CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
2 Thessalonians 3:5. Direct your hearts.—The same word for “direct” again occurs only in 1 Thessalonians 3:11 and Luke 1:79. A similar phrase in the LXX. of 1 Chronicles 29:18 (R.V. “prepare”). Into the patient waiting for Christ.—A.V. margin and R.V. text, “into the patience of Christ.” “The Thessalonians were eagerly awaiting His return: let them wait for it in His patient spirit” (Findlay).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF 2 Thessalonians 3:5
Divine Love and Patience.
Again the apostle is on his knees. How beautifully the habitual devoutness of the apostle’s spirit comes out in the side-lights thrown from passages in his writings like this verse! He lives and breathes in the electric atmosphere of prayer. All the time he is reasoning, expounding, warning, and persuading he is also praying. Prayer is a powerful aid to the preacher. It keeps his soul in sympathy with the realm of spiritual realities, gives him clearer insight into truth, and intensifies his experience of the divine. We learn from this verse:—
I. That divine love and patience are conspicuous elements in man’s redemption.—“The love of God and the patient waiting for Christ”—the patience of Christ (R.V.). The love of God devised and the patience of Christ carried out the great plan of human salvation. The gospel is a grand revelation of the divine love and patience in Christ Jesus; and the history of the gospel in its world-wide progress is a many-sided illustration of these two conspicuous virtues in the divine character and operations. After the last French war the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Paris was imprisoned. His cell had a window shaped like a cross, and with a pencil he wrote upon the arms of the cross that they denoted the height, length, breadth, and depth of God’s love. That man knew something of the love of God. The patience of Christ in suffering for mankind was sustained and sublimated by the love of God, and was an object-lesson to the world, teaching, in a way that appealed to the most callous, the power and universality of that love.
II. That divine love and patience are the distinguished privilege of human experience.—“Direct your hearts into the love of God and patience of Christ.” The love we are to enjoy is no mere human passion, fickle and evanescent; the patience, no mere grim stoical endurance. We are admitted into the sacred adoption of the divine mysteries; we share in their spiritual ecstasy and unruffled calm, the very love and patience of God! The divine in us becomes more growingly evident to ourselves and to others. Love gives staying-power to and teaches us how to suffer without murmuring, to endure without retaliating. “Sire,” said Beza in his reply to the king of Navarre, “it belongs to God’s Church rather to suffer blows than to strike them; but let it be your pleasure to remember that the Church is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer.” With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes satin.
III. That divine love and patience are more fully enjoyed by the soul that prays.—“And the Lord direct your hearts.” The prayerful apostle had realised the blessedness of a personal participation in the love and patience of God. But for the love of God he would never have ventured upon his evangelistic mission, and but for the patience of Christ he would not have continued in it. Now he prays that the hearts of the Thessalonians may enjoy the same grace, or be set in the direct way of attaining it. It is of vital consequence that the current of the heart’s outgoings should be set in the right direction. This brief petition shows what we ought to ask for ourselves. The best way to secure a larger degree of love and patience is to ardently pray for them.
“What grace, O Lord, and beauty shone
Around Thy steps below!
What patient love was seen in all
Thy life and death of woe!
“Oh! give us hearts to love like Thee—
Like Thee, O Lord, to grieve
Far more for others’ sins, than all
The wrongs that we receive.”
Lessons.—
1. The Christian life is a sublime participation in the nature of God.
2. Love and patience reveal the God-like character.
3. Prayer is at its best when engaged with the loftiest themes.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSE
2 Thessalonians 3:5. Waiting for the Second Advent.
I. The love of God a preparation for the Redeemer’s coming.—
1. The love of God is the love of goodness.
2. The love of God is the love of man expanded and purified. The love of man expanded into the love of Him, of whom all that we have seen of gentle and lovely, of true and tender, of honourable and bright in human character, are but the shadows and the broken, imperfect lights.
II. Patient waiting another preparation for the Redeemer’s coming.—
1. The Christian attitude of soul is an attitude of expectation.—Every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by hope’s perfect breath.
2. It is patient waiting.—Every one who has ardently longed for any spiritual blessing knows the temptation to impatience in expecting it.—F. W. Robertson.