2 Thessalonians 2:13-17
13 But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord,
because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. 14 He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.15 So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
God’s Gracious Election Extends Into Eternity and Encourages Us Even Now
There’s a trend going around social media right now. It goes something like this:
“Here is what the world has said to millennials:
Welcome to your teenage years! Here’s a traumatic terrorism event to define your adolescence!
Congratulations on graduating! Here’s a great recession!
Welcome to adulthood! Here’s a global pandemic!”
Millennials’ formative years have been filled with a lot challenges that many people have called “once in a lifetime” kind of events. But when multiple “once in a lifetime” kind of events happen in the span of 30 years, are they really once in a lifetime?
And let’s not pretend that millennials are alone in this. We could do this same exercise with other generations too:
“Here is what the world has said to boomers:
Welcome to your teenage years! Here’s a desk to hide under in case nuclear war breaks out!
Congratulations on graduating! Here’s a foreign war and your draft form!
Welcome to adulthood! Here are the most violent and prolonged racial tensions since the 1800s!”
Or,
“Here is what the world has said to the greatest generation:
Welcome to your teenage years! Here’s a world war!
Congratulations on graduating! Here’s a Great Depression!
Welcome to adulthood! Here’s another world war!”
It doesn’t matter to which generation you belong, life in this world is hard, and every new year brings with it new challenges. We’d love to say they’re “once in a lifetime,” but if that’s true, then we’ve all lived through several lifetimes’ worth of trouble. It’s easy to get depressed about it or jaded; it’s easy to develop a “Chicken Little” complex and feel that the sky is falling, or to assume an attitude that says, “Nobody loves me; everybody hates me; guess I’ll go eat worms.”
It’s easy to feel alone, like nobody understands or cares. But God does. And that’s the beauty of our First Lesson for today. In his second letter to the Christians living in Thessalonica, Paul says, “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.”[1]
The Thessalonians were no strangers to trouble. From the first time that Paul visited them, their lives got harder. The Jews grew jealous of Paul’s success in their city, so they formed a mob and started a riot in town. When they couldn’t find Paul, they dragged an innocent Christian named Jason out of his home simply because they knew that he knew Paul. Paul had to flee for his life that very night under cover of darkness, and Jason had to pay his way to freedom.
And it didn’t stop after Paul left. The persecution persisted. In his letter, Paul talks about all the trials they were enduring (1:4). He acknowledges that they were “suffering for the kingdom of God” (1:5), and being troubled by the people of their city because of their faith in God (1:6). There were even people who infiltrated their church and were sharing “fake news.” They said Christ had already come and had taken everyone that was worthwhile back to heaven with him, which meant that if you were still here, then God had abandoned you, i.e. that God didn’t love you, and that you were wasting your time (2:2).
Can you even imagine? Can you imagine being dragged out of your home because one of your neighbours knows that you’re a Christian? Can you imagine being forced to pay fines and fees for your faith? Can you imagine having people inside your own congregation actively contradicting God’s Word and trying to rob you of hope? Give me a global pandemic and a great recession over those things any day!
And yet Paul still says to them: But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.[2]
What Paul is talking about here is the sometimes-confusing Christian doctrine called election. At its most basic, it simply means that God chose you, because he loves you. That’s what Paul says: “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord…”[3]
You may feel hostility in this world, i.e. that people are against you. It may be for your opinions, your lifestyle, your faith. You may feel under attack and marginalized, but Paul says that even if the sky is falling, even if nobody loves you and everybody hates you, you are still loved by the Lord.
And the Lord’s love for you isn’t just a feeling he harbours for you in his heart. The Lord’s love for you has inspired him to take action for you. Paul goes on. He says, “…because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved.”[4] You know, I think the older translation of this verse might be even better: …because from the beginning God chose you to be saved.
Before you were born, God had you in his heart. Before he created the world, he conceived of you in his mind. God always had a desire for you. And that desire caused him to choose you for salvation, to reserve a place for you in heaven with your name on it by his side where you will share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.[5]
And so, when we talk about the doctrine of election, we know that that gracious act of God choosing you is eternal. It goes back before time began and it extends into an eternal, unending future.
When we look at our lives right now, we’re just at one small segment right in the middle. The pain and frustration and hardship that we are feeling right now – as difficult as it truly is – is but the blink of an eye on an eternal landscape. In the doctrine of election, we know that before any of our troubles got started, God’s love for us began. And that love for us carries us through our light and momentary troubles and into a future that God calls glorious, in heaven with Jesus.
Because of God’s gracious act of choosing you, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It doesn’t matter when the vaccine comes or the pandemic ends. It doesn’t matter when your personal problems are a thing of the past. No matter where you are in life or what you’re experiencing, you have something to look forward to. There is relief on the way. And it’s not a false hope or a pipe dream. It’s not a delusion of grandeur or an opiate for the masses. As Paul says to the Thessalonians, God chose you to be saved… through belief in the truth.[6]
Doctrines like election, concepts like eternity, can make our heads spin, but the truth is that God’s love for you is real and tangible. God’s love for you walked this earth in flesh and blood. God’s love for you died on a cross of wood. God’s love for you was wrapped in cloths and buried in a tomb. God’s love for you rose from the dead and was held on to by the women. Thomas put his hands in the nail marks in Jesus’ hands and in the spear wound in Jesus’ side.
God’s love for you is real and tangible, and it’s here today too. Today, we get to see and touch and taste God’s love in the sacrament of Holy Communion. This is his real body and blood given and poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Today, we get to hold and hear God’s word of promise and truth, that reminds us of his love for us.
The Spirit is working invisibly behind the scenes, sure, but it’s no great mystery how God makes his love known to us. It’s the means of grace. It’s the gospel in Word and sacrament. It’s this visible, tangible expression of his eternal love and election. And it’s yours.
That’s why Paul encourages you – no matter what is going on in your life, no matter how the sky is falling – to stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you.[7]
There may come times when you’re afraid. Hold on to the truth that God loves you and wants you to share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why he chose you from eternity and sent his Son to save you. That’s why he called you to faith by sending people to share His Word with you. God has taken every step to ensure that you can have eternal encouragement and good hope.
There may come times when you’re confused, i.e. when conflicting voices are saying contradictory things. Stand firm in the truth of God’s Word so that you’re not tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by ever wind of teaching.[8] God gives you a firm foundation to stand on in his Word. So stand firm in your faith.
It’s not always going to be easy. There will be obstacles to overcome, but that’s why Paul ends with a blessing: May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.[9]
Soul and body, heart and hands, God loves you inside and out. It starts inside, with the courage and confidence that come from knowing God’s love for us in Jesus. But it works its way outside too, with all our works and words. We can be ambassadors of the gospel, bringers of good news to the world and lights of God’s love to others. We can be God’s hands and the expression of his eternal love and gracious election to the world, but only because God gave us someone to be those things for us, and only because God left us His Word to be passed down from generation to generation.
So, whether you’ve lived through terrorist attacks, global pandemics, recessions, depressions, afflictions of the heart or body, you can have hope, because God’s Word endures forever. And because His Word endures, you will too, by the grace God has shown you, through the sanctifying work of his Spirit and through your belief in the truth.
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father… encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.[10] Amen.
[1] 2 Thessalonians 2:13
[2] 2 Thessalonians 2:13,14
[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:13
[4] Ibid
[5] 2 Thessalonians 2:14
[6] Ibid
[7] 2 Thessalonians 2:15
[8] Ephesians 4:14
[9] 2 Thessalonians 2:16,17
[10] Ibid