Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
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.
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.
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. - 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17
"They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." These words open a question in my mind: Why do they refuse to love the truth? There must be something unpalatable about the truth that people would refuse to accept it or the promises that come with it. It is somehow so repulsive that Paul has to remind the believers in Thessaloniki to "stand firm and hold fast" because they might perfer to give way and let go.
What is it? I think it is the death to self. "Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Matt. 16:24) There are dreams that must be placed on that cross--an exchange of my dreams for God's. And those magnificent dreams of God are often fuzzy, so distant and not made clear to us--so obscured that we trade them for the paltry hopes that we can see. We trade the feast promised tomorrow for the soup and bread that we can grasp now.
When Paul talks about the future delusion of the world. When people follow after the "lawless one" we know what he is offering, maybe know it is a lie but rationalize that a lie we know is better than glorious future we don't know. But this lawless one lets us keep the illusion that we are in control, the illusion that it is our choice, never realizing that all of the so-called choices he gives are equally damning. Christ asks us to choose him, to admit that we have chosen badly, and follow him wherever he leads.
Acting this way--choosing a person rather than choosing a destination that we choose is really difficult because it means we don't get to be right. We don't get to be the hero of our own story. There is no more rationalization. We are failures-but failures who are deeply loved.
We don't get to be right. Only Jesus gets to be right. That can be liberating or really upsetting. Every time we try to climb back in the throne and try to be the one who is right, we find it a loser's game.
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