was with the daughter of Jairus or with Lazarus; that they could as much hear His voice as those departed spirits had done; that as they were members of Christ’s body, and drew their life from Him, God would bring them with Him.
And this therefore he tells them by the word of the Lord, that “we, the living ones, we that are left over unto the appearing of the Lord, shall not anticipate those that have been put to sleep. Because the Lord Himself with a cry, with the voice of an archangel and with the trump of God, shall descend from Heaven; and then we, the living, shall together with them be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” Sentences which sooner pass into music than most in the Scriptures, and to which the hearts of most men confess a strange response, yet which give as much trouble to the understanding as any that we know of. May I venture to suggest that if we followed the impulses of our hearts, and took the words as they stand, and tried less to measure them according to certain notions of ours, some of the perplexities we have found in them might perhaps disappear? The first question we are disposed to ask is, “And was St. Paul then alive at the appearing of the Lord, even supposing that appearing identical with some event that took place in that generation?” This question involves a subject which has occupied us much in former parts of this volume; the reconsideration of it may help us to trace a unity in the books of the New Testament; a full apprehension of it would be the most satisfactory key to the connection between the history of the Christian Church and the prophecies of the Old and New Testament.
All the hopes of the old prophets pointed to an appearing or manifestation of a King of Israel, and a Son of God. They interpreted the thoughts and hopes which were consciously or unconsciously striving in all men whatsoever. They said what kind of person “the desire of all nations must be.” I have endeavored to show that the Gospels present such a person to us. They say, “This Jesus is the Son of God, this Jesus is the King of Israel. We declare to you how He showed, while He was upon earth, walking about as the friend of fishermen, as the carpenter’s son, that He had both these characters. We affirm that His crucifixion was the most necessary part of His manifestation, in these characters, as well as of the work which he came to do in them. We affirm that His resurrection was the final assurance given here upon earth that He was what the Jewish Sanhedrim and the Roman governor denied that He was. But that resurrection involved His not continuing upon earth. It was consummated by His ascension to the right hand of God. So He was declared to be both Lord and Christ. The descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was the witness that this ascension involved no separation from his disciples and witnesses upon earth. It enabled them to be real and effective witnesses of His resurrection, that is to say, of His being the risen and victorious Lord of man, the Redeemer of the Spirit and soul and body of man, the Restorer and Regenerator of humanity.” Was nothing more involved in the ascension and in the gift of the Spirit than this? The more the Apostles received of the spiritual illumination, the more they were certain that there was. If Christ had died and risen again, if He had ascended on high, if He was both Lord and Christ, if they had not deceived men when they bore this testimony concerning Him, there would be an appearing or manifestation of Him in that character, a manifestation which would be as real as His appearing in the likeness of a servant, which would carry out that appearing to its effect and result, as the crucifixion had carried out the incarnation, as the resurrection had carried out the crucifixion, as the ascension and descent of the Spirit had carried out the resurrection. All these, strictly speaking, were parts of the same appearing, were different acts of the drama, leading on to a catastrophe which was absolutely inevitable, if the great Hero of it, He who had been directing the operations of the world since it had been created, had really come to assert His own right over it, had really shown how all the subordinate personages had been working with Him and for Him. It was strictly in accordance with the method of the old prophets to regard all the events that might occur in a particular generation as parts of the same appearing or day of the Lord; though the first might be separated from the last by an interval of many years; though the events might be very unlike each other in their outward character, some being bright and some gloomy; though a visitation of locusts might lead to an outpouring of the Spirit, and that to some critical battle in the valley of Jehoshaphat. The link between all these events was that they proved God was present and was at work for the putting down of evil, and the establishment of righteousness. John the Baptist, the herald of the Divine King, had proclaimed the wrath that was coming upon the land, as the great result of His coming, that to which the preaching of repentance and the baptism of the Spirit would lead, that which would be the sign that the kingdom he spoke of as at hand, had actually been revealed. We have seen how consistent with this preparatory announcement were all the discourses of our Lord, and most conspicuously the one which preceded the last Passover.
How then could St. Paul, if he were really imbued with the lessons which he had received from the old teachers of his land, if he really believed the outward and inward manifestations which had been made to himself, have doubted that he was living in a day of the Lord, in that day of the Lord towards which all others had been leading? Whether or not he should be on earth at the winding up of that day,—at the appearing of the Lord which he fully believed, on his Lord’s own assurance, would take place in that generation,—he was one of those who had been alive and remained to the appearing of the Lord, seeing he was a witness of the incarnation and the resurrection and the ascension, seeing that Christ had been outwardly revealed to him on the way to Damascus, seeing that God had been pleased to reveal His Son in him, seeing that he had preached that Son as the Desire of all nations, to Greeks and Barbarians. And it was no play upon language to speak thus. By it he met the perplexity in the minds of the Thessalonians. He removed their fear about the condition of their fathers. He enlarged their feelings about the revelation of the Lord. He gave them an additional assurance of that revelation which was yet to be, and which was so near at hand by treating it as one of a series of events, many of which were already fulfilled.
If we have overcome this first difficulty, I do not think the rest of the passage will trouble us; nay, I believe if we receive it, it will be full of the consolation which the Apostle told the Thessalonians there lay in it. He affirms certainly that the Lord would descend from Heaven with the voice of an archangel and the trump of God. And if we believe in our Lord’s own words respecting the earthquakes and the distress of nations with perplexity, which were to occur in that generation, we may well believe that a trumpet did sound, that the voice of the archangel was heard by mortal ears. Nor does it signify, as far as the statement of the Apostle is concerned, whether that voice was recognized by many or any of those “whom the muddy vesture of decay did grossly close,” whether they perceived or not that it betokened the descent of the Lord from Heaven. What he declares is, that those who had fallen asleep before the appearing of our Lord upon earth, would hear his voice and would rise up as those did who heard it in the days of His humiliation; not to return, as they did, to speak and walk again among men, but to be with him to share His glory. And what he further says is, that he and the Thessalonians who had not fallen asleep before the appearing of Christ in the world, who had survived to that great day of the Lord, would be sharers in the same blessing, since they would not and could not have any higher one. Only there would be this difference; since Christ had died and was risen again, the grave could no longer be looked upon as receiving those whom Christ had redeemed. Even the word sleep, which belonged to the former time, would not be applicable to this. The departure of those who were in Christ, would be really a translation. They would not sink, but rise. They would not go down to meet the worms, but ascend to meet Christ. The phrase, “meeting the Lord in the air,” seems expressly used to discourage the carnal notion of His coming down as an earthly king, to reign visibly upon earth. The translation which the Apostle speaks of, was an object of faith, not of sight. The Thessalonians were not called to imagine that He would be invested with the purple with which He was clothed in mockery upon earth; but that He would come in the glory with which he ascended, in the glory of His Father and the holy angels, that those who had shared His sufferings might partake it with Him.
I have said that this very literal way of construing the Apostle’s words, the most literal I can conceive, and the most consonant with the rest of the New Testament, must have conveyed great consolation to the Thessalonians, and may convey the like to us. If events which were to occur very soon, bore witness to them that the Lord who had died and risen again was actually present, and was reigning over the universe, they would look upon those events, however portentous in themselves, as accomplishing the expectations and hopes of one dispensation, and as inaugurating a new and higher one. They would look upon those events as denoting a crisis in the history of the universe, which did not affect only or chiefly its visible conditions, but affected the relations between those who were still and those who had been upon the earth, and put an altogether new interpretation upon the facts of earthly life and earthly death. And if we had courage to believe that what St. Paul said actually came to pass, and that we are living in that better age of the world to which he was looking forward, we might perhaps claim many privileges as our possession, which we suppose may be ours in a distant future; we might think that much more has been done for us and for mankind, than we have at all dreamed of; we might look forward with much greater confidence to that which shall be done when the mists which surround us are scattered, and we are able to walk in the full light of God’s countenance.
But to realize this comfort, we must heed, as carefully as the Thessalonians were called upon to heed, the words which follow. “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that it should be written to you. For you yourselves perfectly know that a day of the Lord as a thief at night so cometh. When they say, Peace and safety, then a sudden destruction is standing over them like the travail to a woman with child. But you, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should come upon you as a thief.”(Lachmann has “thieves;”a very tempting alteration, which one would be much inclined to adopt if the previous verse did not seem to forbid it, and if it were not too natural a substitute for the common reading.) “For ye are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night, nor of darkness. Then let us not sleep, as the rest. But let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep by night, and they that are drunkards drink by night. But let us, being of the day, be sober, having put upon us the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. Because God hath not appointed us to wrath, but unto the procuring of salvation, through that Lord of us, Jesus Christ, Him that died for us; that whether we wake or whether we sleep, we may live together with Him.” Here lay the grand correction of their irregular practices, as well as of their confused belief. The day of the Lord presented itself to them as a time or season which they were to ascertain by some calculations,—calculations which, though the prophets might furnish the material of them, were pursued upon the very maxims of the astrologers and soothsayers whom the prophets denounced. The Apostle was not desirous to make them doubtful that the day was at hand,—that they were on the eve of it, nay, that they were in it, though the sun might not yet have reached his full height in the heavens. But this confidence, as well as all the hope and the diligence which it would engender,—was not promoted but hindered by restless speculations about the meaning and issue of particular events, or the accomplishment of supposed predictions. When St. Paul spoke of a day, he did not mean a day of twenty-four hours, but a day as opposed to night, light as opposed to darkness. He so explains his meaning to the Romans and to the Corinthians—here with still greater minuteness, on account of the particular errors which he had to encounter. The more we observe his language, and compare it with that which we find elsewhere, the more we perceive with what divine skill and delicacy he is opening their minds to a deeper perception of the truth he is teaching, while he is giving it a practical force and awfulness which in their hands it was very likely to lose. We perceive at the same time, how much all his corrections of their mistakes are united with the encouragement, not the discouragement, of their belief and of their hopes. They had not thought too highly of their present position. They had been inclined to make the thought of a future time an excuse for disparaging it. They were sons of the light and of the day then; they were not to become so afterwards. But they were to expect blessings which they had not received: they were to look for a full salvation from all that oppressed and crushed them. The hope of it was a helmet, the best protection from some of the most perilous and deadly assaults of their enemy. While they cherished it, they would keep themselves awake; if they lost it, they would sink into sleep.
The exhortations which follow, though they might be suitable to any Church, have, I think, a peculiar appropriateness to the circumstances and temper of this one. One can easily imagine that the restlessness of speculation about the coming time, and the advantage which it gave to quick and clever diviners to exalt their own auguries above homelier and more practical teaching, would hinder them from knowing those who were laboring among them, their appointed guides and counsellors, or from setting much store by their quiet labors of love. And though the Apostle has borne them witness that there was brotherly love amongst them, the peace of the Church must have often been interrupted by rival predictors. A certain impatience of government,—with that which corresponds to it, a loss of the faculty in governing,—may have produced many unruly spirits who needed to be admonished. The desponding would often be left without comfort by those who were busy about times and seasons. There would be an intolerance of the weak, and that pride of half knowledge which is most opposed to sympathy and long suffering. There might be some particular instance of revenge or of bitterness towards those who were without, which led to the warning against returning evil for evil. The other exhortation, “Pursue the good always towards one another, and towards all,” reminded them that they were members of a Church, a body of witnesses whose conduct towards each other was a testimony to the world. The exhortations to “rejoice always,” and to “pray without ceasing,” like the similar ones which he addressed to the Philippians—derive a new force, as in that case, from the tribulations to which both were exposed. The command, “In all things give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus unto you,” kept them in mind of the truth which persecuted men, and men expecting a judgment upon others, were so likely to forget, that the Will of God is a will to all good, and that they were only right when they were rejoicing in that will, and subjecting their own to it. The Thessalonians might have seemed less likely than others to quench the Spirit, or despise prophesyings; but the Spirit of God is not the spirit of divination, and prophecies in the apostolical sense are not predictions. Our interpretations have cruelly mangled the beautiful precepts that follow. “Prove all things. Hold on to the good. Hold off from every form of evil.” For we have inculcated a doctrine,—exceedingly in accordance with our cowardice and feebleness, utterly adverse and contrary to the teaching and example of Christ and His Apostles,—that we are to abstain from all that appears evil in the sight of men. He had bidden them test all things, to see what they were good for, and yet they were to shrink from every thing that looked bad to those who judged according to the appearance, and did not judge righteous judgment! If the Apostle had so preached at the end of an epistle specially concerning Christ’s day and Christ’s judgment, specially exhorting them to wait for that, the contradiction would have been flagrant indeed. But he is guilty of no such inconsistency. He winds up his exhortations with a prayer, not that they may abstain from the things which appear evil to those who are themselves evil, but that the God of peace would make them thoroughly holy and perfect, that their spirit and soul and body, as one entire inheritance, might be preserved without blame to the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
No one, I believe, has ever doubted the connection between the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. The relation between them is not merely like that between the two to the Corinthians. The subject is the same in both, and the second is commonly and perhaps rightly, assumed to have arisen out of mistakes respecting the intention of the first. It is clear from the opening of the Epistle (the part of it included in our first chapter) that the tribulations of the Thessalonians had continued and increased. St. Paul intimates that faith and patience and love were also increasing. “An evidence,” he says, “of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that ye may be made worthy of the kingdom of God; for which also ye are suffering: seeing that it is a righteous thing with God to recompense to those who trouble you, tribulation, and to you the troubled, rest with us in the unveiling of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of his power, in the flame of fire, giving out recompense to them who know not God, and to them who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall receive the judgment of eternal destruction 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 wondered at by all who believe; for our testimony to you was believed in that day.” I have extracted this passage, partly that the reader may see at once how much the Apostle is occupied with the subject of a coming judgment, in this as in the former epistle; secondly, that he may be led diligently to consider the expressions which the Apostle uses to describe the nature of this judgment, and to compare them with similar expressions in other parts of the New Testament. I suppose there is no passage which would be so readily accepted as a classical and a cardinal one on the whole question of judgment and of punishment. Let us examine it, that we may, if possible, get some light on subjects so deeply concerning all men in all ages.
The faith and patience and love of the Thessalonians were, the Apostle believed, means to their being made worthy, or, if we follow our translation, to their being counted worthy of the kingdom of God. If that kingdom of God is the kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy, patience and hope and love would seem to be the instruments whereby it is enjoyed or inherited, as a clear eye is the instrument by which any beautiful landscape is enjoyed or inherited. So our Lord had taught in the Sermon on the Mount. The poor in spirit would have the kingdom of heaven, the pure in heart would see God. It was not they would be paid for being poor in spirit or being pure in heart by certain gifts in a future world. It was that being poor in spirit, they would not crave to be rulers themselves, but would rejoice to have the true Lord for the ruler of their hearts; it was that the light which was in them not being darkened, the purified man would be able to know Him in whom he was living and moving and having his being. The righteous judgment of God then, which the Apostle anticipates, is that which would affirm who were living as children and citizens of God’s kingdom; even as also the righteous judgment which he anticipates upon the persecutors is that which is the opposite of rest, the trouble and dismay and confusion that belong to those who have sought to exalt themselves and have trampled upon others. “In the revelation of Jesus Christ with His angels from heaven,” in that great day-light of the universe which shall show all things as they really are, there will be recompense to those who have not known God, and who do not obey the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this recompense he describes as eternal destruction from the face of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. The recompense of the wicked corresponds exactly to that of the righteous. The true judgment of God ascertains the condition of both. Each obtains what he is seeking after. As the state of knowing God and being like Him is the reward of the one, the state of not knowing Him and being without Him is the punishment of the other. This is called æonian or eternal destruction, the most awful state to which a spiritual being can be reduced. We are not told how long or how short a time that destruction may last. Time, I conceive, enters as little into the question here as into our Lord’s discourse in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew. In one and the other the language denotes a moral condition of being. In one passage and in the other the revelation or unveiling of Christ which distinguishes every person and declares what he is, is described as that which separates those on the right hand from those on the left. Nor must it be forgotten that this judgment, as well, I conceive, as that spoken of in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, is the judgment which was to wind up that age or dispensation of the world. Those who had called Jesus a blasphemer because He said He was the Son of God, would find out what sort of being they had been worshipping under the name of God, what a Being they had rejected when they had said that the crucified Man was not His true image. And what other blessing could a faithful man desire than to see in that crucified Man the real King of the universe, the full glory of the Father, St. Paul then, while he cherishes the faith and hope of the Thessalonians in this judgment of Christ, gives them the clearest indication of what was to be feared and what was to be hoped in that judgment. It was to be desired earnestly because it was true, not because it would favor Christians or Jews or Gentiles. It was to be desired, because it would bring forth the true image of God, and would confound all dark and false and hateful images of Him by whomsoever, Jew, heathen, or Christian, they were set up.
And now on the strength of the appearing of Christ, and of that blessed gathering together in Him which was the realization and fruition of their life as members of a Church, he conjures them not to be quickly shaken, or agitated in mind, either through spirit or through word or through letter as coming from him, with the thought that the day of the Lord was coming instantly. “Let no one,” he says, “deceive you in any wise, because it will not come unless the apostasy come first, and there be revealed the man of sin, he that is the adversary, and that lifts himself up above every one that is called a god, and above every form of worship, so as to set himself in the temple of God, showing that he is God.” I might of course spend pages or volumes upon this passage, if I allowed myself to travel over eighteen centuries of history, and to inquire which of all the illustrious names that occur in them most accords with this description, and is to be understood as fulfilling it. But as hitherto we have been obliged, by reverence for the Apostle’s words, and for the harmony of the Scriptures, to suppose that he is speaking of events which were to take place in his own day, I must waive all such questions, and only try to ascertain from this passage itself, what kind of manifestation it is which is spoken of. Then perhaps we shall be better judges of any historical facts which answered to the words at that time; and we may be able hereafter to deal fairly not with one, but with all, the different alleged fulfilments of them in subsequent times.
There can be no doubt then, I think,—indeed very few have doubted,—that we have here the description of the appearing of an Antichrist, in anticipation of that appearance of the Christ, whereof St. Paul has been speaking so much. Whatever is opposed to the lowliness of the Son of Man, to the character of the King who came meek and sitting upon an ass, to His acts who ministered to others instead of being ministered to himself, to Him who gave Himself for the world, is gathered up and concentrated in these sentences. The man of sin is opposed to the Lord our Righteousness; the son of perdition to the Saviour; he who sets himself up above every thing that is called God, to Him who humbled Himself and became of no reputation; he who sits in the temple of God, showing himself as God, to Him who said, “Father, not my will but Thine be done.” It is also clear, I think, that a power is described to us which claims dominion both over the Gentile and the Jewish world, exalting itself above every form of worship in the first, proclaiming its superiority to the one Jehovah of the other. The word apostasy, as I have already intimated, would appear to import a reverence paid to this power not by Jews and heathens only, but by the professed disciples of Jesus. Now as the Divus Imperator was always striving to set himself above all that is called God, to claim all the gods and worships of the empire as his tributaries, as there was much that resisted this tendency in the old laws and faith of the Roman state, as the temple of Jerusalem was the one great abiding witness against it, as every holy man who upheld the true worship of that temple was in his own person a check upon this last consummation of human or rather of brute worship, I conceive that the whole period from the reign of Augustus downward was an approximation to the accomplishment of this antichristian idea, but that it never was embodied even in the person of Nero. It is no new theory of mine, but one which biblical scholars have oftentimes suggested, that Vitellius exhibits all the characteristics which are here presented to us. It will be a fitter opportunity to consider that opinion when we examine the Apocalypse. I do not ask any one to accept it, or even pledge myself to it. I feel the doubtfulness even of the best of such identifications, in proportion as I feel the truth and certainty of the Apostle’s assertion, that such a power did exist, that it had not yet reached its fullest, worst, development.
He asks the Thessalonians whether they do not remember that he told them these things when he was yet with them. The special opposition which they encountered from the Jews made such teaching, as I hinted before, more needful for them than for others. He could not tell them that Jesus was the Christ or that He would be manifested as the Christ, without telling them what a different and contrary idea of a Christ there was in the world, and how the world in all its different sections would at last find some representative of that idea. He says that they knew also what the restraining influence was, which prevented this mystery of iniquity from coming at once and fully into light. Afterwards he seems to speak of this restraining influence as being in a person, “He that lets will let till he be taken out of the way.” Considering that the Apostle must have looked for the great divine centre of resistance to the antichristian principle in Jerusalem, considering that he must have felt that the Pharisees and Sadducees of that city were more possessed and penetrated by it than any worshipper of Jupiter, it seems not an unreasonable supposition, which many have entertained, that he supposed the restraining power to lie in the church at Jerusalem, and most especially in the Apostle James. The effects of his “being taken out of the way” upon the city itself, all the parties in which reverenced his righteousness,—and still more upon the Church itself,—would answer very strikingly to the words of the brother-apostle who is so often represented as his rival. When that great impediment was removed, it would seem as if the mystery of iniquity, which had been so long at work did come forth most mightily where it might least have been looked for, and as if nothing but the destruction of the city and the temple (so nearly contemporaneous with the destruction of the Capitol, with the downfall of Vitellius, and the commencement, if not the establishment, of a better era) could have prevented the hideous and godless tyranny,—sustained as it was by all signs and lying wonders, by all deceivableness of unrighteousness, by the tricks of the diviner and enchanter,—from permanently establishing itself over the world. The overthrow of such a power would have seemed to the prophets of the old world a day of the Lord indeed, immeasurably more wonderful, more pregnant, more a pledge of future blessings, than the downfall of Sennacherib or Belshazzar. But when it was connected with the incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of the Son of Man, it could be looked upon as nothing else than His appearance to claim the kingdom which He had proved to be His Father’s and which the power of evil was seeking to wrest from Him.
On this firm ground, the Apostle can raise thanksgivings to God and arguments to his converts as earnest as those in the first letter. His thanksgiving is that God has chosen them as a first-fruit unto salvation by sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. His prayer is that God would comfort their hearts and strengthen them in every good word and work. His entreaty, which might be a command, is, that they would keep the rules he has given them, and that they would separate themselves from every brother who walked disorderly. He explains his words, by bringing out more distinctly the charge which he had hinted at before, that there were some who were not workers, but overworkers, or as we say, busybodies. “If a man will not work, neither let him eat,” is the Apostle’s rule, which he had first illustrated by his example. He will have no trifling or equivocation in this matter, no fine dainty saints who are so busy with their spirits that they have not time to fulfil their proper manual callings, no waiters for the Lord who will not do what the Lord commands them. There must be discipline, he says, especially with such persons; only they must not be treated as enemies, but warned as brothers. And then he beseeches the Lord of peace to give them peace always in every place, and he prays that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ might be with them all.