The Love of God for His New Creation

¹³ But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. ¹⁴ To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁵ So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

¹⁶ Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, ¹⁷ comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

Tomorrow my oldest son turns 20 years old. As a college student now exiting his teenage years, this is a big milestone. When you turn 20, there is a lot to look forward to, a lot of significant things you are about to do. And in all the things we set out to do, there is the accompanying desire to find fulfillment and satisfaction, meaning and purpose. Much of that quest is settled by whether we enjoy our calling and our work and all the other things we do with our lives.

But consider another question: Does God enjoy his work? Does God find purpose and meaning in the things he does? And if so, does it matter for us? Does God’s enjoyment of his work have any impact on how we go about doing our own work?

Last week we studied the first twelve verses of the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians. It has to do with concerns about the Second Coming of Christ and the arrival of the promised “day of the Lord.” The focus of much of that passage is on the terrifying fate that awaits those who do “not believe the truth” of the gospel of Jesus and are led astray by the “wicked deception” of rebellion against the Lord.

The passage before us today is a concluding contrast to what we see in the first twelve verses. The nineteenth century Scottish theologian, James Denney, noted that in verses 13-14 we are given “a system of theology in miniature.” [1] Here we find a scope of all of redemptive history, the entirety of what we might call, “The things God has done.” What we’ll see is that the gospel reveals God’s great love for his people, a love which motivates Christians to live out their respective life callings. The privileges of being a Christian are to be seen in the great Christian tradition we’ve been given. And then we are free to live day by day under the blessing of God.

The Christian Privilege

If we’re going to rehearse the story of redemption, the story of our salvation, we should recognize that the kind of story we are telling is a love story. This story is categorized as romance through and through. I know this can be uncomfortable for some; for others, this is critically important for us to see. God loves his people! He loves them more than you can imagine. And if you are one of God’s chosen ones, then God loves you more than you can imagine.

Beloved Brothers

Two words occurring back-to-back in verse 13 remind us of this great love. Paul says here, as he did back in the first chapter (2 Thess 1:3), that he ought to always give thanks to God for these believers in Thessalonica because they are “brothers beloved.” Now the word brothers does not exclude the female believers, as most modern English versions make plain (the ESV usually does this in a footnote). And the letters to the Thessalonians use this expression a total of 28 times. Why?

It’s a term of endearment, but it’s also a term of identity. What makes us Christians brothers and sisters together is the fact that we are “beloved by the Lord.” This description signifies some act of love by God in the past that characterizes us still in the present.[2] We could look one another square in the eyes and say, “You are loved, dearly loved, by God, brother or sister in Christ.” Oh what a privilege this is to be loved by God!

Chosen by God and for God

What is this act of love by God in the past that characterizes us in the present? It is God’s election. “God chose you.”

The Bible often speaks of sovereign election, but it does so with different terms. In Romans 8:29 we read about the foreknowledge of God, a term that does not mean merely to know about something before it happens. It is more relational than that. It means to “choose beforehand.”[3] God chooses his people long before they choose him. It is an act of love that is free. It does not depend on us loving God first. No, it is God’s love that precedes and even cause our own (1 Jn 4:19).

The word that occurs here in verse 13 is also not the standard Greek word for choosing something. This verb occurs only two other times in the New Testament and is also a highly relational term, emphasizing personal selection, what one chooses to take for one’s self. It is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 26:18 where God chooses Israel to be his treasured possession. This is no cold, impersonal choice of one over another. This is the kind of choice that is being expressed, for example, in marriage vows, when the bride and groom say to one another, “I take you.” God’s love is not his willingness to tolerate you. God’s love is his delight in having you, in taking you for himself.

The Firstfruits of Salvation

And there’s more in verse 13. God loved us so God chose us. But notice the objective complement, “as the firstfruits to be saved.” What does it mean that God has chosen us, even that he has chosen us for himself? What now? What does it matter? What does it do?

In the Old Testament, the “firstfruits” of a crop were to be sacrificed, given up as an offering to God. But the purpose of this was not simply to give God his portion; God didn’t need their sacrifices anyway. Rather, the point of the sacrifice of the firstfruits was to signify that the entire harvest was being dedicated to God. It all belonged to him and was to be used and enjoyed as he intended for it to be.

So to say that God chose the Thessalonians “as the firstfruits to be saved” does not mean that they were in some way the first Christians either in the city or in the region or even in their generation, however much these things may have been true. What Paul seems to have in mind here is what James 1:18 says: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” In other words, every Christian has been chosen by God, even chosen for himself, to receive and experience salvation in the present age. “Salvation” here should be seen in its full, new creation sense. The experience of being chosen by God is the experience of something ahead of time, before the full harvest has arrived.

Think of it this way. God could have chosen to save you but then only actually saved you at the end of time, at the Second Coming. The point here is not to lead us into speculation about that possibility, but simply to lead us into the celebration of what God has already done for us now. He has made us as Christians “a kind of firstfruits.” We are enjoying now the reality of new creation even before that new creation has come. And all of this is by the sovereign, loving choice of God. Oh how he loves you and me!

The Christian Tradition

In light of all we’ve been given, as recipients of God’s love, how could we throw it all away? In verse 15, the Apostle gives an exhortation, which must be understood in light of what we have just seen in verses 13-14. “So then, brothers,” he begins. In light of all we have been given through the incomparable love of God, we must “stand firm.”

Stand Firm

What does it mean to stand firm? Many people might hear this as something like, “Be a good Christian.” The current president of Dallas Theological Seminary, Mark Yarbrough, tells of the time when he was about to get up and preach at the Billy Graham Training Center when Billy Graham himself slipped in and took a seat in the back. Seeing the nervousness increase in the young preacher, the late seminary professor, Howard Hendricks, leaned over to Yarbrough and whispered to him, “Just don’t screw it up!”

The Christian faith is not like a great inheritance we’ve been given that now means all that is left for us to do is to keep from messing it all up. It is a great inheritance, an incredible gift of grace, but “stand firm” is a word of encouragement, not shame. There is no pessimism here, no cold conservatism that leaves us feeling like we must maintain our grip as our hands grow weak and weary.

In Galatians 5:1 we find the same word, “stand firm.” Here’s what that verse says: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” The reason we are to “stand firm” is not so we can just barely make it and finally be free from the troubles that surround us. We are to “stand firm” because we’ve already been set free by Christ. The Christian faith is about freedom, liberation, and new creation. The world is looking for progress, and as Christians we know what that is.

Hold the Traditions

That’s why the command to “stand firm” is further defined by the exhortation that follows: “hold to the traditions that you were taught.” The word tradition will cause many people to think that this is that backward-looking impulse of Christianity, but nothing could be further from the truth.

By “tradition,” Paul does not mean things we believe and do just because we’ve always believed them and done them. The word does mean something that has been handed down, but the point of Christian tradition is that it originates with Jesus.[4] Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul warn of the dangers of an empty traditionalism that find their origins in someone other than Jesus.

This tradition, the Christian tradition, is not about the deadness of traditionalism but the promise of new creation and the enjoyment of the vitality to be found in communion with the risen Christ.[5] Don’t you see? If the tradition we believe, if what has been handed down to us, is the news that our Lord died and was buried and then was raised on the third day (1 Cor 15:3-4), then this is a living tradition, a faith that is both new and old all at the same time. The more we look back to Christ the more we are empowered to move forward into Christ and to experience the reality of the new creation we’ve been privileged to experience now. The older we are in Christ the newer we become. That is the Christian tradition.

What We Were Taught

The problem here is that for us, to “hold to the traditions” as Paul says here, means that sometimes we have to do what sounds like the opposite of what he says. Paul told the Thessalonians to hold to the traditions “that you were taught,” but often that requires us to reject some of the things that we were taught. As an apostle of the Lord, Paul can tell these believers to hold to what they were taught because he himself was their teacher, both by spoken word and by letter. He was giving them the instruction he had been given by Christ himself.

But at the beginning of this chapter, he warned them about being shaken by “a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us” that was a deviation from the Christian tradition they had received from him (2 Thess 2:2). False teaching and false traditions are a constant threat, and we must learn to judge all things by the Christian tradition that is set for us in the Scriptures. We are always in need of the reform that comes to us as we go back and align ourselves with the authoritative word of God, faithfully proclaimed and rightly understood. And when the Word of God is rightly understood, we should find ourselves in company with so many other Christians who have gone before us. The Christian tradition is rich indeed! We should press into it more and more. In so doing, you just might discover fresh insights into this world that were quite well known by many of our Christian ancestors in generations long ago.

The Christian Blessing

Paul brings this section to a close with a benediction in verses 16-17. If we can see the enormous privilege it is to be a Christian, as we see it through the teaching of the Christian tradition, then the future for all of us is bright indeed, and we live out our days under the blessing of God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

The Blessing of a Benediction

Now what is a benediction? It is in one sense a prayer: Paul is interceding for the believers in Thessalonica, asking God to do something on their behalf. But what is unique about a benediction is that it is addressed indirectly to God but directly to the ones for whom the speaker is praying.

The Greek syntax often found in a benediction is a verbal mood that expresses an action as possible. Thus, a benediction is a request that God will do something for someone. Something that has not yet been done. But there is no uncertainty that is being implied here; the uncertainty is meant only to reflect the petitioner’s humility before God.[6] Thus, a benediction is also meant to bless and encourage the hearer as he or she hears what God intends to do on his or her behalf.

Comfort and Hope

In this particular benediction, we are reminded of what God the Father and the Son together have already done for us. They have “loved us” and have given “us eternal comfort and good hope through grace” (v. 16). Here are just some of the treasures of our tradition brought back out for us to look at again. The infinite, matchless love of God in Christ and the certain hope that comes by his lavish grace. For those who are weak and weary, beaten up by sin and Satan, this is the encouragement you need for another week ahead of you. Remember: you are dearly “beloved by the Lord,” and have been chosen and called into the enjoyment of new creation, all by the unconditional grace of God in Christ.

Every Good Work and Word

And if that is true, then here’s what you can expect is ahead of you. God intends not only to bring you this comfort and hope of the gospel, but also to thereby establish you “in every good work and word.” The power of the gospel lies not only as a comfort in our weakness but also a confidence for our endeavors.

Back in chapter one the apostle prayed that God would “fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thess 1:11). This is the freedom of the Christian tradition yet again. We are dearly loved by God. We need not live our lives trying not to displease him. We are instead to live for his pleasure. The difference between these two is vast.

Your Christian faith and your daily calling are meant to be fully integrated. Because you are already a new creation, the work that God has given to you to do tomorrow is not a waste of time, a necessary evil to pay the bills until you can find something else more satisfying. God may call you to some other work in the future, but you do not need to wait until then to expect that God just might be achieving eternal purposes in what you do and in what you say.

And that’s because he loves you too much to do otherwise. After all, you are among the firstfruits of his new creation.

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[1] Cited in Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, vol. 32B, ed. David Noel Freedman (London: Yale University Press, 2008), 438.

[2] The verb is ἀγαπάω in the perfect passive tense.

[3] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG), rev. and ed. Frederick William Danker, 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 866.

[4] Friedrich Büchsel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1964–74), 2:172.

[5] F. F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1982), 193.

[6] The so-called “voluntative optative” mood. See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 481.