Worth Everything
Read: 2 Thessalonians 1:1-5
This is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. – 2 Thessalonians 1:5
I work with a pretty tough group of guys. Whenever someone complains at my secular job he’s sure to be chided with, “You can’t be a sissy and work here.” Now, this is all in fun, but it is our way of keeping one another from focusing on the negative. It looks like I’m part of a pretty tough bible study team too.
Our small group bible study is working through a book titled “Living Victoriously in Difficult Times”. We choose our topics together, and believe it or not, this tough subject was the one everyone decided to tackle and 2 Thessalonians 1 is where we jump in on first meeting together.
This portion of the letter from Paul encouraging the Thessalonian Christians by reminding them that their suffering was not in vain and that they were being held up as examples for other believers stunned me.
If I understand it correctly, it looks like suffering has a cleansing effect on a believer, however, it also stands in condemnation to those causing the suffering that their day of reckoning will arrive soon enough; the persecutors will be punished and the persecuted rewarded.
In his commentary, Matthew Henry captures the underpinning theme pretty well, “Religion, if worth anything, is worth everything” I think Mr. Henry would agree; you can’t be a sissy and be a Christian.
No comments:
Post a Comment