Anna Resurget

Today is fifteen years since May 7, 2008. Some days it seems an eternity. Other days it seems like it just happened.

Yesterday I was at an event with some friends, among whom was an elderly couple who lost their grown son about five years ago on May 4 in an auto accident. I was talking to the wife and she said, “It just doesn’t get any easier, does it.” I nodded quietly. Something interrupted us and we didn’t continue the conversation, but I wanted to say to her that while those early years were very difficult, the stabbing grief that one feels at that time gives way to a numbing ache later on. I don’t know that I would say that it “gets easier,” but the feelings of sadness change and don’t feel so violent.

I am reading 2 Thessalonians this morning before we go to church. Paul tells the church in Thessalonika that “We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing.” He goes on to say that they are persevering in their faith despite suffering brought about by unbelievers around them. Their perseverance becomes the object of Paul’s boasting. “Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God’s churches–about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.”

Why would Paul boast about the suffering of the church? He goes on, “It is clear evidence of God’s righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also are suffering, since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief for you who are afflicted, along with us.”

Now to be clear, I believe that Paul was speaking to them of problems being brought on the church by civil and social pressures. The persecution of the church by the Roman government was infamous. And Paul was telling them that God would set these afflictions right by repaying their afflicters. But for us, I do not think it is inappropriate to think more broadly of what Paul might have meant by “those who afflict you.” Paul himself would say elsewhere that our struggles are not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. He recognized that there are afflictions brought on us in a spiritual dimension. Again, in other places Paul would speak of the bondage we are under to sin. He would speak of our slavery to sin. Sin pays wages and those wages are death. Paul knew very well that among those who afflict us, we must count sin, sickness and death in their company. And God will repay those afflicters as well as the persecutors within the Roman government.

But when will that happen? When will the victory be had over death? In one sense that victory already took place when Jesus was killed, buried and then rose from the dead. With his resurrection, death was defeated. And yet . . . we still go through sickness, death, auto accidents, bicycle accidents. We still feel the painful pangs of grief at the loss of loved ones. We might ask, “How is this a victory?”

Returning to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says, “This [God’s repayment of affliction on those who afflict us] will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” The pains we feel now will be set right, but not yet. They will be set right at the return of Christ.

The beautiful and difficult thing to see in what Paul says is that we do not need to be the agents of the vengeance. In fact, Paul would say this more strongly, that we should not be the agents of the vengeance. God is the worker of vengeance. He will do this on our behalf. We do not need to wield the sword. God will do that.

And so Paul prays for the church as they await this return and the setting right of all things, “In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling, and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you, and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I pray the same for us today, that we would be faithful to do every good work that God has created for us to do, as we patiently await his return and his working of vengeance over sin, death, and the pangs of grief.