'We pray always for you, that our God would count
you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the
good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of
faith with power; 12. That the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in
Him.'--2 THESS. i. 11, 12.
In the former letter to the Church of Thessalonica, the Apostle had
dwelt, in ever-memorable words--which sound like a prelude of the trump
of God--on the coming of Christ at the end to judge the world, and to
gather His servants into His rest. That great thought seems to have
excited some of the hotter heads in Thessalonica, and to have led to a
general feverishness of unwholesome expectancy of the near approach or
actual dawn of the day. This letter is intended as a supplement to the
former Epistle, and to damp down the fire which had been kindled. It,
therefore, dwells with emphasis on the necessary preliminaries to the
dawning of that day of the Lord, and throughout seeks to lead the
excited spirits to patience and persistent work, and to calm their
feverish expectations. This purpose colours the whole letter.
Another striking characteristic of it is the frequent gushes of short
prayer for the Thessalonians with which the writer turns aside from the
main current of his thoughts. In its brief compass there are four of
these prayers, which, taken together, present many aspects of the
Christian life, and hold out much for our hopes and much for our
efforts. The prayer which I have read for our text is the first of
these. The others, the consideration of which will follow on subsequent
occasions, are these:--'Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our
Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and stablish you in
every good word and work.' And, again, 'The Lord direct your hearts into
the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.' And, finally,
summing up all, 'The Lord of peace Himself give you peace always, by all
means.' So full, so tender, so directed to the highest blessings, and to
those only, are the wishes of a true Christian teacher, and of a true
Christian friend, for those to whom He ministers and whom He loves. It
is a poor love that cannot express itself in prayer. It is an earthly
love which desires for its objects anything less than the highest of
blessings.
I. Notice, first, here, the divine test for Christian lives: 'We pray
for you, that God would count you worthy of your calling.'
Now, it is to be observed that this 'counting worthy' refers mainly to a
future estimate to be made by God of the completed career and permanent
character brought out of earth into another state by Christian souls.
That is obvious from the whole strain of the letter, which I have
already pointed out as mainly being concerned with the future coming to
judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also, I think, made probable by
the fact that the same expression, 'counting worthy,' occurs in an
earlier verse of this chapter, where the reference is exclusively to the
future judgment.
So, then, we are brought face to face with this thought of an actual,
stringent judgment which God will apply in the future to the lives and
characters of professing Christians. Now, that is a great deal too much
forgotten in our popular Christian teaching and in our average Christian
faith. It is perfectly true that he who trusts in Jesus Christ will 'not
come into condemnation, but has passed from death unto life.' But it is
just as true that 'judgment shall begin at the house of God,' and that,
'the Lord will judge His people.' And therefore, it becomes us to lay to
heart this truth, that we, just because, if we are Christians, we stand
nearest to God, are surest to be searched through and through by the
light that streams from Him, and to have every flaw and corrupt speck
and black spot brought out into startling prominence. Let no Christian
man fancy that he shall escape the righteous judgment of God. The great
doctrine of forgiveness does not mean that He suffers our sin to remain
upon us unjudged, ay! or unavenged. But just as, day by day, there is an
actual estimate in the divine mind, according to truth, of what we
really are, so, at the last, God's servants will be gathered before His
throne. 'They that have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice' shall be
assembled there--as the Psalm has it--'that the Lord may judge His
people.'
Then, if the actual passing of a divine judgment day by day, and a
future solemn act of judgment after we have done with earth, and our
characters are completed, and our careers rounded into a whole, is to be
looked for by Christians, what is the standard by which their worthiness
is to be judged?
'Your calling.' The 'this' of my text in the Authorised Version is a
supplement, and a better supplement is that of the Revised Version,
'your calling.' Now _calling_ does not mean 'avocation' or 'employment,'
as I perhaps need scarcely explain, but the divine fact of our having
been summoned by Him to be His. Consider who calls. God Himself.
Consider how He calls. By the Gospel, by Jesus Christ, or, as another
apostle has it, 'by His own glory and virtue' manifested in the world.
That great voice which is in Jesus Christ, so tender, so searching, so
heart-melting, so vibrating with the invitation of love and the yearning
of a longing heart, summons or calls us. Consider, also, what this
calling is to. 'God hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness,'
or, as this letter has it, in another part, 'unto salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.' By all the
subduing and animating and restraining and impelling tones in the
sacrifice and life of Jesus Christ we are summoned to a life of
self-crucifixion, of subjection of the flesh, of aspiration after God,
of holy living according to the pattern that was showed us in Him. We
are summoned here and now to a life of purity and righteousness and
self-sacrifice. But also 'He hath called us to His everlasting kingdom
and glory.' That voice sounds from above now. From the Cross it said to
us, 'I die that ye may live'; from the throne it says to us, 'Live
because I live, and come to live where I live.' The same invitation,
which calls us to a life of righteousness and self-suppression and
purity, also calls us, with the sweet promise that is firm as the throne
of God, to the everlasting felicities of that perfect kingdom in which,
because the obedience is entire, the glory shall be untremulous and
unstained. Therefore, considering who summons, by what He summons, and
to what He calls us, do there not lie in the fact of that divine call to
which we Christians say that we have yielded, the solemnest motives, the
loftiest standard, the most stringent obligations for life? What sort of
a life will that be which is worthy of that voice? Is yours? Is mine?
Are there not the most flagrant examples of professing Christians, whose
lives are in the most outrageous discordance with the lofty obligations
and mighty motives of the summons which they profess to have obeyed?
'Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called!' Have I made my own the
things which I am invited to possess? Have I yielded to the obligations
which are enwrapped in that invitation? Does my life correspond to the
divine purpose in calling me to be His? Can I say, 'Lord, Thou art mine,
and I am Thine, and here my life witnesses to it, because self is
banished from it, and I am full of God, and the life which I live in
the flesh I live not to myself, but to Him that died for me?'
An absolute correspondence, a complete worthiness or perfect desert, is
impossible for us all, but a worthiness which His merciful judgment who
makes allowance for us all may accept, as not too flagrantly
contradictory of what He meant us to be, is possible even for our poor
attainments and our stained lives. If it were Paul's supreme prayer,
should it not be our supreme aim, that we may be worthy of Him that hath
called us, and 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called'?