CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
2 Thessalonians 2:13. We are bound to give thanks.—The same form of expression as in 2 Thessalonians 1:3, save that here “we” is expressed separately and emphatically.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14
Salvation a Divine Act.
When the air is thick with antichristian theories, sincere inquirers after truth are perplexed, the grasp of the hesitating is loosened, and the fidelity of the strongest severely tested. Only those who fully yield themselves up to the teaching and guidance of the divine Spirit are safe. A clever inventor has recently constructed a fireproof dress, which enables him to walk about unharmed in the midst of the fiercest fire. Experimental godliness is a fireproof dress, and the soul clothed with this is safely guarded from the fiery darts of the wicked, and will pass unscathed through the fiercest fires of temptation. We never know what it is to be really saved till we personally experience the sanctifying power of the truth. These verses teach that salvation is a divine act.
I. Salvation is an act of the divine will.—
1. The divine will is actuated by divine love. “Brethren beloved of the Lord, God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). When we examine the sources of salvation, we find them not in ourselves, but in some power outside of ourselves. We are saved, not because we are good, or better than others, or more favourably circumstanced, but because God has chosen us. And if we ask still further how it is that God should lavish the grace of His salvation on sinful man, we are reduced, in the final analysis, to this answer: Such is the divine will—a will swayed in all its mighty potentialities by infinite love.
“Love, strong as death; nay, stronger—
Love mightier than the grave;
Broad as the earth, and longer
Than ocean’s widest wave.
This is the love that sought us,
This is the love that bought us,
This is the love that brought us,
To gladdest day from saddest night,
From deepest shame to glory bright,
From depths of death to life’s fair height,
From darkness to the joy of light.”
Bonar.
2. The divine will provides the means of salvation.—“Whereunto He called you by our gospel” (2 Thessalonians 2:14). The gospel is God’s method of salvation, and it is through this gospel He “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:4). If the gospel were but a human expedient, it would fail; but, as it was originated and devised in the divine mind, so it is backed and made forceful by the operation of the divine will.
II. Salvation as a divine act is in harmony with individual freedom.—
1. Salvation implies personal holiness. “Through sanctification of the Spirit” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). The Spirit sanctifies the individual soul, and the soul, in the exercise of its voluntary power, co-operates with the Spirit. The soul feels the need of being sanctified, is willing to be sanctified, earnestly desires to be sanctified, and gives free, unrestricted scope to the Spirit in His sanctifying work.
2. Salvation implies personal faith.—“And belief of the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). This clause brings out distinctly that the sanctification of the Spirit is not wrought on a passive and unresponsive agent. Faith is the gift of God, but it is the act of man. It is a self-giving; the surrender of his own freedom to secure the larger freedom that salvation confers on the soul that trusts. Without God’s gift there would be no faith, and without man’s exercise of that gift there is no salvation. It is not faith that saves, but the Christ received by faith. Erskine puts it thus: “As it is not the laying on the plaster that heals the sore, but the plaster itself that is laid on, so it is not the faith, or receiving of Christ, but Christ received by faith that saves us. It is not our looking to the brazen serpent mystical, but the mystical brazen serpent looked unto by faith—Christ received by faith—that saves us.”
III. Salvation as a divine act aims at securing for the soul the highest blessedness.—“To the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 2:14). The saved soul aspires after glory, but it is glory of the loftiest type. It is not the changeful glory of worldly magnificence. It is not the glory of Paul, or of the greatest human genius. It is “the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When the soul catches a glimpse of the splendour of this divine blessedness, it can be satisfied with no lower aims. “Paint and canvas,” said Guthrie, “cannot give the hues of a rainbow or of the beams of the sun. No more can words describe the Saviour’s glory. Nay, what is the most glowing and ecstatic view that the highest faith of a soul, hovering on the borders of another world, ever obtained of Christ, compared with the reality? It is like the sun changed by a frosty fog-bank into a dull, red copper ball—shorn of the splendour that no mortal eyes can look upon.” As it is Christ’s glory that we seek, so it is Christ’s glory we shall share.
IV. Salvation as a divine act affords matter for unceasing gratitude.—“But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). The mercy of God in our salvation is ever providing fruitful themes for gratitude on earth: the glory of Christ as revealed in heaven will be the song of everlasting thankfulness and praise. Every added trophy of saving power augments the gratitude and joy of the faithful.
Lessons.—
1. The rejection of the truth is the rejection of salvation.
2. Salvation brings the highest good to man and the greatest glory to God.
3. Salvation will be the exhaustless theme of the heavenly song.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Thessalonians 2:13. The Holy Ghost the Sanctifier.
I. Connect the divine purpose and agency, that the nature and effect of the latter may be more apparent.—To collect a people out of the wreck of human life has been God’s purpose from the first. To sanctify them is to separate them to God in fact and in effect. The Holy Ghost is given by Christ to sever the once dead in sins from the dead around them.
II. The scope of this agency.—God’s work is perfect. It has its stages; but the Holy Ghost conducts it from first to last. Sanctification is progressive. The end of sanctification is salvation.
III. The ordinary means through which the Holy Ghost operates.—Through belief of the truth, the gospel. The Spirit sanctifies through the truth.—H. T. Lumsden.
2 Thessalonians 2:14. The Glory of Sainthood—
I. Is the object of the gospel to promote.—“Whereunto He hath called you by our gospel.”
II. Is a conscious personal possession.—“To the obtaining of the glory.”
III. Is a sharing of the glory of Christ.—“Of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What Saints should be.—In the cathedral of St. Mark, Venice, a marvellous building lustrous with an Oriental splendour beyond description, there are pillars said to have been brought from Solomon’s temple; these are of alabaster, a substance firm and endurable as granite, and yet transparent, so that the light glows through them. Behold an emblem of what all true pillars of the Church should be—firm in their faith and transparent in their character; men of simple mould, ignorant of tortuous and deceptive ways, and yet men of strong will, not readily to be led aside or bent from their uprightness.—Spurgeon.