There’s a short, little part of a sentence in 2 Thessalonians chapter two that stuck out to me. It’s in the middle of verse two, where Paul tells them not to get freaked out or confused about the day of the Lord having already come. Apparently, one of the ways that was happening, he wrote, was regarding, “… a letter seeming to be from us.”
I had highlighted that little part and kept thinking about it as I reread both letters some more.
I found myself meditating on all of the counter-cultural… forces… influences at work. This church he wrote to, twice, was doing its best to love and serve one another, and follow Jesus as they had been taught by Paul. But they were surrounded everywhere by everything that operated everyday on an endless spectrum of opposition to Jesus-truth.
Apparently, on that spectrum were fake letters.
Like, imagine you get a letter delivered one day, and it says it’s from Paul and co., and everyone in the church gathers to read and hear it, and there’s just a few parts here and there that seem… surprising? Odd? Confusing?
I mean, how would these Thessalonians really authenticate letters and messengers and people sent to them? They’re trying their best to sort out and through all this new teaching and movement of Jesus—that was sorting out in general as it moved through culture to culture.
It feels even more significant for me, more applicable for me as I’m here, basically reading through other people’s mail, right? We’re reading these letters sent thousands of years ago, addressing pretty specific circumstances of the time, not addressed to us.
And there are probably some parts here and there that seem… surprising? Odd? Confusing? I think it’s easy to see the same spectrum of opposition to Jesus-truth, today in 2024, is still here and all around, now in a world infrastructure where any form of information can travel at the speed of thought.
That’s probably why Paul was so focused in his letters on being one united body, living out Jesus as a community in all aspects of life: loving together, serving together, walking together, reading together, praying together, rejoicing together, growing together…
I mean, what would churches and Jesus-life look like today without any of that?
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction...
—2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 (ESV)
