Thank you for listening to the First Day podcast. Please visit the website www.firstday.us to listen to current and past episodes and to subscribe and link to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you are enjoying these series, please share them with others. If you have any questions, please drop me an email at connect@firstday.us.

Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians was written just months after his first, sometime around 51 CE. The issues it addresses are very much the same ones that 1 Thessalonians are concerned with: in particular, remaining faithful until the end. The church there remains in Christ and continues to face its troubles faithfully; Paul, like last time, is concerned with their remaining so. However, 2 Thessalonians is not an exact repetition or mere extension of what came before it.

Paul’s first letter to the church is best seen as a letter of general encouragement to a group of new, Gentile Christians to help them remain faithful amid a cultural, religious, and societal landscape that could very easily tempt them away from Christ. Added to this is the fact that their bit of the world had been facing food shortages for some time; it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that there would be an urge to just go back to the way they were present in the Thessalonian church. What is familiar and common can be very tempting.

They are surrounded by well-established religious cults, money, and all the signs of imperial power. And since Thessalonica had a strong history of loyalty to the emperor, this would have likely been their home to run to when things got bad. Paul in 1 Thessalonians, then, is akin to a coach preparing and encouraging his team of underdogs as it faces off against a much stronger opponent; talking up the nerd who has to ask the homecoming queen to prom. He encourages them and builds them up before instructing them on how to remain faithful and overcome.

In his first letter to them, the only specific problem that the Thessalonians are facing that we catch a glimpse of involves questions about the disposition of God’s blessing of eternal life for those who have died before Christ’s return. Will those who have died before the Judgement—the end-times—receive eternal life, or is this gift only for the living? And it is on this subject, the end-times, that 2 Thessalonians focuses; specifically, that it appears that someone was deliberately misleading them that the end-times had already occurred. In fact, according to 2 Thessalonians 2:2, they were trying to pass-off these teachings as Paul’s! (But more on that when we get there.)

“Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is only fitting, because your faith is increasing abundantly, and the love of each and every one of you toward one another grows ever greater. 4 As a result, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure.”

How similar this opening is to that found in 1 Thessalonians:

“Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. 2 We always give thanks to God for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 constantly keeping in mind your work of faith and labor of love and perseverance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father…”

Paul offers the Thessalonians grace and peace and tells them that he is thankful for the example of their faithfulness and love. Like in his former letter, Paul here in 2 Thessalonians tells them how proud he is of them for their example. He is going to rinse and repeat until it finally sinks in.

Paul continues:

“5 This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you indeed are suffering. 6 For after all it is only right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us, when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.”

Paul is once again echoing James who said that it is a blessing to face trials because to endure them is to strengthen faith. The Thessalonians’ perseverance and faith in their trials indicate that they are “worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which [they] are suffering.” They could run back to the emperor or to Artemis or Apollo, but they don’t.

Nevertheless, the pressure of these trials will undoubtedly increase to a point when bearing it will be next to impossible. Who among us hasn’t thought, “Why does this keep happening? When will it end? It seems that Paul thinks that the Thessalonians are at this point.

“For after all it is only right for God…to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us, WHEN the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.”

Don’t give up. God will see you through. Paul can’t say when precisely this relief will come, but only that it will. Is it worth it? Well, each of us must decide for ourselves if the juice is worth the squeeze.

You’ll notice that I omitted part of verse six a second ago when I quoted 6 and 7 about the promise of God’s relief in the second coming. “6 For after all it is only right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you…”

God promises relief for His faithful—for those who persevere—but He also promises to do unto those that which they have done unto you. Sadly, it seems like the human condition hasn’t changed much in 2000 years. Paul says that it is not our place to pay our afflicters back for the troubles that they have caused us. Paul, like James, surely would have in his possession a collection of Jesus’ teachings and sayings. He would know that Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies and to do good to them.

How strange that even today, nearly two millennia later, many of us just can’t do a Frozen and let it go—can’t let go of the hurts, hangups, and hates. We simply refuse to be happy until they get their comeuppance.

“…when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God, and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”

“…to those who do not know God, and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” This is key. The church is facing pressure from those who do not know God and who do not desire to live like Jesus. This isn’t God is about to bring down fire on a specific person—Ms. Smith or your estranged friend or some politician. Nor is this God laying the flames down on any specific group of sinners. Paul here is speaking about those outside of the faith who directly afflicting the Thessalonians. This is personal.

Though this will be denied some, in my experience there seems to be a bit of glee attached to thoughts about the Last Day among our more self-righteous sisters and brothers. Their longing for divine comeuppance is directed at those whose actions have had zero, real impact on their daily lives in the faith. It’s like Jonah at the beginning of chapter four. (This is from the RSV.)

“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city.”

The Nineveh has had no direct impact on Jonah’s life, yet he wants nothing more than to watch the city burn. Yes, Paul states a generality about “those who do not know God, and…those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus,” but these groups’ actions target the Thessalonians directly! In fact, this Jonahistic attitude is quite a dangerous one to have.

Isaiah 5:18,19 read, “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes, who say: ‘Let him make haste, let him speed his work that we may see it; let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!’”

Amos puts this even more bluntly in Amos 5:18-20: “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! Why would you have the day of the LORD? It is darkness, and not light; as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

Isaiah and Amos directly address here the longing that so many of God’s faithful have for God to destroy “them”—whoever their “them” may be. I think Paul would be the first to tell us that instead of sitting still and waiting for Nineveh’s ultimate failure and destruction it would probably be a better use of our time to be working out our faith with fear and trembling—but more on this later.

“9 These people will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, 10 when He comes to be glorified among His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—because our testimony to you was believed.”

Although the Thessalonians would not have been familiar with Isaiah’s prophecies, Paul certainly would have. He would have known that there would come a time when all accounts would be settled, so to speak: The Day of the Lord will occur. On this day, those who have maintained their faith, he tells them in 1 Thessalonians 4, will finally be relieved of their burdens, and they will be with God in Christ forever. At the same time, those who have actively persecuted the Thessalonians—those who are the source of the church’s trials—those who “do not obey the gospel of Jesus Christ” will also have a extraordinary experience. Theirs, however, will not be one of joy but, rather, great sorrow.

Isaiah chapter two refers to this time. Those who have been faithful to the teachings and life of Christ will live on in the presence of God, while those who have not…

Isaiah 2:10-12 read: “Enter the rocky place and hide in the dust / From the terror of the LORD and from the splendor of His majesty. The proud look of humanity will be brought low, / And the arrogance of people will be humbled; / And the LORD alone will be exalted on that day. / For the LORD of armies will have a day of reckoning/ Against everyone who is arrogant and haughty, / And against everyone who is lifted up,
That he may be brought low.”

And verses 19-22 repeat this same thought.

“People will go into caves of the rocks / And into holes in the ground / Away from the terror of the LORD / And the splendor of His majesty, / When He arises to terrify the earth.
On that day people will throw away to the moles and the bats / Their idols of silver and their idols of gold, / Which they made for themselves to worship, / In order to go into the clefts of the rocks and the crannies of the cliffs / Before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty, / When He arises to terrify the earth. / Take no account of man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; / For why should he be esteemed?”

God’s glory will accompany Christ on that Day, and His presence will bring joy to His faithful but destruction to those who bring strife to God’s people; to them, “the splendor of His majesty” will be a terror. Those who have not obeyed the gospel of Christ will realize on that day that their idols are worthless, and they will cast them away to the worthless things to try to hide from God’s presence. Because of this, Isaiah tells the faithful to “Take no account of man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils”.

Those who persecute the Thessalonians are nothing to fear, since, on that Day, the same presence and glory of God that brings the faithful eternal life will bring the tormentors’ lives to nothing. The lives of the faithful will live on to eternity in Christ, but theirs will go on to Shaol. This is true because the Thessalonians believed the gospel that Paul preached.

11 To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will consider you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, in accordance with the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul tells the church that he prays for it so that it would continue to live a life “worthy of [their] calling” to be followers and brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus, and that God “fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power.” Essentially, Paul prays that God sees the church as an instrument of His divine presence and a source for good and good works. He prays that God brings these into existence through the Thessalonians so that Jesus to be made known through them. When Paul writes in verse 12, “and you in Him, in accordance with the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ,” he is praying that this desire of goodness and the work of faith with power not only declares to the world who Christ I but that they help the Thessalonians realize who they have become in Christ as well.

A brief look at the phrase “the penalty of eternal destruction,” found in verse nine, is warranted. Paul uses a form of the Greek word olethros, meaning “annihilation or death”, here, paired with the Greek aionion, “eternal”. Has Paul, in only his third letter, established the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell? To answer this, let’s take a deeper dive.

Verse 9 can be directly translated:

“who [the]penalty will suffer of destruction eternal away from presence of the Lord and from the glory of the power of Him.”

hoitines diken tisousin olethron aionion apo prosopou tou Kyriou kai apo tes doxes tes ischyos autou.

Olethros is the personification of havoc. It translates roughly to annihilation, death, or destruction, but is often seen with a positive connotation as what must happen before renewal. It is used only 4 times in Paul’s writing: here in 2 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:3; 1 Timothy 6:9; all as a state of destruction; and 1 Corinthians 5:5 as an act of destruction.

By pairing this with the world eternal, Paul is indicating that on the Day of Judgement—the day of the Lord’s return—those who have persecuted the Thessalonians—as well as those who “have not obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ”, will be destroyed and not renewed.

In its interpretation of olethros—number 3639—Strong’s interprets it as “properly, ruination with its full, destructive results…however, does not imply ‘extinction’ (annihilation). Rather it emphasizes the consequent loss that goes with the complete ‘undoing’.” Strong’s emphasis here on ruination and loss and not annihilation indicates a bias and does a disservice to Paul’s readers: Strong’s here implies that Paul is speaking about eternal punishment when he is clearly not. If this were the apostle’s meaning, he would have used the word tartarus or hades, but he doesn’t.

Jeremiah 31:28 communicates the traditional understanding of olethros: “’And just as I have watched over them to uproot them, tear them down, ruin and destroy, and bring disaster on them, so I will watch over them to build and to plant them,’ declares the LORD.”

As noted above, the Greek Thessalonians would be familiar with process of destruction leading to renewal, however, Paul wants the Thessalonians to know that in the case of those who persecute the Church and those who do not obey Jesus, there will be no renewal, only their annihilation. This is why he adds the aionon, eternal.

On that day, Paul tells the Church, you will be with Christ and find salvation and eternal life—he has already discussed this in his letter to the Galatian Gentiles—and those who have ignored Christ’s gospel will be no more.