Look how the letter begins. 'Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the
church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord
Jesus Christ.' What is the meaning of that collocation, putting these
two names side by side, unless it means that the Lord Jesus Christ sits
on the Father's throne, and is divine?
Then there is another fact that I would have you notice, and that is
that more than twenty times in this short letter that great name is
applied to Jesus, 'the Lord.' Now mark that that is something more than
a mere title of human authority. It is in reality the New Testament
equivalent of the Old Testament Jehovah, and is the transference to Him
of that incommunicable name.
And then there is another fact which I would have you weigh, viz., that
in this letter direct prayer is offered to our Lord Himself. In one
place we read the petition, 'May our God and Father Himself and our Lord
Jesus direct our way unto you,' where the petition is presented to both,
and where both are supposed to be operative in the answer. And more than
that, the word 'direct,' following upon this _plural_ subject, is itself
a _singular_ verb. Could language more completely express than that
grammatical solecism does, the deep truth of the true and proper
divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? There is nothing in any
part of Scripture more emphatic and more lofty in its unfaltering
proclamation of that fundamental truth of the Gospel than this
altogether undoctrinal Epistle.
The Apostle does not conceive himself to be telling these men, though
they were such raw and recent Christians, anything new when he
presupposes the truth that to Him desires and prayers may go. Thus the
very loftiest apex of revealed religion had been imparted to that
handful of heathens in the few weeks of the Apostle's stay amongst them.
And nowhere upon the inspired pages of the fourth Evangelist, nor in
that great Epistle to the Colossians, which is the very citadel and
central fort of that doctrine in Scripture, is there more emphatically
stated this truth than here, in these incidental allusions.
This witness, at any rate, declares, apart altogether from any other
part of Scripture, that so early in the development of the Church's
history, and to people so recently dragged from idolatry, and having
received but such necessarily partial instruction in revealed truth,
this had not been omitted, that the Christ in whom they trusted was the
Everlasting Son of the Father. And it takes it for granted that, so
deeply was that truth embedded in their new consciousness that an
allusion to it was all that was needed for their understanding and their
faith. That is the first part of the testimony.
II. Now, secondly, let us ask what this witness has to say about the
dying Christ.
There is no doctrinal theology in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, they
tell us. Granted that there is no articulate argumentative setting forth
of great doctrinal truths. But these are implied and involved in almost
every word of it; and are definitely stated thus incidentally in more
places than one. Let us hear the witness about the dying Christ.
First, as to the fact, 'The Jews killed the Lord Jesus.' The historical
fact is here set forth distinctly. And then, beyond the fact, there is
as distinctly, though in the same incidental fashion, set forth the
meaning of that fact--'God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain
salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us.'
Here are at least two things--one, the allusion, as to a well-known and
received truth, proclaimed before now to them, that Jesus Christ in His
death had died for them; and the other, that Jesus Christ was the medium
through whom the Father had appointed that men should obtain all the
blessings which are wrapped up in that sovereign word 'salvation.' I
need but mention in this connection another verse, from another part of
the letter, which speaks of Jesus as 'He that delivereth us from the
wrath to come.' Remark that there our Authorised Version fails to give
the whole significance of the words, because it translates _delivered_,
instead of, as the Revised Version correctly does, _delivereth_. It is a
continuous deliverance, running all through the life of the Christian
man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at the far end; because
by the mighty providence of God, and by the automatic working of the
consequences of every transgression and disobedience, that 'wrath' is
ever coming, coming, coming towards men, and lighting on them, and a
continual Deliverer, who delivers us by His death, is what the human
heart needs. This witness is distinct that the death of Christ is a
sacrifice, that the death of Christ is man's deliverance from wrath,
that the death of Christ is a present deliverance from the consequences
of transgression.
And was that Paul's peculiar doctrine? Is it conceivable that, in a
letter in which he refers--once, at all events--to the churches in Judea
as their 'brethren,' he was proclaiming any individual or schismatic
reading of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ? I believe that there
has been a great deal too much made of the supposed divergencies of
types of doctrine in the New Testament. There are such types, within
certain limits. Nobody would mistake a word of John's calm, mystical,
contemplative spirit for a word of Paul's fiery, dialectic spirit. And
nobody would mistake either the one or the other for Peter's impulsive,
warm-hearted exhortations. But whilst there are diversities in the way
of apprehending, there are no diversities in the declaration of what is
the central truth to be apprehended. These varyings of the types of
doctrine in the New Testament are one in this, that all point to the
Cross as the world's salvation, and declare that the death there was the
death for all mankind.
Paul comes to it with his reasoning; John comes to it with his adoring
contemplation; Peter comes to it with his mind saturated with Old
Testament allusions. Paul declares that the 'Christ died for us'; John
declares that He is 'the Lamb of God'; Peter declares that 'Christ bare
our sins in His own body on the tree.' But all make one unbroken phalanx
of witness in their proclamation, that the Cross, because it is a cross
of sacrifice, is a cross of reconciliation and peace and hope. And this
is the Gospel that they all proclaim, 'how that Jesus Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures,' and Paul could venture to say,
'Whether it were they or I, so we preach, and so ye believed.'
That was the Gospel that took these heathens, wallowing in the mire of
sensuous idolatry, and lifted them up to the elevation and the
blessedness of children of God.
And if you will read this letter, and think that there had been only a
few weeks of acquaintance with the Gospel on the part of its readers,
and then mark how the early and imperfect glimpse of it had transformed
them, you will see where the power lies in the proclamation of the
Gospel. A short time before they had been heathens; and now says Paul,
'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad;
so that we need not to speak anything.' We do not need to talk to you
about 'love of the brethren,' for 'yourselves are taught of God to love
one another, and my heart is full of thankfulness when I think of your
work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.' The men had been
transformed. What transformed them? The message of a divine and dying
Christ, who had offered up Himself without spot unto God, and who was
their peace and their righteousness and their power.
III. Thirdly, notice what this witness has to say about the risen and
ascended Christ. Here is what it has to say: 'Ye turned unto God . . . to
wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead.' And again:
'The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.' The risen
Christ, then, is in the heavens, and Paul assumes that these people,
just brought out of heathenism, have received that truth into their
hearts in the love of it, and know it so thoroughly that he can take for
granted their entire acquiescence in and acceptance of it.
Remember, we have nothing to do with the four Gospels here. Remember,
not a line of them had yet been written. Remember, that we are dealing
here with an entirely independent witness. And then tell us what
importance is to be attached to this evidence of the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Twenty years after His death here is this man speaking
about that Resurrection as being not only something that he had to
proclaim, and believed, but as being the recognised and notorious fact
which all the churches accepted, and which underlay all their faith.
I would have you remember that if, twenty years after this event, this
witness was borne, that necessarily carries us back a great deal nearer
to the event than the hour of its utterance, for there is no mark of
its being new testimony at that instant, but every mark of its being the
habitual and continuous witness that had been borne from the instant of
the alleged Resurrection to the present time. It at least takes us back
a good many years nearer the empty sepulchre than the twenty which mark
its date. It at least takes us back to the conversion of the Apostle
Paul; and that necessarily involves, as it seems to me, that if that
man, believing in the Resurrection, went into the Church, there would
have been an end of his association with them, unless he had found there
the same faith. The fact of the matter is, there is not a place where
you can stick a pin in, between the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the
date of this letter, wide enough to admit of the rise of the faith in a
Resurrection. We are necessarily forced by the very fact of the
existence of the Church to the admission that the belief in the
Resurrection was contemporaneous with the alleged Resurrection itself.
And so we are shut up--in spite of the wriggling of people that do not
accept that great truth--we are shut up to the old alternative, as it
seems to me, that either Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or the noblest
lives that the world has ever seen, and the loftiest system of morality
that has ever been proclaimed, were built upon a lie. And we are called
to believe that at the bidding of a mere unsupported, bare, dogmatic
assertion that miracles are impossible. Believe it who will, I decline
to be coerced into believing a blank, staring psychological
contradiction and impossibility, in order to be saved the necessity of
admitting the existence of the supernatural. I would rather believe in
the supernatural than the ridiculous. And to me it is unspeakably
ridiculous to suppose that anything but the fact of the Resurrection
accounts for the existence of the Church, and for the faith of this
witness that we have before us.
And so, dear friends, we come back to this, the Christianity that flings
away the risen Christ is a mere mass of tatters with nothing in it to
cover a man's nakedness, an illusion with no vitality in it to quicken,
to comfort, to ennoble, to raise, to teach aspiration or hope or effort.
The human heart needs the 'Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh
intercession for us.' And this independent witness confirms the Gospel
story: 'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits
of them that slept.'
IV. Lastly, let us hear what this witness has to say about the returning
Christ.
That is the characteristic doctrinal subject of the letter. We all know
that wonderful passage of unsurpassed tenderness and majesty, which has
soothed so many hearts and been like a gentle hand laid upon so many
aching spirits, about the returning Jesus 'coming in the clouds,' with
the dear ones that are asleep along with Him, and the reunion of them
that sleep and them that are alive and remain, in one indissoluble
concord and concourse, when we shall ever be with the Lord, and 'clasp
inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever.' The
coming of the Master does not appear here with emphasis on its judicial
aspect. It is rather intended to bring hope to the mourners, and the
certainty that bands broken here may be re-knit in holier fashion
hereafter. But the judicial aspect is not, as it could not be, left out,
and the Apostle further tells us that 'that day cometh as a thief in the
night.' That is a quotation of the Master's own words, which we find in
the Gospels; and so again a confirmation, so far as it goes, from an
independent witness, of the Gospel story. And then he goes on, in
terrible language, to speak of 'sudden destruction, as of travail upon a
woman with child; and they shall not escape.'
These, then, are the points of this witness's testimony as to the
returning Lord--a personal coming, a reunion of all believers in Him, in
order to eternal felicity and mutual gladness, and the destruction that
shall fall by His coming upon those who turn away from Him.
What a revelation that would be to men who had known what it was to
grope in the darkness of heathendom, and to have new light upon the
future!
I remember once walking in the long galleries of the Vatican, on the one
side of which there are Christian inscriptions from the catacombs, and
on the other heathen inscriptions from the tombs. One side is all dreamy
and hopeless; one long sigh echoing along the line of white
marbles--'Vale! vale! in aeternum vale!' (Farewell, farewell, for ever
farewell.) On the other side--'In Christo, in pace, in spe.' (In Christ,
in peace, in hope.) That is the witness that we have to lay to our
hearts. And so death becomes a passage, and we let go the dear hands,
believing that we shall clasp them again.
My brother! this witness is to a gospel that is the gospel for
Manchester as well as for Thessalonica. You and I want just the same as
these old heathens there wanted. We, too, need the divine Christ, the
dying Christ, the risen Christ, the ascended Christ, the returning
Christ. And I beseech you to take Him for _your_ Christ, in all the
fulness of His offices, the manifoldness of His power, and the sweetness
of His love, so that of you it may be said, as this Apostle says about
these Thessalonians, 'Ye received it not as the word of man, but, as it
is in truth, as the word of God.'