Overview of 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

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)

To summarize our study of 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, these verses present the content of one of the intercessory prayers that Paul, Silvanus and Timothy offered up to the Father on behalf of each member of the Thessalonian Christian community.

They offered this intercessory prayer based upon the merits of their union and identification with Jesus Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father.

Both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father are described as 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.

The Lord Jesus Christ divinely loved Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community when He voluntarily suffered the righteous indignation of the Father by suffering a substitutionary spiritual and physical death on the cross 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 this righteous indignation in the eternal lake of fire forever.

The Father divinely loved 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 at 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 and 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).

Both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father are also described as having given to Paul, Silvanus and Timothy as well as each member of the Thessalonian Christian community as a gift an encouragement, which is eternal.

This encouragement would include the guarantee of a resurrection body at the rapture or resurrection of the church as well as the guarantee of rewards for faithful service at the Bema Seat Evaluation of the church which immediately follows the rapture.

This encouragement would also include the guarantee of victory over the sin nature, Satan and his cosmic system because they are in union with Jesus Christ and identified with Him in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father.

The Thessalonians would experience this victory by appropriating by faith this union and identification with Jesus Christ.

Lastly, both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father are described in verse 16 as giving as a gift to the Thessalonians a confident expectation of blessing.

This refers to the guarantee of a resurrection body at the rapture of the church as well as rewards for faithful service at the Bema Seat Evaluation of the church which immediately follows the rapture.

Paul asserts that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father did all this by means of their grace, which refers to their grace policy towards sinners, which means that the Father blesses the sinner with all these things based upon the merits of their union and identification with Jesus Christ.

In other words, all these things are a gift from God, which means that they do not earn or deserve any of these blessings.

2 Thessalonians 2:17 reveals the content of this intercessory prayer offered up to the Father by Paul, Silvanus and Timothy on behalf of the Thessalonian Christian community.

This verse reveals that they want the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father to encourage and exhort the hearts of the Thessalonians.

This would involve both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father filling them with courage or strength of purpose and the raising of their confidence in God through Paul, Silvanus and Timothy’s Spirit empowered teaching of the gospel.

It also would involve the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father exhorting them in the sense of authoritatively training each member of the Thessalonian Christian community through Paul, Silvanus and Timothy’s Spirit empowered teaching of the gospel.

Then, Paul explains what he means by the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father exhorting and encouraging them.

He asserts that they would encourage and exhort the Thessalonians by strengthening each of them.

A comparison with 1 Thessalonians 3:2 would indicate that this strengthening would be in relation to their post-justification faith in the gospel.

This strengthening of their post-justification faith in the gospel would be the result of exercising faith resulting in obedience to the Spirit empowered teaching of Paul, Silvanus and Timothy.

This would make the Thessalonians more marked by firm determination or resolution with regards to the gospel.

This strengthening would cause them to become stronger spiritually in the sense of more firm and unchanging in attitude or belief in regard to the gospel and their relationship with the Trinity.

It would cause them to become steadfast in their mental attitude reflecting a mental state that is settled and firmly rooted in the truth of the gospel.

This strengthening of their post-justification faith in the gospel is with respect to every type of action and word, which are divine in quality and character.

In other words, the purpose for which the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father would strengthen the post-justification faith of the Thessalonians is that the Thessalonians would perform actions and speak in a manner which is the result of the Holy Spirit’s work in their lives.

It is the result of exercising faith in their Spirit empowered teaching which results in obedience to the commands and prohibitions, which these three men communicated to the Thessalonians.

These actions and the content of their speech with regards to each other and those outside the Christian community are divine-good in quality and character because they are in accordance with the Father’s will.

They are in accordance with the Father’s will because they are the direct result of a person being influenced by the Spirit.

They are intrinsically valuable, intrinsically good, inherently good in quality but with the idea of good which is also profitable, useful, benefiting others, benevolent because they are based upon and motivated by the teaching of the Spirit in the Word of God and they benefit the members of the Christian community and non-Christian community.