LIGHT FOR DARK DAYS

2 THESSALONIANS 2:13-17

NASB

13 But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you [a]from the beginning for salvation [b]through sanctification [c]by the Spirit and faith in the truth. 14 It was for this He called you through our gospel, [a]that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter [a]from us.

16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, 17 comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

2:13 [a]One early ms reads first fruits  [b]Lit in  [c]Lit of  2:14 [a]Lit to the gaining of  2:15 [a]Lit of 

NLT

13 As for us, we can’t help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first[*] to experience salvation—a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and through your belief in the truth. 14 He called you to salvation when we told you the Good News; now you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

15 With all these things in mind, dear brothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on the teaching we passed on to you both in person and by letter.

16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope, 17 comfort you and strengthen you in every good thing you do and say.

[2:13] Some manuscripts read chose you from the very beginning.  

Pain is a part of God’s curriculum for life. It’s not an elective we can avoid or a course we can simply audit from afar. Its lessons must be learned if we’re to grow. However, when it comes to suffering, most of us want to skip class. The always uncomfortable and sometimes grueling labor of enduring dark days of suffering —whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual —can tempt us to drop out of God’s program of sanctification. Yet if we keep at it, strengthened and comforted by the Holy Spirit, we will receive the greatest graduating gift imaginable: “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17).

From our human perspective, however, pain often seems pointless, random, even devastating to faith. But God assures us that everything from trials to tragedies, from adversity to affliction —all things work together purposefully for the ultimate good of believers (Rom. 8:28). Nevertheless, when a tsunami of suffering crushes our comfortable, well-ordered lives, we can feel betrayed, slighted, even cheated by God. Instead of trusting that God is accomplishing something good in our lives, we can start to believe that He has it in for us, that He delights in causing us pain.

The new believers in Thessalonica were themselves caught in this theological and practical tension caused by the weight of suffering. Like the man in Jesus’ parable who had been beaten and robbed by thieves (Luke 10:25-37), the Thessalonians felt like the Christian life had dumped them on the side of the road and left them for dead. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17, Paul took on the role of the Good Samaritan, attending to his beloved spiritual children in Thessalonica who lay beaten down on the side of the straight and narrow path. Paul’s calm, pastoral approach to their afflictions provides us with spiritual first-aid training that we can draw from when we face our own bouts of suffering . . . or when we need to come to the aid of others.

When Paul stepped into the lives of those young, downtrodden believers, he found them wallowing in darkness —shutters latched, drapes drawn, lights out. But in these five short verses, Paul switches on four lights of hope that can still be lit for us today as we face our own days of darkness.

— 2:13 —

First, we light up the darkness by encouraging those who suffer with words of compassion. The Thessalonians were going through some pretty dark days. They probably felt devastated and confused, isolated from help, questioning their past decisions, worrying about their present conditions, and wondering about the future.

In the thick of this darkness, Paul doesn’t barge in, throw open the windows, pull back their sheets, and drag them outside. He lights a single candle of hope, a solitary but brilliant flame of compassion. With gentle words, he informs them that he is thankful to God for them, that they are his brothers and sisters in Christ, precious in His sight —“beloved by the Lord” (2 Thes. 2:13). To a people pummeled by affliction, those words could bring them to tears.

When we endure pain and suffering ourselves, we need to remember that in spite of how others treat us, God loves us; we’re members of His forever family with spiritual brothers and sisters who care for us. We live in a community infused by the Holy Spirit with the light of compassion and hope.

— 2:14 —

Second, we light up the darkness by encouraging those who suffer with words of instruction. As was the case with the Thessalonians and their doctrinal derailment with regard to the end times, suffering can frequently cause theological disorientation and disillusionment. Dark days of suffering lead to forgetfulness of such core doctrines as the goodness of God, the hope of salvation, and the promise that the Spirit has been given as our Comforter. Suffering believers need gentle instruction to reassure and reorient them, to bring God’s promises back into focus.

How does Paul fill their darkness? By encouraging them with these rays of illuminating theology:

Did you notice that in this brief litany of doctrinal truths, Paul touches on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (the Trinity), salvation and election (soteriology), the church (ecclesiology), spiritual growth (sanctification), and even our future glory (eschatology)? Together these already bright points of doctrine form the sunshine of theological truth that lights up their dark days of suffering. Theologian John R. W. Stott sums it up well:

In a single sentence the apostle’s mind sweeps from “the beginning” to “the glory.” There is no room in such a conviction for fears about Christian instability. Let the devil mount his fiercest attack on the feeblest saint, let the Antichrist be revealed and the rebellion break out, yet over against the instability of our circumstances and our characters, we set the eternal stability of the purpose of God.[64]

— 2:15 —

Third, we light up the darkness by encouraging those who suffer with words of exhortation. To exhort means “to give warnings or advice.”[65] In 2:15, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to “stand firm” in the things they had been taught by the apostles —to persevere in sound doctrine and right practice. Whether they learned these things from them in person (“by word of mouth”) while Paul, Silas, and Timothy were present or in writing (“or by letter”), they were to “hold to” the things they had been taught.

Paul’s mention of the ministry partners’ own authoritative “word of mouth” and “letter from us” was meant to stand in direct contrast to the spurious and deceptive false information that the Thessalonians had received “by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us” (2 Thes. 2:2, italics mine). Those lies had caused them to be shaken from their composure and disturbed. But the truth would enable them to stand firm. The key to withstanding the onslaught of false teaching was for the Thessalonians to keep a firm grasp on true teaching.

For us, the exhortation is the same, especially when faced with experiences of suffering. In times of pain, anguish, mourning, depression, or doubt, nothing is more stabilizing than the truth of Scripture —nothing. We should never cave in to the temptation to take uncertain steps or change course in the darkness of despair. If we do, we will certainly misstep, stumble from the right path, or trip over unseen obstacles. This is why Paul illumined the darkness with the light of exhortation to “stand firm.”

— 2:16-17 —

Fourth, we light up the darkness by encouraging those who suffer with words of intercession. The final two verses offer up another brief prayer for the Thessalonians. Maybe you’ve lost count, but this is now the third indication in this letter that Paul keeps the young Thessalonian congregation ever before the throne of grace. In 1:3 he said, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren.” Then at the end of that chapter he notes, “We pray for you always” (1:11). Now, Paul prays for them a third time (2:16-17).

Besides noting what Paul explicitly prays for, it might help us to notice what he doesn’t pray for. He doesn’t pray that they will be immediately removed from the dark days in which they find themselves. Instead, he prays that God would comfort them in light of the eternal comfort they have in Christ (2:16-17). And he doesn’t ask that they be spared the suffering they had been enduring. Instead, he asks that God would strengthen their hearts “in every good work and word” (2:17). In fact, this prayer sounds much like Jesus’ own prayer to the Father for His disciples: “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

How typical it is for us who suffer to want God to snatch us from the trial or step in and solve the problem! When the dark storms of life roll in, we want to outrun them. But in most cases, God allows the darkness to cover us so we can learn and grow through it, trusting in His grace, mercy, love, and strength (see Isa. 43:2-4).

APPLICATION: 2 THESSALONIANS 2:13-17

Benefits of Suffering

Suffering was not a part of God’s original design for the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1–2), nor is it going to be a part of his ultimate plan for the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21–22). However, in the intervening space between Genesis 3 and Revelation 20, sin, death, suffering, and pain have poisoned God’s creation. During this long era of dark days between Creation and New Creation, God in His providence has seen fit to use suffering to bring about good benefits. This isn’t the same as saying, “Evil is good!” or the equally ludicrous “Pain and suffering don’t really exist!” Rather, this is the prerogative of a good, wise, and powerful God, who takes what Satan and sinful people originally meant for evil and turns it around for good (Gen. 50:20; Rom. 8:28).

So, while all of us are living during that in-between time, what are some benefits we gain through suffering? Paul’s encouraging words in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 emphasize that we are on a course of sanctification by the Spirit (2:13) —a process of spiritual growth that involves suffering. In this fallen world, filled with pain and persecution, we need to “stand firm” in the faith, despite all challenges (2:15). To stand strong, we need constant comfort and hope (2:16-17). One way to be comforted is to meditate on things God accomplishes in our lives by permitting suffering.

First, we gain the ability to comfort others. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Notice that it isn’t the pain itself that gives us the ability to comfort, but rather the comfort we receive from God as we endure the affliction. When we go through various bouts of suffering, we can rest assured that God can use these experiences to benefit others —if we’re willing to be comforted by Him. In Christ, by the power of the Spirit, we have “eternal comfort” (2 Thes. 2:16), but this eternal comfort comes to us in temporal circumstances through our fellow believers who have persevered through trials and tribulations.

Second, we gain a dependence on God. By enduring hardships, challenges, pain, and suffering, we flex our faith muscles and are enabled to “stand firm” in the teachings of the apostles (2:15). In 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, Paul writes, “For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction . . . that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.” Did you catch that? Through our pain, we learn to eschew self-dependence and embrace dependence on God. Suffering, then, becomes a faith-builder, not a faith-crusher. It makes us able to “stand firm” (2 Thes. 2:15).

Third, we learn to give thanks in everything. In 2 Corinthians 1:10-11, Paul writes: “[God] delivered us from so great a peril of death. . . . And He will yet deliver us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.” Through suffering, we pray. Yet we don’t pray alone. In times of pain and affliction, the body of Christ gathers to pray for one another. Then, when we are delivered from the suffering, God’s people render praise and thanksgiving to Him. It’s no wonder, then, that Paul ends this section with not only a prayer requesting strength for the Thessalonians (2 Thes. 2:16-17), but also a prayer of thanksgiving for their sanctification —accomplished through faith, tested by suffering.

One day, all suffering will come to an end (Rev. 21:1-5). But until that time, we can rest in the assurance that our good God is able to accomplish good things through us, for us, and in us even in the midst of suffering. In Him, we find a light in the darkness that leads us into a harbor of peace and shelters us from the storms of despair.