_THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL._
"But we are bound to give thanks to God alway for you, brethren
beloved of the Lord, for that God chose you from the beginning unto
salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
whereunto He called you through our gospel, to the obtaining of the
glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand fast, and
hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by
epistle of ours.
"Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father which loved us
and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your
hearts and stablish them in every good work and word."--2 THESS. ii.
13-17 (R.V.).
The first part of this chapter is mysterious, awful, and oppressive.
It deals with the principle of evil in the world, its secret working,
its amazing power, its final embodiment in the man of sin, and its
decisive overthrow at the Second Advent. The characteristic action of
this evil principle is deceit. It deludes men, and they become its
victims. True, it can only delude those who lay themselves open to its
approach by an aversion to the truth, and by delight in
unrighteousness; but when we look round us, and see the multitude of
its victims, we might easily be tempted to despair of our race. The
Apostle does not do so. He turns away from that gloomy prospect, and
fixes his eyes upon another, serene, bright, and joyful. There
_is_ a son of perdition, a person doomed to destruction, who will
carry many to ruin in his train; but there is a work of God going on
in the world as well as a work of evil; and it also has its triumphs.
Let the mystery of iniquity work as it will, "_we_ are bound to give
thanks alway to God for _you_, brethren beloved of the Lord, for that
God chose you from the beginning _unto salvation_."
The thirteenth and fourteenth verses of this chapter are a system of
theology in miniature. The Apostle's thanksgiving covers the whole
work of salvation from the eternal choice of God to the obtaining of
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in the world to come. Let us
observe the several points which it brings out. As a thanksgiving, of
course, God is the main subject in it. Every separate clause only
serves to bring out another aspect of the fundamental truth that
salvation is of the Lord. What aspects, then, of this truth are
presented in turn?
(1) In the first place, the original idea of salvation is God's. He
chose the Thessalonians to it from the beginning. There are really two
assertions in this simple sentence--the one, that God chose them; the
other, that His choice is eternal. The first of these is obviously a
matter on which there is an appeal to experience. These Christian men,
and all Christian men, could tell whether it was true or not that they
owed their salvation to God. In point of fact, there has never been
any doubt about that matter in any church, or, indeed, in any
religion. All good men have always believed that salvation is of the
Lord. It begins on God's side. It can most truly be described from His
side. Every Christian heart responds to the word of Jesus to the
disciples: "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." Every
Christian heart feels the force of St. Paul's words to the Galatians:
"After that ye have known God, or rather were known of God." It is His
taking knowledge of us which is the original, fundamental, decisive
thing in salvation. That is a matter of experience; and so far the
Calvinist doctrine of election, which has sometimes an unsubstantial,
metaphysical aspect, has an experimental basis. We are saved, because
God in His love has saved us; that is the starting-point. That also
gives character, in all the Epistles, to the New Testament doctrine of
election. The Apostle never speaks of the elect as an unknown
quantity, a favoured few, hidden in the Church, or in the world,
unknown to others or to themselves: "God," he says, "chose
_you_,"--the persons addressed in this letter,--"and you
_know_ that He did." So does every one who knows anything of God
at all. Even when the Apostle says, "God chose you from the
beginning," he does not leave the basis of experience. "Known unto God
are all His works from the beginning of the world." The purpose of
God's love to save men, which comes home to them in their reception of
the gospel, is not a thing of to-day or yesterday; they know it is
not; it is the manifestation of His nature; it is as eternal as
Himself; they can count on it as securely as they can on the Divine
character; if God has chosen them at all, He has chosen them from the
beginning. The doctrine of election in Scripture is a religious
doctrine, based upon experience; it is only when it is separated from
experience, and becomes metaphysical, and prompts men to ask whether
they who have heard and received the gospel are elect or not--an
impossible question on New Testament ground--that it works for evil in
the Church. If you have chosen God, you know it is because He first
chose you; and His will revealed in that choice is the will of the
Eternal.
(2) Further, the means of salvation for men are of God. "He chose
you," says the Apostle, "in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of
the truth." Perhaps "means" is not the most precise word to use here;
it might be better to say that sanctification wrought by the Spirit,
and belief of the truth, are the state in which, rather than the means
by which, salvation is realised. But what I wish to insist upon is,
that both are included in the Divine choice; they are the instruments
or the conditions of carrying it into effect. And here, when we come
to the accomplishment of God's purpose, we see how it combines a
Divine and a human side. There is a sanctification, or consecration,
wrought by the Spirit of God upon the spirit of man, the sign and seal
of which is baptism, the entrance of the natural man into the new and
higher life; and coincident with this, there is the belief of the
truth, the acceptance of God's message of mercy, and the surrender of
the soul to it. It is impossible to separate these two things, or to
define their relation to each other. Sometimes the first seems to
condition the second; sometimes the order is reversed. Now it is the
Spirit which opens the mind to the truth; again it is the truth which
exercises a sanctifying power like the Spirit. The two, as it were,
interpenetrate each other. If the Spirit stood alone, man's mind would
be baffled, his moral freedom would be taken away; if the reception of
the truth were everything, a cold, rationalistic type of religion
would supplant the ardour of the New Testament Christian. The eternal
choice of God makes provision, in the combination of the Spirit and
the truth, at once for Divine influence and for human freedom; for a
baptism of fire and for the deliberate welcoming of revelation; and it
is when the two are actually combined that the purpose of God to save
is accomplished. What can we say here on the basis of experience? Have
we believed the truth which God has declared to us in His Son? Has its
belief been accompanied and made effectual by a sanctification wrought
by His Spirit, a consecration which has made the truth live in us, and
made us new creatures in Christ? God's choice does not become
effective apart from this; it comes out in this; it secures its own
accomplishment in this. His chosen are not chosen to salvation
irrespective of any experience; _none_ are chosen except as they
believe the truth and are sanctified by His Spirit.
(3) Once more, the execution of the plan of salvation in time is of
God. To this salvation, says Paul, _He_ called you by our gospel.
The apostles and their companions were but messengers: the message
they brought was God's. The new truths, the warnings, the summonses,
the invitations, all were His. The spiritual constraint which they
exercised was His also. In speaking thus, the Apostle magnifies his
office, and magnifies at the same time the responsibility of all who
heard him preach. It is a light thing to listen to a man speaking his
own thoughts, giving his own counsel, inviting assent to his own
proposals; it is a solemn thing to listen to a man speaking truly in
the name of God. The gospel that we preach is ours, only because we
preach it and because we receive it; but the true description of it
is, the gospel of God. It is His voice which proclaims the coming
judgment; it is His voice which tells of the redemption which is in
Christ Jesus, even the forgiveness of our trespasses; it is His voice
which invites all who are exposed to wrath, all who are under the
curse and power of sin, to come to the Saviour. Paul had thanked God
in the First Epistle that the Thessalonians had received his word,
not as the word of man, but as what it was in truth, the word of the
living God; and here he falls back again on the same thought in a new
connection. It is too natural for us to put God as far as we can out
of our minds, to keep Him for ever in the background, to have recourse
to Him only in the last resort; but that easily becomes an evasion of
the seriousness and the responsibilities of our life, a shutting of
our eyes to its true significance, for which we may have to pay dear.
_God_ has spoken to us all in His word and by His Spirit,--God, and
not only some human preacher: see that ye despise not Him that
speaketh.
(4) Lastly, under this head, the end proposed to us in obeying the
gospel call is of God. It is the obtaining of the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul became a Christian and an Apostle, because he saw
the Lord of Glory on the way to Damascus; and his whole conception of
salvation was shaped by that sight. To be saved meant to enter into
that glory into which Christ had entered. It was a condition of
perfect holiness, open only to those who were sanctified by Christ's
Spirit; but perfect holiness did not exhaust it. Holiness was
manifested in glory, in a light surpassing the brightness of the sun,
in a strength superior to every weakness, in a life no longer
assailable by death. Weak, suffering, destitute--dying daily for
Christ's sake--Paul saw salvation concentrated and summed up in the
glory of Christ. To obtain this was to obtain salvation. "When Christ
who is our life shall appear," he says elsewhere, "then shall ye also
appear with Him in glory." "This corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality." If salvation were anything
lower than this, there might be a plausible case to state for man as
its author; but reaching as it does to this immeasurable height, who
can accomplish it but God? It needs the operation of the might of His
power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.
One cannot read these two simple verses without wondering at the new
world which the gospel created for the mind of man. What great
thoughts are in them--thoughts that wander through eternity, thoughts
based on the most sure and blessed of experiences, yet travelling back
into an infinite past, and on into immortal glory; thoughts of the
Divine presence and the Divine power interpenetrating and redeeming
human life; thoughts addressed originally to a little company of
working people, but unmatched for length and breadth and depth and
height by all that pagan literature could offer to the wisest and the
best. What a range and sweep there is in this brief summary of God's
work in man's salvation. If the New Testament is uninteresting, can
it be for any other reason than that we arrest ourselves at the words,
and never penetrate to the truth which lies beneath?
On this review of the work of God the Apostle grounds an exhortation
to the Thessalonians. "So then, brethren," he writes, "stand fast, and
hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by
epistle of ours." The objection that is brought against Calvinism is
that it destroys every motive for action on our part, by destroying
all need of it. If salvation is of the Lord, what is there for us to
do? If God conceived it, planned it, executes it, and alone can
perfect it, what room is left for the interference of man? This is a
species of objection which would have appeared extremely perverse to
the Apostle. Why, he would have exclaimed, if God left it to us to do,
we might well sit down in despair and do nothing, so infinitely would
the task exceed our powers; but since the work of salvation is the
work of God, since He Himself is active on that side, there is reason,
hope, motive, for activity on our part also. If we work in the same
line with Him, toward the same end with Him, our labour will not be
cast away; it will be triumphantly successful. God _is_ at work;
but so far from that furnishing a motive to non-exertion on our part,
it is the strongest of all motives to action. Work out your own
salvation, not because it is left to you to do, but because it is God
who is working in you both will and deed in furtherance of His good
pleasure. Fall in, the Apostle virtually says in this place, with the
purpose of God to save you; identify yourselves with it; stand fast,
and hold the traditions which ye were taught.
"Traditions" is an unpopular word in one section of the Church,
because it has been so vastly abused in another. But it is not an
illegitimate word in any church, and there is always a place for what
it means. The generations are dependent on each other; each transmits
to the future the inheritance it has received from the past; and that
inheritance--embracing laws, arts, manners, morals, instincts,
religion--can all be comprehended in the single word tradition. The
gospel was handed over to the Thessalonians by St. Paul, partly in
oral teaching, partly in writing; it was a complex of traditions in
the simplest sense, and they were not to let any part of it go.
Extreme Protestants are in the habit of opposing Scripture to
tradition. The Bible alone, they say, is our religion; and we reject
all unwritten authority. But, as a little reflection will show, the
Bible itself is, in the first instance, a part of tradition; it is
handed down to us from those who have gone before; it is delivered to
us as a sacred deposit by the Church; and as such we at first regard
it. There are good reasons, no doubt, for giving Scripture a
fundamental and critical place among traditions. When its claim to
represent the Christianity of the apostles is once made out, it is
fairly regarded as the criterion of everything else that appeals to
their authority. The bulk of so-called traditions in the Church of
Rome are to be rejected, not because they are traditions, but because
they are not traditions, but have originated in later times, and are
inconsistent with what is known to be truly apostolic. We ourselves
are bound to keep fast hold of all that connects us historically with
the apostolic age. We would not disinherit ourselves. We would not
lose a single thought, a single like or dislike, a single conviction
or instinct, of all that proves us the spiritual posterity of Peter
and Paul and John. Sectarianism destroys the historical sense; it
plays havoc with traditions; it weakens the feeling of spiritual
affinity between the present and the past. The Reformers in the
sixteenth century--the men like Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin--made
a great point of what they called their catholicity, _i.e._, their
claim to represent the true Church of Christ, to be the lawful
inheritors of apostolic tradition. They were right, both in their
claim, and in their idea of its importance; and we will suffer for it,
if, in our eagerness for independence, we disown the riches of the
past.
The Apostle closes his exhortation with a prayer. "Now our Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, and God our Father which loved us and gave us eternal
comfort and good hope through grace, comfort[28] your hearts and
stablish them in every good work and word." All human effort, he seems
to say, must be not only anticipated and called forth, but supported,
by God. He alone it is who can give steadfastness to our pursuit of
good in word and deed.
In his prayer the Apostle goes back to great events in the past, and
bases his request on the assurance which they yield: "God," he says,
"who _loved_ us and _gave_ us eternal comfort and good hope
through grace." When did God do these gracious things? It was when He
sent His Son into the world for us. He does love us now; He will love
us for ever; but we go back for the final proof, and for the first
conviction of this, to the gift of Jesus Christ. There we see God who
_loved_ us. The death of the Lord Jesus is specially in view.
"Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us." "Herein
is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins." The eternal consolation is
connected in the closest possible way with this grand assurance of
love. It is not merely an unending comfort, as opposed to the
transitory and uncertain joys of earth; it is the heart to exclaim
with St. Paul, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword?... Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us." Here, and now, this eternal
consolation is given to the Christian heart; here, and now, rather, it
is enjoyed; it _was_ given, once for all, on the cross at Calvary.
Stand there, and receive that awful pledge of the love of God, and see
whether it does not, even now, go deeper than any sorrow.
But the eternal consolation does not exhaust God's gifts. He has also
in His grace given us good hope. He has made provision, not only for
the present trouble, but for the future uncertainty. All life needs an
outlook; and those who have stood beside the empty grave in the garden
know how wide and glorious is the outlook provided by God for the
believer in Jesus Christ. In the very deepest darkness, a light is
kindled for him; in the valley of the shadow of death, a window is
opened to him in heaven. Surely God, who sent His Son to die for us
upon the Cross; God, who raised Him again from the dead on our behalf,
and set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places,--surely He who
has been at such cost for our salvation will not be slow to second all
our efforts, and to establish our hearts in every good work and word.
How simply, one is tempted to say, it all ends--good works and good
words; are these the whole fruits which God seeks in His great work of
redemption? Does it need consolation so wonderful, hope so
far-reaching, to secure patient continuance in well-doing? We know
only too well that it does. We know that the comfort of God, the hope
of God, prayer to God, are all needed; and that all we can make of all
of them combined is not too much to make us steadily dutiful in word
and deed. We know that it is not a disproportionate or unworthy moral,
but one befitting the grandeur of his theme, when the Apostle
concludes the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians in a tone very
similar to that which rules here. The infinite hope of the
Resurrection is made the basis of the commonest duties. "Therefore, my
beloved brethren," he says, "be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your
labour is not in vain in the Lord." That hope is to bear fruit on
earth--in patience and loyalty, in humble and faithful service. It is
to shed its radiance over the trivial round, the common task; and the
Apostle does not think it wasted if it enables men and women to do
well and not weary.
The difficulty of expounding this passage lies in the largeness of the
thoughts; they include, in a manner, every part and aspect of the
Christian life. Let each of us try to bring them near to himself. God
has called us by His gospel: He has declared to us that Jesus our Lord
was delivered for our offences, and that He was raised again to open
the gates of life to us. Have we believed the truth? That is where the
gospel begins for us. Is the truth within us, written on hearts that
God's Spirit has separated from the world, and devoted to a new life?
or is it outside of us, a rumour, a hearsay, to which we have no vital
relation? Happy are those who have believed, and taken Christ into
their souls, Christ who died for us and rose again: they have the
forgiveness of sins, a pledge of love that disarms and vanquishes
sorrow, an infallible hope that outlives death. Happy are those to
whom the cross and the empty tomb give that confidence in God's love
which makes prayer natural, hopeful, joyful. Happy are those to whom
all these gifts of grace bring the strength to continue patiently in
well-doing, and to be steadfast in every good work and word. All
things are theirs--the world, and life, and death; things present and
things to come; everlasting consolation and good hope; prayer,
patience, and victory: all are theirs, for they are Christ's, and
Christ is God's.
[28] For the verb in the singular, and its import, compare 1st Epistle
iii. 11.