2 Thessalonians 2.16a-The Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father Divinely-Loved the Child of God
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday September 30, 2021
Second Thessalonians: 2 Thessalonians 2:16a-The Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father Divinely-Love the Child of God
Lesson # 45
2 Thessalonians 2:16 Now, may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself as well as God, who is our Father, who divinely loved each and every one of us, namely by means of grace having given to each one of us as a gift an encouragement, which is eternal resulting in a confident expectation of blessing, which is divine-good, 17 encourage and exhort your hearts. Specifically, by strengthening each and every one of you with respect to every kind of action and oral communication, which are divine-good in quality and character. (Lecturer’s translation)
2 Thessalonians 2:16 is marking a transition from Paul’s statements in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 to his statements in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17.
Now, in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, Paul communicates to the Thessalonian Christian community an intercessory prayer that he, Silvanus and Timothy regularly offered up to the Father on behalf of each and every one of them.
They communicate this prayer to the Thessalonians to encourage them and to express their love and concern for them.
In this prayer, both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father are described as having loved them.
By divinely-loving them, Paul means that by means of grace the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father gave to each of them an encouragement, which is eternal in nature which resulted in a confident expectation of blessing, which is divine-good in quality and character.
Paul, Silvanus and Timothy requested that both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father encourage and exhort the hearts of the Thessalonians by strengthening them with respect to every kind of action and word, which is divine-good in quality and character.
Therefore, 2 Thessalonians 2:16 is marking a transition from Paul communicating to the Thessalonians that he, Silvanus and Timothy regularly gave thanks to the Father for them which is followed by their command for them to begin to strongly adhere to their teaching regarding the eschatological day of the Lord and continue doing so to communicating to them, the intercessory prayer that he, Silvanus and Timothy regularly offered up to the Father for them.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 contain a grammatical oddity related to the referent of the third person singular form of the verbs agapaō (ἀγαπάω), didōmi (δίδωμι), parakaleō and stērizō (στηρίζω) since all of these verbs are used with a plural subject.
Specifically, the subject of all four of these verbs is the articular nominative masculine singular form of the noun kurios (κύριος), “Lord” as well as the articular nominative masculine singular form of the noun theos (θεός), “God.”
Therefore, both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father are the referents of all four of these verbs and thus perform the actions of all four of them.
Therefore, in relation to the verb agapaō (ἀγαπάω), this would indicate that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father performed the action of divinely loving Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community.
This love is divine in nature and does not refer to the function of human love because it is intrinsic to the character and nature of each member of the Trinity.
Therefore, in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, this would indicate that the Lord Jesus Christ divinely loving Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community when He voluntarily suffered the righteous indignation of the Father.
The Lord Jesus Christ suffered the righteous indignation of the Father by suffering a substitutionary spiritual and physical death on the cross in place of the Thessalonians and all sinful humanity in order to deliver them from the Father’s righteous indignation in the eternal lake of fire forever.
This sacrificial act also redeemed each of them out of the slave market of sin, reconciled them to a holy God and propitiated the Father’s holiness, which demanded that sin and sinners be judged.
Also, in relation to God the Father, this would indicate that the Father divinely loved Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community by offering His one and only Son as a substitute for each of them on the cross.
It would indicate that the Father divinely loved each one of them by exercising His righteous indignation against His one and only Son in order that each of them would never experience His righteous indignation in the eternal lake of fire forever.
This would also indicate the Father performed the act of divinely loving Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community when He identified each of them with His Son in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the Father’s right hand through the baptism of the Spirit the moment He declared them justified through faith in His Son.
Consequently, this identification delivered the justified sinner from eternal condemnation, condemnation from the Law, personal sins, spiritual and physical death, enslavement to the sin nature and Satan and his cosmic system.
Through this identification with Jesus Christ, the justified sinner is delivered in a positional sense from these things.
By positional, I mean that God views the justified sinner as crucified, died, buried, raised and seated with Christ.
It also means that this is what God has done for the justified sinner through the Spirit and His Son.
It also sets up a guarantee of receiving a resurrection body at the rapture of the church.
Lastly, it sets up the potential to experience this deliverance in time.
I say potential because the justified sinner can only experience this great deliverance by appropriating by faith this union and identification with Jesus Christ.
This is accomplished by the justified sinner considering themselves as crucified, died, buried, raised and seated with Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand (cf. Rom. 6:1-11; Col. 3:1-5).
Charles Spurgeon writes “From this we gather that every true believer, everyone who rests upon Christ and is saved through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, is at the present moment, first of all, the object of the love of God: ‘who has loved us.’ Paul does not speak of God as though we were strangers to Him and He a stranger to us, but he says, ‘who has loved us.’ Concerning this matter he does not speak as one who was in doubt, with mangled hope and fear, but he says positively, ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who has loved us.’ He is quite sure of it; he is certain that these people to whom he is writing, and all believers in Jesus, are the objects of divine love.
Being spoken of in the past tense, I infer that the love that God has for believers is no novelty. He did not commence to love them yesterday. We believe that as many as have been called by grace have been the objects of a love that never knew a beginning. Long before the stars were lit or the sun’s refulgent ray had pierced through primeval shade, the heart of Deity had fixed itself upon the chosen. They were not merely foreknown, but they were fore-loved; they were the favorites of His heart, the dear ones of His choice. He ‘has loved us.’ Fly back as far as you will, till time is not begun and the work of creation is not accomplished, and God dwells alone. It was still true of all believers, even then, that ‘God our Father has loved us.’
Is it not marvelous that we should have been the objects of a love that has been so constant? For, as there never was any beginning to it, so there never has been a period in which that love has grown dim toward those who were the objects of it. The river of God’s love has gone flowing on in one undiminished stream even until now. He ‘has loved us.’ He loved us when our father Adam plunged us into the ruins of the fall. He loved us when He spoke the first promise in the garden of Eden that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. He loved us all through the prophetic days when He was writing the Book of love upon which our delighted eyes were afterwards to gaze. He loved us when He sent his Son, His only Son, to live our life and to die our death. He loved us when He exalted that Son of His to his own right hand, and in His person exalted us there too, and made us to sit in heavenly places together with Him.
The marvel is not merely that God has loved, but that He has loved us, so insignificant, so frail, so foolish, let us add—for this increases the marvel—so sinful, and therefore so uncomely, so ungrateful, and therefore so provoking, so willfully obstinate in returning to old sins again, and therefore so deserving to be abhorred and rejected! I can imagine the Lord’s love to the apostles. We can sometimes think of His love to the early saints without any great wonder, and of His love to the patriarchs and to the confessors and the martyrs, and to some eminently holy men whose biographies have charmed us. But that our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself God, even our Father, should have loved us, is a world of wonders!”16