Bible Commentaries

A PROMISE

‘He shall come to he glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe … in that day.’

2 Thessalonians 1:10

In our text the brilliant lights of this promise, ‘He shall come to be glorified in His saints,’ are shown on a very dark background. St. Paul had proclaimed the simple gospel of the grace of God to these Thessalonians. That gospel had been received by many of them, but in much affliction. The offence of the Cross was theirs. The Apostle draws aside the curtain and reveals the events which are veiled to mortal eyes—the coming of the Lord and the light of eternity thrown on the things of time.

I. It was of saints and believers he spoke.—Once dark idolaters they were now light in the Lord. What had made thewondrous change? The acceptance of the message of the gospel. Such a glorious gospel!

II. Christ shall be glorified in His saints.—Why, the skilled workman is admired in his works of skill which he has wrought. The artist is admired in his picture on which he has lavished time and thought. The sculptor is admired in that marvellously chiselled statue which seems almost to breathe. The author in his book, transfused with his deepest thoughts and feelings. Surely God’s people shall show forth His praise? We shall be presented ‘faultless.’ Shall not the Master see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied?

III. It is not the saints who will be admired, but the Saviour. The praise shall all be His. In the perfected Bride there will be a perfect reflection of Christ.

This leads us on to the Apostle’s prayer (2 Thessalonians 1:11).

Bishop E. H. Bickersteth.

Illustration

‘There is a distinction between “glorified in the saints” and “admired in them that believe.” We must trace the difference. “Saints” are either those in whom the great work of sanctification is going on in this world, or those in whom it is perfected in the world to come. In this passage it is the perfectly holy. Now, holiness, as regards man, is the final end. All else—election, redemption, grace—is only a means to the one end—that we may be holy. Therefore we are always taught to think of everything else as a first principle, and to go on to holiness. And the reason is this: Holiness is the image of God; to see His own image is the will and purpose of God. That there might be an image of God was the first creation, that there might be an image of God is the second creation. The thick clay will have become the beautiful vessel—the rude ore will be the pure, fine gold. Out of the unlikeliest materials the hands of the Almighty will have made His masterpiece—the pearl from the shell, the diamond from the charcoal—and the whole world will marvel at that transformation; and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost will be “glorified in His saints.”’

A PRAYER

‘To which end we also pray always for you, that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfil every desire of goodness and every work of faith, with power; that the Name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and ye in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.’

2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 (R.V.)

These words of the Apostle Paul were a prayer for the infant Christian Church at Thessalonica, a church founded by him some twenty years after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. St. Paul was wishing to encourage the Thessalonian Christians—a small body of believers in the midst of much opposition and many perplexities—to be steadfast in their faith. He bids them look on for the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven, as an event in which all righteous judgment should culminate.

I. ‘The Name of our Lord Jesus’ had for the Apostle Paul, and has for all who believe as Paul did, a sacred, a personal, a living significance. No one can fail to perceive the parallel which suggests itself between the petition taught by Christ to His disciples in the prayer to ‘our Father in heaven,’ and the wish of St. Paul here as he looks up and away from earth’s sin and suffering to the yearned-for future of a perfected salvation.

‘Hallowed be Thy Name’ is the primary attitude of a soul turned Godward. But, it may be asked, is such attitude legitimate, Christward? Most assuredly yes, if we honestly receive and believe the gospel records of what Christ was, and taught, and did.

II. How is this Name glorified?—Think of two utterances of Christ Himself. ‘The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.’ He then intimates that through suffering and death should come the glorious issue; and His soul is troubled within Him, and yet confident as to the final victory. Again, our Lord in speaking to His disciples about the Spirit of Truth said, ‘He shall glorify Me.’ God glorified in Christ; Christ glorified by the Spirit; the world attracted, the disciples taught; and disciples thus enlightened, inspired, encouraged, are to preach remission of sins in Christ’s Name unto all the nations of the earth: this is, in brief sum, the function of the Messianic age, the progressive glorification of the Name of our Lord Jesus among men.

III. The effect upon human progress of Christ’s claims and of the response to them is indisputable.—Men recognise ‘Christianity’ as a great transforming power, and as a great ethical force in the world; but do not let us forget that its power is personal and its force is spiritual energy, exercised in the life of Christians. It is no abstract system of theology or ethics that has produced the ameliorating, or expanding, or elevating effects which show themselves in connection with the spread and reception of the Christian religion; it is the practical outcome of glorifying the Name of our Lord Jesus.

—Archbishop Saumarez Smith.

Illustration

‘Christ Jesus cannot be disestablished from human history; nor can His resurrection be disproved, though it can be denied. Non-Christian critics are themselves compelled to some extent to glorify Christ’s Name. When Strauss, the German critic, says, “Jesus stands in the first line of those who have developed the idea of humanity,” and that “in Him is condensed all that is good and excellent in our nature”; when Renan, the French man of letters, says that “Jesus is the individual who has made His species take the greatest step towards the Divine”; when John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher (in a passage often quoted), tells us that it would not “even now be easy for an unbeliever to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life”; the Christian believer may—not self-complacently, but gratefully—feel how these testimonies tend to prove that the logical position and the moral certainty of the Christian, who believes, is superior to that of the non-believer, who criticises.’