The fledgling Christians had believed the gospel and trusted in Jesus. As a result, they immediately faced such violent opposition that some had been killed. It was essential for these Christians, therefore, to stand firm in their faith, relying on God to save them. If the Thessalonians sought a worldly solution to their problem, and especially if they betrayed their faith in Christ, the result would be eternal disaster. In this situation, Paul reminds them that God’s righteous judgment would destroy their enemies in due time and that their faith would ultimately win salvation when Christ returns.

One of the thoughts that undermines the faith of suffering believers is the idea that God doesn’t care or is uninvolved in their trials. In Romans 8:32, Paul countered this harmful idea by pointing out that God has already acted decisively for us in sending His Son to die for our sins. Since the cross, God can never credibly be accused of remaining aloof from the trials of this world. In 2 Thessalonians 1:5, Paul advances another reason why they should never believe that God had abandoned them in their suffering. In verse 4, he had boasted about their “steadfastness and faith” in affliction. Now, he adds that this very faith is “evidence of the righteous judgment of God.”

The fact that the believers were continuing to trust the Lord while suffering was a sign that God was working in them and was on their side, thus anticipating the final judgment of His and their enemies. Suffering Christians sometimes ask, “Why isn’t God doing something?” The first answer is that God has already done what is most needful in sending His Son to die for our sins. A second answer is that God is upholding our faith under trials so that we will be saved in the end.

Reading Paul’s treatment of persecution introduces us to the Christian understanding of suffering and trials. The non-Christian regards suffering as an utter disaster to be avoided at nearly all costs. It is likely that some believers in Thessalonica were thinking this way. If God is sovereign, how could they be experiencing persecution? If God loves His children, how could He stand by while they suffer and even die?

The Bible teaches, first, that suffering is inevitable for the believer. The Christian is never promised a care-free life but is in fact promised trials and affliction. Earlier Paul had reminded the Thessalonians that “we are destined for this” kind of trouble (1 Thess. 3:3). Christians are destined for tribulation just as certainly as we are destined for glory, both of which result from our union with Christ. “If you were of the world,” Jesus taught, “this world would love you as its own; but because you are not of this world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you…If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:19-20). Every Christian is duly forewarned that trials are part and parcel of the Christian experience.

Given this understanding of afflictions and persecution, Paul writes to change his readers’ attitude. They should realize not only that their steadfast faith anticipates God’s judgment on their enemies, but also that they may be “considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering” (2 Thess. 1:5). The point is not that enduring under suffering makes us worthy of Christ’s kingdom, but rather that it reveals our membership in Christ, which is by God’s grace and through faith. According to the Bible, faithful suffering for the kingdom is in fact necessary to mark those who will inherit His glory by God’s grace.

As Paul sees it, the key to enduring persecution is to understand God’s righteous judgment. In verse 5, he wanted his readers to see their steadfast faith as both evidence of God’s faithfulness and proof of their right to enter Christ’s kingdom. Continuing in verse 6, Paul turns to the other side of the coin, displaying God’s avenging justice against the ungodly who persecute His church: “since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you.”

Here Paul states the biblical principle of divine retribution for sin. Believers in Jesus rely on God’s righteousness for our salvation: we know that God will keep His promises and that the payment that Jesus offered for our sins will be accepted. This same divine righteousness, however, ensures precise repayment for the sins of all those who do not receive Christ in faith. In particular, those who “afflict” God’s people will be repaid by God “with affliction” in return.

When Christians point out God’s righteous judgment of sinners, the question is sometimes raised as to how a loving God can treat people this way. The Bible’s answer is that God loved the world by sending His Son to die on the cross. Paul specifies that God will judge “those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (v. 8). This shows that unbelievers who refuse to accept Jesus in faith are judged precisely for spurning the love that God offered them. Having rejected the only way of forgiveness and reconciliation with God, persistent unbelievers have no other option than to be repaid “with affliction” (v. 6).

The inevitable question that suffering Christians will ask, especially under extreme duress, is when God will come to judge and repay their oppressors. Paul has reminded the suffering Thessalonians that God was already helping them by upholding their faith and that this help proved His final judgment of unbelief. But when will that final judgment actually take place? Paul’s answer is that it will happen at the second coming of Christ: “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels” (v. 7). This is the second time that Paul has emphasized the return of Christ to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, the apostle offered Christ’s return as our hope for believers who have died. Now he comes back to Christ’s return as the time when the ungodly are judged and the oppression of God’s people come to a final end.

Paul provides a stirring picture of Christ’s glorious return, saying that He will be revealed “with his mighty angels in flaming fire” (vv. 7-8). We are reminded of Jesus’ remark before His arrest, when His glory as the Christ was so completely veiled to human sight that men thought is right to put Him to death. When Peter sought to defend Jesus with a sword in the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord responded, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more that twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53). Jesus explained that the angels would be kept at bay in order for Him to offer His blood as the Lamb of God who died for our sins.

The angelic host that so marveled in the Bethlehem sky when Jesus was born of the virgin Mary must have strained at the leash when Jesus forbade them to vent their fury at those who would nail Him to the cross. But when His glory is unveiled in the second coming, that angel host will be set free to take “vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (v. 8). The book of Revelation shows that angels will bring final judgment to the earth in the fires of God’s wrath. John writes: “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God’” (Rev. 16:1). The final bowl of wrath in Revelation is the very vengeance that Paul sees unleashed by angels when Jesus returns.

Whereas the appearing of Christ will spell doom for the unbelieving world in the righteous judgment of God, the same appearing will “grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us” (v. 7). Christ’s coming will remove all suffering and affliction from His people and usher them into a glorious communion that will last forever. Believers will be greatly relieved to be taken by Jesus to the place that He has been preparing, but even more, filled with joy that He takes us to Himself.

2 Thessalonians 1:5-8 Study Questions:

If being a Christian were made illegal by a hostile government, so that believers risked arrest by gathering for worship, how many of the people who fill evangelical Western churches today do you think would still do so?

What about you? Why do you come to church now? Would you identify yourself as a Christian if you could be persecuted for it?

How will God’s justice be worked out in the world as seen in verses 5-10?

How is justice different from vengeance? Think about your own life, your community or the world. How do you currently most desire to see God’s justice done?

In verses 5-10, Paul describes for the Thessalonians what future Justice and the coming of Jesus will look like. How would these words have deeply encouraged the young believers?