Last week, we heard warnings about Satan and his continuing desire to draw people away from Jesus and the truth about Him as our Savior. Satan often uses people who are forces for evil, sometimes called “antichrists” or “antichrist” or in 2 Thessalonians, “the man of lawlessness” or just “lawlessness.”
In spite of all this, Paul went on to give strong encouragement to the believers in Thessalonica, in 2 Thess. 2:13-15. He said for the third time in these two short letters, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you.” (See also 1 Thess. 1:2 and 2 Thess. 1:3.) God is and must be thanked because of all that He has been doing for these believers, to bring them to faith and to keep them in that faith in Him.
Paul piled up the words, describing the blessings God had given them to help them deal with the challenges they faced. God “dearly loved” them. God “chose” them, as some of the first people (“firstfruits” of God’s work) to be “saved” (rescued by God). God had “sanctified” them through the Holy Spirit. They were forgiven and counted as holy people, acceptable to God, “by the Spirit,” as they were also brought to “belief in the truth” of Jesus and His perfect life and saving work, credited to them. To this belief, centered in the “Lord Jesus Christ,” God Himself “called” them, “through the Gospel” that Paul and Silvanus and Timothy preached. Through trust in this Good News, the believers in Thessalonica would one day be able to be with Christ in “glory” in eternal life. (Notice that everything that Paul mentioned in v. 13-14 was Christ's work and doing for them. None of it was earned or deserved by any of them. It was all the gift of God.)
In verse 15, Paul called upon the believers in Thessalonica to “stand firm” in their faith and to “hold to what they were taught” by the “words spoken” or the “letters written” by Paul and the others. Paul used here the word “traditions” which simply means the “teachings handed down” by God to the prophets and apostles, including Paul, and then handed down by them to others.
In this passage Paul was clearly talking about the Word of God itself that Paul shared with others. Remember what He had said in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 - that what he spoke and wrote was “really the true Word of God” and not “the word of men.” (See 1 Corinthians 11:2,23 and 15:3 and Hebrews 2:3, where “things handed down” were also the Word of God. In fact, all of the Scriptures are “God-breathed” and come from God and are delivered to us through these prophets and apostles. See 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and John 8:31-32 and 17:14-17, for example.)
At the same time, the Scriptures also warn about “traditions” handed on from generation to generation that are simply "words of men” and did not come from God and even contradict what God says in the Scriptures He gave us. (See the discussion of Jesus with the Jewish religious authorities in Mark 7:1-12.) Frankly, many of the differences among various religious denominations and groups come from people adding traditions, “words of men," to the Word of God, or from people using “words of men” to reject Scriptures they do not like, and then insisting that others must do what they do to have the real “truth.”
Scripture does not “contain” the Word, and then we have to figure out what is “true” and what is not. Scripture is entirely the Word of God; and conservative Lutherans say it is ”the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged.” (See Psalm 119:105 and Galatians 1:8, for example.) “Other writings of ancient and modern teachers, whatever their names, should not be put on a par with Holy Scriptures. Every single one of them should be subordinated to the Scriptures.” This includes Martin Luther or Popes or Church Councils or any particular pastors, including the one who is writing this today. You should always compare what is said with what the Scriptures say.
One last thought: most churches do have certain human “traditions” that they follow. That is OK, as long as these traditions do not contradict Scripture and as long as we do not make these traditions into new “Laws” that everyone must follow or they are doing wrong, as if these human ideas were clearly taught and commanded in Scripture.
As he sometimes did, Paul then stopped and offered a prayer at this point in his letter, 2 Thess.2:16-17, that God the Father and God the Son (together with God the Holy Spirit) would bring “comfort to the hearts” of the believers in Thessalonica and “establish” them in doing all sorts of “good works” and in speaking “good words.” Again, Paul prays that these believers would be enabled to use good words and do good works in order to thank God for His good gifts and honor Him and be useful people and help others in this life. They are not to do good works thinking they will earn God’s favor and be able to attain salvation, as a result. Earlier in this prayer Paul had affirmed that God already “loved” all believers and had given them (and us) “good hope” for their future and even “eternal comfort” for their future after this life “through His grace.” All this is through His good news and mercy and favor toward us, given as a gift. It does not need to be earned.
As 2 Thess. 3 begins, Paul asked the Thessalonian believers to pray for him and his fellow workers, too. First, he needed their prayers “that the Word of the Lord would speed ahead (literally, “run”) and be honored by more people as they heard that Word. (v.1) Paul knew that the Word had power and was “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12), because the Holy Spirit was at work, whenever that Word was used.
Paul had seen the power of the Word in the short time he had to speak it to the people at Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:4-7). “It happened among you,” he reminded them. Paul also needed prayer because of continuing trouble “from wicked and evil men” who opposed him sharing it with others because they did not “have faith.” He need to be “delivered” from such people. Also, the evident fact that “not all have faith” was a clear indication that many more people needed to hear the Good News of Christ. But, Paul said, “the Lord is faithful” (2 Thess. 3:2-3).
The Lord would be faithful in helping Paul and Silvanus and Timothy in their work; and He would be faithful to the Thessalonian believers in their struggles, too. The Lord “will establish you and guard you against evil and the evil one.” Paul had confidence that this would happen because he had confidence in the Lord and His promises. Paul was confident that the Lord would also lead the believers to keep on doing the things Paul commanded them to do. (We will hear more about this and what he wants to have happen, next week, as Paul closed this letter (2 Thess. 3:3-4).
All this will happen, Paul said, as “the Lord kept directing their hearts to the love of God and the steadfastness (the patient endurance) of Christ in His dealings with them and others (2 Thess. 3:5). (May our own study of the Word help us to see more clearly God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness toward us, too. He is also faithful to us. And may we, too, pray that the Word of God will reach more and more people these days, as well. For certainly, it is still very true that “not all have faith.”
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