1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

1 Thessalonians 2:13

I. In this passage the Apostle states the evidence of the effectual working of the word in the Thessalonian converts. The change it had wrought in them was genuine, for it withstood trial. This is the test of a right acceptance of the truth. The Thessalonian Church was one of the earliest in Palestine to testify their faithfulness in the furnace of affection. They were being exercised in what Melanchthon used to say was the best of the three schools in which a Christian must be trained the school of suffering. Those of prayer and meditation, he said, were good, but that of trial was the most fruitful of them all. It was so in apostolic times. It was so in the times of the Reformation. It is so still. The way of cross-bearing is the way of light. Christ's people need to be taught how noble a thing it is to suffer and be strong.

II. The Apostle now turns aside from his theme. He makes a digression. He "goes off" (Jowett) upon the word "Jews" to describe the evil deeds and the merited doom of his own countrymen. The culminating point in Jewish wickedness is the casting out and murder of their Messiah, the Son of God. With fearful perseverance, "alway," alike before Christ came, when He had come, and after He was gone, they had been filling up the measure of their guilt. The archangel of judgment, with his sword-arm free, was already approaching, so near indeed, that in anticipation the Apostle could say, "For the wrath iscome upon them to the uttermost." Hardly fourteen years after the date of this epistle, it overtook them with a sudden surprise it descended in the doom of fire upon the once sacred city, the entire overthrow and extinction of the Jewish state, the dispersion of the race, and the centuries of weary wandering appointed them, which are not yet closed. That was the dies iraefor the Jews, and foreshadowing of the wrath to come. They who belong to God's own kingdom and glory, on the other hand, while they see in the fearful judgment which befell the Jews a distinct and manifest type of another and final judgment, wait for Jesus, who is delivering them from the wrath to come.

J. Hutchison, Lectures on Thessalonians,p. 84.

References: 1 Thessalonians 2:14. Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p 301. 1 Thessalonians 2:16. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 225.