The Word Made Fresh
1Now, about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being joined to him we beg you, friends, 2don’t be shaken and don’t let your spirits be alarmed by word or by letter that supposedly comes from us, claiming that the day of the Lord has already come. 3Don’t be deceived. That day won’t come until after the lawless one, the one doomed to destruction, is revealed. 4He opposes every so-called god or idol, trying to establish himself in God’s temple, and claiming to be God himself. 5I told you this when I was with you; don’t you remember? 6You know what is holding him back for now – it is so that he can make a big entrance when his time comes. 7Yes, the mysterious power of lawlessness is already working, but only until the removal of the one who is holding it back for now. 8Then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord will blow him away when his arrival is made known. 9The appearance of the lawless one is obviously a work of Satan, using all his power to give signs, fake displays of strength, powerful lies, 10and every other form of wicked deceit against those who are dying because they refused the truth and could not be saved. 11That is why God sent a powerful delusion to them so they would believe the lies, 12and so all those who have not believed the truth but have taken pleasure in sinful behavior will be condemned.
13But we always thank God for you, our friends whom the Lord loves, because God chose you to be among the first to be sanctified by the Spirit through your faith in the truth. 14This is why God called you through our preaching of the good news; so that you might share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15So, stand firm. Hold on to the things we taught you – both by what we have told you and by our letter.
16And may our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who loved us and gave us the grace of lasting spiritual comfort and good hope, 17be a comfort to your hearts, and may you be strengthened through every good word and deed.
Commentary
1-2: It is clear that the congregation in Thessalonica is very anxious about the coming of Christ. In 1 Thessalonians the issue was their concern about those who die before the Lord returns. In this letter the issue is that they have been told by someone that Christ has already returned, and apparently it is someone who has claimed that the idea came from Paul, Silas, and Timothy, which claim Paul obviously wishes to deny in the strongest terms.
3-12: How does he know Christ hasn’t returned? He gives his reasons here. First, he says there will be the unveiling of “the lawless one.” Unfortunately, these verses are badly garbled in the Greek and there is little agreement among translators as to the exact meaning. The gist of it, however, seems clear enough. It is likely that the imagery employed here was familiar enough to Paul’s readers: There was a firm and widespread belief among Jews and Gentiles alike that there was a force of evil at work in the world in opposition to that which is good. Jews, of course, identified the impulse for good with the God of Abraham who created the world, and the impulse for evil with the devil, whose name, as we know from other ancient literature, was Beliar or Belial (see 2 Corinthians 6:15, where Paul contrasts God and Beliar as opposites). The common belief that had arisen among Jewish Christians was that, just as Jesus was God in the flesh, so there would arise one who would be the devil in the flesh. This one (in later writings called the antichrist) would gather around himself those who rejected Christ, and set himself up as God. Verse 4 probably conjured up in his readers’ minds stories of foreign despots of the past who had set up statues and emblems of other gods or of themselves in the temple in Jerusalem. First, however, the power that restrains him will have to be removed. The identity of that power is not revealed. One interesting guess is that he is referring to Rome. Paul, himself a Roman citizen, had been rescued on more than one occasion by Roman authorities.
It is important to understand here, I think, that Paul is setting up an opposition not only between God and Satan, but also between the church and those who side with the “lawless one.”
Christ will finally annihilate the “lawless one” and will “blow him away” with the breath of his mouth, an image which he possibly takes from Job 4:9 (see also Exodus 15:8, 2 Samuel 22:16 and Psalm 18:15).
13-15: Paul entreats them to ignore such wayward teachings and hold to what he taught them while he was with them, and what he had written in his letter, probably a reference to 1 Thessalonians.
16-17: These verses read like a closing benediction, and some have imagined the rest of the letter to have been added later. However, it might also be seen as a transition from one topic to another. Paul is simply telling them to hold on to the hope that they have in Christ. And now he will move on to another topic.
Takeaway
Yes, there is evil in the world. No, evil will not win. But each of us has the responsibility of deciding which power, good or evil, will guide our decisions.