Scripture Daily

Context No. 444 of 4322 · 2 Thessalonians

Context · Reflection

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12: in context

1Now, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you 2not to be quickly shaken in your mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter as if from us, saying that the day of Christ has already come. 3Let no one deceive you in any way. For it will not be unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction. 4He opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, setting himself up as God. 5Don’t you remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? 6Now you know what is restraining him, to the end that he may be revealed in his own season. 7For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way. 8Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the manifestation of his coming; 9even he whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn’t receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11Because of this, God sends them a powerful delusion, that they should believe a lie, 12that they all might be judged who didn’t believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This is one of the more mysterious passages in Paul's letters, full of apocalyptic imagery: a coming rebellion, a man of lawlessness who exalts himself above every god and sets himself up in God's own temple, a hidden restraining force holding him back until the appointed time, and finally his defeat by the mere breath of the Lord's mouth. There is a great deal here that is debated and hard to pin down. But near the end of the passage Paul explains the mechanism by which people are deceived by this figure, and that explanation is clear, sober, and searching, and it applies far beyond any end-times scenario.

The lawless one comes, Paul says, with counterfeit signs and wonders and every kind of deception, and it works on those who are perishing. But watch the reason he gives for why it works on them: because they did not receive the love of the truth, so as to be saved. And then the chilling next line: for this reason God sends them a strong delusion, so that they believe the lie, and are condemned, because they did not believe the truth but delighted in unrighteousness. The deception is not random, and it does not strike people out of nowhere. It comes to those who first refused to love the truth. There is a moral logic to self-deception here: a person who will not love the truth, especially the unwelcome truth, gradually loses the ability to tell truth from falsehood, until he cannot see the lie for what it is. And underneath it Paul names the deeper problem, a heart that took pleasure in unrighteousness, that preferred what was comfortable to what was true.

That is a warning worth taking personally, because it locates the root of being deceived not in a lack of intelligence but in a lack of love for the truth. It is possible to know the truth and not love it, to tolerate it while quietly preferring the more flattering or convenient version. Do I actually love the truth, even when it exposes me or costs me or contradicts what I would rather believe, or do I merely put up with it, when Paul warns that refusing to love the truth is the very doorway through which delusion comes in?

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