The Epistles to the Thessalonians
The keynote of both of these letters is promptly struck in the third verse of the first chapter, in the phrase, patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Here we are turned toward the future, the second coming of Him in Whom we find the sphere of our final triumph over all foes. Hope looks forward to the future and fixes its gaze on this consummation, and hence becomes the profound secret oi patience in present trials. The same blessed thought reappears in verses 9, 10. To serve the living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. ’
These two epistles therefore carry us to the climax of the glorious truth which has lifted us to higher and higher
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elevations, as we have gone from summit to summit in studying this progress of docftrine; here the Holy Spirit gives us a glimpse of our final, ultimate, and complete vi(5lory in Christ over all enemies and all trials.
It will be remembered that, in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, we found one blessed privilege to lie in the future: in. the former, our gathering together unto Him; and in the latter, our manifestation in Him. Here we are emphatically reminded of His reappearing, at which time this gathering together of all saints is to take place about the very Head of the mystical body; and their manifestation in Him, because He himself is to be manifested in glory.
The Holy Spirit guides the pen of Paul to write of these two future and crowning relations of blessing that yet await all God’s saints. Comp. II. Thess., ii; I, $, “By our gathering
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together unto Him,” and, “the brightness of His coming” — the epiphany of His Parousia. Here we have both thoughts; and in fadl both are found in the one verse which opens second chapter: ‘* Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christy and by our gathering together unto Him.’’^
To get even a glimpse of this truth, we must first know what is included in this second advent of the Son of God, as it is set forth in these two letters to Thessalonica. We present the following as a partial analysis of their contents, but sufficient to hint at the wealth of suggestion herein to be discovered:
1. The reward of service. I.,ii:19. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our I^ord Jesus Christ at His coming?
2. The final perfe(5lion in holiness.
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I., iii: 13. Unblamable in holiness at the coming, etc.
3. The reunion of departed and surviving saints. I., iv: 13-18.
4. The triumph over death in the resurre(5lion of the dead and the translation and transformation of the living. Ibid. 16, 17.
5. The final consummation of salvation. Living together with Him, forevermore. Ibid. 17.
6. The avenging of saints upon all adversaries. I., v: 9; II., i: 7-10.
7. The ultimate gathering together unto Him. II., ii: i.
8. The destrudlion of the man of sin. II., ii: 8.
9. The obtaining of the glory of our I^ord Jesus Christ. II., ii: 14.
10. The final, eternal glorification of saints in Him. Ibid. 16.
When Christ comes again to complete our salvation, there will be at least a fourfold triumph:
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1. Over sin, in unblamable holiness.
2. Over suffering, endured at the hands of the wicked.
3. Over death, in resurredlion and translation.
4. Over Antichrist and the devil. And in this triumph the saints are
to be in every respect copartakers with Christ. His triumph is theirs, and His joy is theirs.
Only in this grand consummation will it be possible to understand what it is to be in Christ Jesus. In our present experience several necessary hindrances exist to our full realization of the blessedness of our estate in Him.
I. First, All this sphere pertains to the invisible. We as yet belong to a material and temporal order. Things visible and sensible appeal to us, because our physical senses are on the alert to receive impression. We walk by sight naturally and inevitably; and the unseen and eternal can be apprehended and appre-
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dated only in part, dimly, even by those whose inner spiritual senses are exercised to discern good and evil. To see the visible we need only to open our natural eyes — it is easier to keep them open than shut, and to walk by sight requires no e£fort. But to see the invisible and feel the power of the eternal, is not natural nor easy; it requires sedulous and constant effort — the daily divScipline of our higher senses. These things evade and escape us if we are careless, nay, unless we are most prayerful and careful; and at times the most devout and circumspe(5l believer loses the vision of their entrancing loveliness, preciousness, and glory, and sets his eye on the lower good that seems so much easier both to see and grasp. But when Christ comes again and is manifested. He will be revealed, and all our being will be filled with the enamoring sense of his reality, and we shall never lose sight of Him more.
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The now unseen and eternal will then be as vividly real as any objecfls of sight or sense.
2. Secondly, This sphere of our life in Christ is now of necessity partial. We are in this world, however little we may be it, and we can not escape more or less of its contact, however free from its contamination. Our enj oyment of Christ is interrupted by earthly and carnal surroundings, even when the lower cravings are subdued. From time to time we are recalled to a painful sense of the facfl that sin is in us, however free we may be from sins and sinning. We are compassed about with infirmity of body, mind, and will; and the thorn in the flesh can not be wholly forgotten even in the all-sufficient grace. The weakness is there, even while the strength is made perfe(5l, for that is the condition of its perfedl exhibition and manifestation. Perhaps it is not too much to say that perfedl enjoyment of
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God is impossible, for our condition and characSter are yet imperfecfl or unperfedl. How different when the last bond is broken, the last tie severed, and we are free to be only in Christy not even the body longer hindering our perfecfl resemblance to Him and perfect communion with Him! What approximation to perfec5lion may be possible, probably no saint has yet known or shown; doubtless greater measures of resemblance to Him and more complete absorption in Him are possible and practicable than any saint has ever yet experienced; but it is plain that we must wait until He comes, and we meet Him face to face, and with bodies fashioned like unto His, ourselves without blemish, as He is, before our inspherement in Him can reach its completeness.
3. Thirdly, Our sphere of life in Christ is now coyitested. We are in the midst of adversaries, and sometimes their presence is more vividly and aw-XTbessalonlans 165
fully real to us than that of our Advocate. Without are fightings, within are fears. However secure in Christ, we feel the danger to be constant and imminent. The five foes of whom we have found the Holy Spirit reminding us, are not slain, nor are they, to our experience, routed. They reappear with such frequency that we are never wholly free from their taunting, torturing presence. What saint, from Paul to Müller, has ever entirely found conscious liberty from the law in grace! How we need to keep reminding ourselves that we are on Sion, not under Sinai! How perpetually are we shadowed by the sense of condemnation! Who has ever entirely escaped the allurements of the world, so that he is adlually dead to its censure or approval, indifferent to its opposition or cooperation, insensible to its attractions and its ridicule? Who is there who is nevei- worldly-minded and finds no need of a new turning of the mirror of the mind from the lower to the higher realm?
Has any saint ever found the flesh and the carnal man .subdued? The very fadl that every one of us finds the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit contending against the flesh, and that we feel these to be contrary, one to the other, so that we may 7ioi, according to the Spirit, do the things that we would, according to the flesh, shows how to the last we have to acknowledge our deliverance to be but partial.
Need it be said that the self-life is never wholly destroyed in us while we are in the world? We may think that self is dead, but our very thought is an evidence of its survival, and perhaps a proof of its pride. We slay self in one form, and it seems to be the more alive in every other, until what we think the death of self-praise, proves only the boastfulness of a conscious humility tTbessalonians 167
which is proven, by such consciousness, to be no humiHty at all. Here is the subtlest of our foes, and the most persistent of life, as well as the most multiplied of form.
And as to the devil, obviously he is not dead. The saintliest priest of God can not stand at His altar without the unseen Satanic foe at his right hand to resist him. We go up to the heavenlies in the rapt communion with God, but in the heavenlies are the hostile principalities and powers (Kph. vi: lo). There is no escape from the approach of this devouring lion. We may indeed escape his jaws and his paws, but we hear his roar and we tremble as we remember how many in their securest moments have become his vidlims.
The day will come, when even Death, the last enemy, will be destroyed, and we shall be free to enjoy Him who is our life, without even the presence of a foe. What a life that will be in Him
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—when the law is forever silenced as our accuser, and Sinai’s summit forever disappears! What a freedom when sin no longer dwells in us, but our very nature is purged of its hateful presence! What a deliverance, when the world to come displaces the world that now is, and there are no allurements that draw from God! What a death, when self gives up the ghost, and the life of Christ is all the life we know! When the flesh and carnal mind are eternally gone, that the Spirit may rule every motion within us! And, when the bottomless pit closes its doors over the adversary of God and man, never again to release him; and, before the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the lion that roars in our path and seeks to devour our souls, falls in final destrudlion — what a shout of deliverance will ring through all the universe of redeemed souls and unfallen angels!
Over these two epistles might be
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written one sublime word, victory. A salvation complete and glorious draws nearer than when we believed, and this is held up before us continually in these two letters. The phrases which abound here are found in their variety and combination nowhere else, for they grow naturally out of such a soil:” patience of hope, “” joy of the Holy Ghost,” ‘’ to wait for His Son from heaven, “” God who hath called you unto His kingdom and glory,” * ’ at the coming of our lyord Jesus Christ with all His saints,” ‘’the I/)rd Jesus shall be revealed from heaven,” etc. And, as these phrases abound, so these epistles abound in arguments for holy living drawn from the glorious and blessed hope which illumines the future. There is scarce a grace or virtue in the whole blessed catalogue of saintly excellencies and adornments, for which this future vidlory and glory presents no new in-
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centive; obedience, service, patience, fidelity, self-denial, love, meditation on the Word, joy, comfort, stedfastness, zeal, san(5lity, honesty, hope, consolation, vigilance, humility, gentleness, supplication, separation to God, peace — all that is most lovely and most helpful is made to hang upon the cherishing of the blessed assurance of our final triumph and blessedness, in Him who is the Coming One. Only so far as this blessed hope is obscured or pradlically becomes inoperative in our lives, will our charadler and conducfl as disciples degenerate.
Let us remember that the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is the consummation of all things which pertain to our redemption. It introduces the sublime closing scenes in the whole history of salvation. There is much that can not be revealed to the Church and to the angelic host in the age that now is, and God waits for the ages to
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come to make known His manifold wisdom and grace. He finds in our present experience no data from which to convey a fit knowledge — no dialect sufiiciently meaningful to express the inexpressible things which must wait for the revelation of experience.
The more devoutly we study the Word, the more we shall discover that, like our I^ord’s first advent, the present revelation of grace is a necessary hiding of God’s true power; new conditions are necessary for a full disclosure. When He comes again He will not come in disguise, but in proper attire and with proper attendance. He will be revealed as never before. And all spiritual truth and fadl, pertaining to the believer, waits for His true epiphany, when His glory shall emerge out of clouds into fulness of revelation. We can only, like the Thessalonians, ’ * serve a?id wait.” To the most mature saint, that coming day is
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to be as absolute a surprise as the third heaven mysteries were to Paul. God has something beyond all we have conceived, waiting for us, at Christ’s appearing. The words used to intimate it are the best human language supplies, but the mold is too small for the conception, and so cramps it and so distorts it. We must see in order to know and for that vision we wait, with longing and expedlant eyes, until the dazzling splendor of the coming King shall declare what no words can reveal or unveil.