_SUFFERING AND GLORY._
"A manifest token of the righteous judgment of God; to the end that
ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also
suffer: if so be that it is a righteous thing with God to recompense
affliction to them that afflict you, and to you that are afflicted
rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with
the angels of His power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them
that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus: who shall suffer punishment, _even_ eternal destruction
from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He
shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marvelled at in
all them that believed (because our testimony unto you was
believed[23]) in that day. To which end we also pray always for you,
that our God may count _you_ worthy of your calling, and fulfil
every desire of goodness, and (every) work of faith, with power; that
the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and ye in Him,
according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."--2 THESS.
i. 5-12 (R.V.).
In the preceding verses of this chapter, as in the opening of the
First Epistle, the Apostle has spoken of the afflictions of the
Thessalonians, and of the Christian graces which they have developed
under them. To suffer for Christ's sake, he says, and at the same time
to abound in faith and love and spiritual joy, is to have the mark of
God's election on us. It is an experience so truly and characteristically
Christian that the Apostle cannot think of it without gratitude and
pride. He gives thanks to God on every remembrance of his converts. He
boasts of their progress in all the churches of Achaia.
In the verses before us, another inference is drawn from the
afflictions of the Thessalonians, and their gospel patience under
them. The whole situation is a proof, or manifest token, of the
righteous judgment of God. It has this in view, that the Thessalonians
may be deemed worthy of the (heavenly) kingdom of God, on behalf of
which they suffer. Here, we see, the Apostle sanctions with his
authority the argument from the injustices of this life to the coming
of another life in which they will be rectified. God is just, he says;
and therefore this state of affairs, in which bad men oppress the
innocent, cannot last for ever. It calls aloud for judgment; it
proclaims its approach; it is a prognostic, a manifest token of it.
The suffering which is here in view cannot be an end in itself. Even
the graces which come to perfection in maintaining themselves against
it, do not explain the whole meaning of affliction; it would remain a
blot upon God's justice if it were not counterbalanced by the joys of
His kingdom. "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and
persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My
sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in
heaven." This is the gracious side of the judgment. The suffering
which is borne with joy and brave patience for Christ's sake proves
how dear Christ is to the sufferer; and this love, tried with fire, is
requited in due time with an answer in love that makes him forget it
all.
This is one of the doctrines of Scripture that untroubled times find
it easy to dispense with. There is even an affectation of superiority
to what is called the moral vulgarity of being good for the sake of
something beyond goodness. It is idle to enter on any abstract
discussion of such a question. We are called by the gospel to a new
life under certain definite conditions, one of them being the
condition of suffering for its sake. The more thoroughly that
condition is accepted, the less disposition will there be to criticise
the future blessedness which is its counterpoise and compensation. It
is not the confessors and martyrs of the Christian faith--the men who
die daily, like Paul, and share in the tribulations and patience of
Jesus Christ, like John--who become weary of the glory which is to be
revealed. And it is such only who are in a position to judge of the
value of this hope. If it is dear to them, an inspiration and an
encouragement, as it certainly is, it is surely worse than vain for
those who are living an easier and a lower life to criticise it on
abstract grounds. If we have no need of it, if we can dispense with
any sight or grasp of a joy beyond the grave, let us take care that it
is not owing to the absence from our life of that present suffering
for Christ's sake, without which we cannot be His. "The connection,"
Bishop Ellicott says, "between holy suffering and future blessedness
is mystically close and indissoluble"; we _must_ through great
tribulations enter into the kingdom of God; and all experience proves
that, when such tribulation comes and is accepted, the recompense of
reward here spoken of, and the Scriptures which give prominence to
it, rise to the highest credit in the mind of the Church. It is not a
token of our enlightenment and moral superiority, if we undervalue
them; it is an indication that we are not drinking of the Lord's cup,
or being baptized with His baptism.
But the reward is only one side of the righteous judgment foretold by
the suffering of the innocent. It includes punishment as well. "It is
a righteous thing with God to recompense affliction to them that
afflict you." We see here the very simplest conception of God's
justice. It is a law of retribution, of vindication; it is the
reaction, in this particular case, of man's sin against himself. The
reaction is inevitable: if it does not come here, it comes in another
world; if not now, in another life. The hope of the sinner is always
that in some way or other this reaction may never take place, or that,
when it does take place, it may be evaded; but that hope is doomed to
perish. "If it were done when 'tis done," he says as he contemplates
his sin in prospect; but it never _is_ so done; it is exactly
half done when he is finished with it; and the other half is taken in
hand by God. Punishment is the other half of sin; as inseparable from
it as heat from fire, as the inside of a vessel from the outside. "It
is a righteous thing with God to recompense affliction to them that
afflict you." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
One of the favourite pastimes of some modern historians is the
whitewashing of persecutors. A dispassionate interest in the facts
shows, we are told, in many cases, that the persecutors were not so
black as they have been painted, and that the martyrs and confessors
were no better than they should have been. Where fault is found at
all, it is laid rather at the door of systems than of individuals;
judgment is passed on institutions and on centuries that persons and
their actions may go free. Practically that comes to writing history,
which is the story of man's moral life, without recognising the place
of conscience; it may sometimes have the look of intelligence, but at
bottom it is immoral and false. Men must answer for their actions. It
is no excuse for murdering the saints that the murderers think they
are doing God service; it is an aggravation of their guilt. Every man
knows that it is wicked to afflict the good; if he does not, it is
because he has quite corrupted his conscience, and therefore has the
greater sin. Moral blindness may include and explain every sin, but it
justifies none; it is itself the sin of sins. "It is a righteous thing
with God to recompense affliction to those who afflict." If they
cannot put themselves by sympathy into the place of others--which is
the principle of all right conduct--God will put them in that place,
and open their eyes. His righteous judgment is a day of grace to the
innocent sufferers; He rewards their trouble with rest; but to the
persecutor it is a day of vengeance; he eats the fruit of his doings.
It is characteristic of this Epistle, and of the preoccupation of the
Apostle's mind when he wrote it, that he here expands his notice of
the time when this judgment is to take place into a vivid statement of
its circumstances and issues. The judgment is executed at the
_revelation_ of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of
His power, in flaming fire. "At this moment," he would say, "Christ is
unseen, and therefore by wicked men ignored, and sometimes by good men
forgotten; but the day is coming when every eye shall see Him." The
Apostle Peter, who had seen Christ in the flesh, as Paul had never
done, and who probably felt His invisibility as few could feel it, is
fond of this word "revelation" as a name for His reappearing. He
speaks of faith which is to be found unto praise and honour and glory
at the _revelation_ of Jesus Christ. "Be sober," he says, "and
hope to the end for the grace that is being brought to you at the
_revelation_ of Jesus Christ." And in another passage, much in
keeping with this of St. Paul's, he says, "Inasmuch as ye are
partakers of Christ's sufferings, rejoice; that at the _revelation_
of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy." It is one of the
great words of the New Testament; and its greatness is heightened in
this place by the accompanying description. The Lord is revealed,
attended by the angels of His power, in flaming fire. These
accessories of the Advent are borrowed from the Old Testament; the
Apostle clothes the Lord Jesus at His appearing in all the glory of
the God of Israel.[24]
When Christ is thus revealed, it is in the character of a Judge: He
renders vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not
the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Two classes of guilty men are
quite plainly distinguished by these words; and as plainly, though the
English alone would not enable us to lay stress upon it, those two
classes are the heathen and the Jews. Ignorance of God is the
characteristic of paganism; when Paul wishes to describe the Gentiles
from the religious point of view, he speaks of them as the Gentiles
which know not God. Now, with us, ignorance is usually regarded as an
excuse for sin; it is an extenuating circumstance, which calls for
compassion rather than condemnation; and we are almost astonished in
reading the Bible to find it used as a summary of the whole guilt and
offence of the heathen world. But we must remember what it is that men
are said not to know. It is not theology; it is not the history of the
Jews, or the special revelations it contains; it is not any body of
doctrines; it is God. And God, who is the fountain of life, the only
source of goodness, does not hide Himself from men. He has His
witnesses everywhere. There is something in all men which is on His
side, and which, if it be regarded, will bring their souls to Him.
Those who know not God are those who have stifled this inner witness,
and separated themselves in doing so from all that is good. Ignorance
of God means ignorance of goodness; for all goodness is from Him. It
is not a lack of acquaintance with any system of ideas about God that
is here exposed to the condemnation of Christ; but the practical lack
of acquaintance with love, purity, truth. If men are familiar with the
opposites of all these; if they have been selfish, vile, bad, false;
if they have said to God, "Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge
of Thy ways; we are content to have no acquaintance with Thee"--is it
not inevitable that, when Christ is revealed as Judge of all, they
should be excluded from His kingdom? What could they do in it? Where
could they be less in place?
The difficulty which some have felt about the ignorance of the
Gentiles can hardly be raised about the disobedience of the Jews. The
element of wilfulness, of deliberate antagonism to the good, to which
we give such prominence in our idea of sin, is conspicuous here. The
will of God for their salvation had been fully made known to this
stubborn race; but they disobeyed, and persisted in their
disobedience. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck"--so
ran their own proverb--"shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without
remedy." Such was the sentence to be executed on them in the day of
Christ.
When it is said that ignorance of God and disobedience to the gospel
are here presented as the characteristics respectively of Gentile and
Jew, it is not said that the passage is without significance for us.
There may be some of us who are sinking day by day into an ever deeper
ignorance of God. Those who live a worldly and selfish life, whose
interests and hopes are bounded by this material order, who never
pray, who do nothing, give nothing, suffer nothing for others, they,
whatever their knowledge of the Bible or the catechism may be, do not
know God, and fall under this pagan condemnation. And what of
disobedience to the gospel? Notice the word which is here used by the
Apostle; it implies a conception of the gospel which we are apt, in
magnifying the grace of God, to overlook. We speak of receiving the
gospel, believing it, welcoming it, and so forth; it is equally
needful to remember that it claims our obedience. God not only
beseeches us to be reconciled, He commands us to repent. He makes a
display of His redeeming love in the gospel--a love which contains
pardon, renewal, and immortality; and He calls on all men for a life
in correspondence with that love. Salvation is not only a gift, but a
vocation; we enter into it as we obey the voice of Jesus, "Follow Me";
and if we disobey, and choose our own way, and live a life in which
there is nothing that answers to the manifestation of God as our
Saviour, what can the end be? Can it be anything else than the
judgment of which St. Paul here speaks? If we say, every day of our
life, as the law of the gospel rings in our ears, "No: we will not
have this Man to reign over us," can we expect anything else than that
He will render vengeance? "Do we provoke the Lord to anger? Are we
stronger than He?"
The ninth verse describes the terrible vengeance of the great day.
"Such men," says the Apostle, "shall pay the penalty, everlasting
destruction, away from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His
might." These are awful words, and it is no wonder that attempts have
been made to empty them of the meaning which they bear upon their
face. But it would be false to sinful men, as well as to the Apostle,
and to the whole of New Testament teaching, to say that any art or
device could in the least degree lessen their terrors. It has been
boldly asserted, indeed, that the word rendered everlasting does not
mean everlasting, but age-long; and that what is in view here is "an
age-long destruction from the presence and glory of Christ, _i.e._,
the being shut out from all sight of and participation in the triumphs
of Christ during _that_ age" ["the age perhaps which immediately
succeeds this present life"]. And this assertion is crowned by
another, that those thus excluded nevertheless "abide in His presence
and share His glory in the ages beyond."[25] Anything more gratuitous,
anything less in keeping with the whole tone of the passage, anything
more daring in its arbitrary additions to the text, it would be
impossible even to imagine. If the gospel, as conceived in the New
Testament, has any character at all, it has the character of finality.
It is God's _last word_ to men. And the consequences of accepting or
rejecting it are final; it opens no prospect beyond the life on the
one hand, and the death on the other, which are the results of
obedience and disobedience. Obey, and you enter into a light in which
there is no darkness at all: disobey, and you pass eventually into a
darkness in which there is no light at all. What God says to us in
all Scripture, from beginning to end, is not, Sooner or later? but,
Life or death? These are the alternatives before us; they are
absolutely separate; they do not run into one another at any time, the
most remote. It is necessary to speak the more earnestly of this
matter, because there is a disposition, on the plea that it is
impossible for us to divide men into two classes, to blur or even to
obliterate the distinction between Christian and non-Christian. Many
things prompt us to make the difference merely one of quantity--a more
or less of conformity to some ideal standard--in which case, of
course, a little more, or a little less, is of no great account. But
that only means that we never take the distinction between being right
with God, and being wrong with God, as seriously as God takes it; with
Him it is simply infinite. The difference between those who obey, and
those who do not obey, the gospel, is not the difference of a little
better and a little worse; it is the difference of life and death. If
there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true--that those who
stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love and obey Jesus
Christ, incur at the Last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss.
They pass into a night on which no morning dawns.
This final ruin is here described as separation from the face of the
Lord and the glory of His might. In both the Old Testament and the
New, the vision of God is the consummation of blessedness. Thus we
read in one psalm, "Before Thy face is fulness of joy"; in another,
"As for me, I shall behold Thy face in uprightness: I shall be
satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." In one of the Gospels,
our Saviour says that in heaven the angels of the little ones do
always behold the face of their Father who is in heaven; and in the
Book of Revelation it is the crown of joy that His servants shall
serve Him and shall see his face. From all this joy and blessedness
they condemn themselves to exclusion who know not God, and disobey the
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Far from the face of the Lord and the
glory of His power, their portion is in the outer darkness.
But in vivid contrast with this--for the Apostle does not close with
this terrible prospect--is the lot of those who have chosen the good
part here. Christ is revealed taking vengeance on the wicked, as has
just been described; but He comes also to be glorified in His saints
and to be admired in all them that believed--including those
Christians at Thessalonica. This is the Lord's and the Christian's
interest in the great day. The glory that shines from Him is mirrored
in and reflected from them. If there is a glory of the Christian even
while he wears the body of his humiliation, it will be swallowed up in
a glory more excellent when his change comes. Yet that glory will not
be his own: it will be the glory of Christ which has transfigured him;
men and angels, as they look at the saints, will admire not them, but
Him who has made them anew in the likeness of himself. All this is to
take place "on that day"--the great and terrible day of the Lord. The
voice of the Apostle rests with emphasis upon it; let it fill our
minds and hearts. It is a day of revelation, above all things: the day
on which Christ comes, and declares which life is eternally of worth,
and which for ever worthless; the day on which some are glorified, and
some pass finally from our view. Do not let the difficulties and
mysteries of this subject, the problems we cannot solve, the decisions
we could not give, blind our eyes to what Scripture makes so plain: we
are not the judges, but the judged, in this whole scene; and the
judgment is of infinite consequence for us. It is _not_ a question of
less or more, of sooner or later, of better or worse; what is at stake
in our attitude to the gospel is life or death, heaven or hell, the
outer darkness or the glory of Christ.
[23] "It seems hopeless to find an intelligible meaning for ἐφ'
ὑμᾶς in connection with ἐπιστεύθη. Apparently, as conjectured by
Markland, ἐπιστεύθη is a primitive corruption of ἐπιστώθη, suggested by
the preceding πιστεύσασιν, as well as by the familiarity of πιστεύω and
its _prima-facie_ appropriateness to μαρτύριον. The reference is
probably to vv. 4, 5: the Christian testimony of suffering for the
faith had been confirmed and sealed upon the Thessalonians. Cf. 1 Cor.
i. 6: Καθὼς τὸ μαρτύριον τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐβεβαιώθη ἐν ὑμῖν; also Ps. xciii.
(xcii.) 4, 5: Θαυμαστὸς ἐν ὑπσηλοῖς ὁ Κύριος· τὰ μαρτύριά σου
ἐπιστώθησαν σφόδρα; and for an analogous use of πιστοῦσθαι followed by
ἐπὶ with the accusative, 1 Chr. xvii. 23; 2 Chr. i. 9."--F.J.A. HORT.
[24] For an excellent and instructive study of the relations of Jewish
and Christian eschatology, see Stanton's _Jewish and Christian
Messiah_.
[25] The quotations are from Cox's _Salvator Mundi_, 13th Edition, pp.
128-9. When the time import of ἀιώνιος is in view, many writers
render it, like Dr. Cox, age-long, intending thereby to signify that
æonian time has an end; its finitude, in fact, is the one thing of
which Dr. Cox consents to think. But the very point of the meaning is
that no end is visible. Æonian time is time that fills the mind and
imagination to the furthest horizon and beyond it; there is no
ulterior prospect.