Life Project Blog

2Thessalonians 3:6-13

In these verses Paul pulls no punches as he gives instruction to the Thessalonians regarding Christians who are idle. A common view of this text is that people within the church became idle because they believed that the Lord would return immediately- and quit working to support themselves and their families. Actually, this is the way I was taught to understand it, but upon closer investigation, it seems unlikely.

Paul wrote about Jesus’ return in chapter 2. He writes about idleness here in chapter 3; why didn’t he link them together directly? What he actually did was to separate them, to place a bridge of transition in between and then raise a new subject, keeping these two points apart. If he wanted to tell people that Jesus wasn’t coming back any time soon (which he did NOT tell them) then it would have been a great deal more effective for him to have told them to get back to work in chapter 2. If you combine that with the fact that he wasn’t telling them that Jesus would return in a long time, he was writing to tell them He hadn’t come back yet; the notion of eschatology being the reason for the idleness seems very unlikely indeed.

A more likely approach to this text is that some had stopped working because the believing community of the first century was so generous with each other that they just didn’t feel it was necessary to work; thus, they were taking advantage of the generosity of others, placing an added burden on the ones who had to provide for them, which is no way to present the gospel to the larger community. Paul’s point here is that they must not allow this kind of behavior in the church.

Paul’s seriousness is evident right off the bat as he “commands” in the Lord’s name that this must stop (v. 6). In 7-9, Paul reminds everyone that when he was with them, he worked every day to pay for his own food, and that he did so as an example to be followed by all.

 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” (3:10)

This verse makes a very clear point that one who is unwilling to work isn’t to be helped in the church. The New Testament writers, including Paul are very clear that the ones who are unable to work are to receive help of all kinds, and those who are in a temporary bad way are to be helped, but those who just want to be lazy are to be permitted to reap the harvest they have sown- for their own edification.

Verses 11-12 go on to mention that at least some of these idlers were using their leisure to insert themselves into the business of others, and of course that also must stop.

In the centuries that have passed, some have taken this as teaching for non-church governmental bodies and outside social policy, and this view misses the point of Paul’s message entirely. First, Paul is speaking of life within the church, not in the outside community. In the first century, there were some provisions made for the poor and destitute, although nothing like we have today in most places; Paul did not mention this or comment upon it at all. His instruction here is within the strict confines of church discipline and the way believers should behave.

Now that we have completed 2Thessalonians 2, I thought it might be a good idea for us to sit back, relax and consider what we have discovered there. Oh yes, dear reader, we have made a major discovery in this chapter, and if you haven’t seen it before, I would recommend that you pause and let it sink in, for we have discovered a portal through which we can get a rare glimpse of what is really going on all around us, every hour of every day. We can see that there is much more to this life than the things that we can see, touch, feel, taste and smell. We can also begin to understand the very forces behind human history in this rare glimpse into eternity.

Am I overstating my case here? No, not a chance!

Most of the time, readers of this chapter miss this opportunity, for most teachers these days pull the text out of its actual context to use it as supporting material for one or another eschatological doctrine. Now this may seem natural enough to many, but Paul wasn’t writing about the end of time here, he was writing about all time, and when we come to that realization, so many things become clear. It is almost as if a veil has been removed so that we can see clearly. That is why I was so painstaking in the way I covered these 12 verses.

We began with a little theory:

Jesus Messiah came, and Satan opposed Him with everything at his disposal, and finally was able to have Him killed, and in so doing, Old Satan stepped right into a trap. I would imagine that round about the time of the resurrection, or at the latest at Pentecost, he recognized that Christ’s Kingdom, indwelt by the Holy Spirit spreading across the planet was his worst nightmare, and thus almost immediately, he launched an all-out frontal attack against it. He used everything he could muster to try and destroy the fledgling Kingdom, concentrating his strength in the power and might of the Romans. Those good brothers and sisters of ours in Thessalonica found themselves under attack on the front lines of this assault, as did others in various places over the next one or two hundred years.

God, thinking for the long term, did not directly intervene to take away the attack, remember that His most notable attribute is restraint, not the unlimited exercise of His awesome power. Instead, God provided those people the spiritual resources that would be necessary for them to not only survive this attack, but to actually grow and prosper spiritually while it continued, for the time had not yet come for Jesus to return. The more Satan tried to destroy the church, the more it grew, and eventually, Satan was forced to change his tactics. Even though the battle rages on, the result of God’s strategy is that literally billions more people became part of God’s Kingdom, including you and me.

If you read through the posts on this section, you saw that this working theory was borne out. Now that we have finished the section, we can add a few details.

The “man of lawlessness” is not someone who will come to the scene one day, for he is Satan, who has been working in opposition to God and His purposes since the very beginning, was doing so when Paul wrote the letters to the Thessalonians, and is still hard at work today. As he does so, God restrains him, and he can only go so far. God’s purpose will be done in full when God sees fit to complete it and Jesus returns, and Satan will not be allowed to keep God from accomplishing this. We do not know when that will be, but based upon what Paul has told us in 2Thessalonians 2:1-12, it could be at any time.

Satan uses multiple tactics in his fight against God. In the time of the Thessalonians, he was using a direct tactic, persecution. If you were paying close attention, you will have also noticed that Satan used an indirect method, when person or persons unknown attempted to deceive the Thessalonica Christians into thinking that Jesus had already returned. If the Thessalonica believers had allowed themselves to believe this, there would have been little point in their remaining faithful to the Lord, but to God’s glory, they did not falter.

Does Satan engage in other deceptions? Well, you know the answer to that; he was a liar from the beginning and the father of lies. We see them everywhere around us in every area of life, and each has as its object the frustration of God’s purpose of redemption and the ruin of those who accept the lie. Joseph Goebbels reportedly said that people will always believe the lie and the bigger the lie, the more readily it is believed. Since he was Hitler’s propaganda minister, I guess he must have known what he was talking about.

The Thessalonians must have wondered why God didn’t just put an end to their persecution; why Jesus didn’t just come back. We today might wonder the same thing: “Why doesn’t Jesus just return today?”

I can’t answer that question, for I don’t know. I do know this however: If Jesus had come back in the days of Paul and the Thessalonians, you and I would never have had the opportunity to share in the inheritance of our Lord.

Well dear reader, that’s probably enough for now; suffice it say that I could go on and on with this subject. Think on these things, then have a look around you, and think some more. You might be surprised how much you see.