2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 - Exposition

When that restraining influence was removed, the man of sin would be revealed, accompanied with powers and signs and wonders of falsehood, and would succeed in deceiving those who were destitute of the love of the truth. Then would the Lord Jesus Christ come and destroy him by the breath of his mouth and the appearance of his presence. The apostle thanks God that the Thessalonians, on the contrary, were chosen to salvation and to a participation of the glory of the Lord; he exhorts them to stand fast in the instructions which he had delivered them; and he concludes with a prayer for their consolation and confirmation.

This chapter is involved in difficulties; it is the obscurest passage in the writings of Paul; it is pre-eminently one of those things in his Epistles which are hard to be understood ( 2 Peter 3:16 ). But it is to be observed that the description of the man of sin, though obscure to us, was not necessarily obscure to the Thessalonians. They had information on this point which we do not possess. The apostle, when at Thessalonica, had instructed them in this subject, and to these instructions he refers in the description which he here gives ( 2 Thessalonians 2:5 , 2 Thessalonians 2:6 ). Nor was the information which he imparted to them indefinite and general, but definite and precise. He had described the nature of the apostasy, the characteristics of the man of sin, and the influences which retarded his manifestation ( 2 Thessalonians 2:3 , 2 Thessalonians 2:4 ); and if these points were known to us, as they were to the Thessalonians, most of the obscurity which rests on this prediction would disappear. At present we give the exposition of the passage, reserving the discussion of the various theories concerning its interpretation to an excursus at the end of the chapter.