2 Thessalonians 1:7-12

2 Thessalonians 1:7

The rest awaiting Christ's troubled saints is in the fullest sense to be their possession at the revelation of the Lord Jesus. He who is emphatically the coming One is to be revealed. There is a vividness in the word. He is now hidden. But when He comes again, every eye shall see Him.

I. The term "everlasting" qualifying "destruction," as it here does, shows that this destruction is not extinction of being. It is not loss of being, but loss of wellbeing: for as its opposite, life, is more than mere existence, so destruction is more than mere non-existence. The purpose the Apostle has in view in the description of the coming is the same here as in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, the giving of comfort and encouragement to his readers in the midst of apprehensions and trials.

II. "And fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness." There are structural objections to the rendering which makes "the good pleasure" to be God's. It is rather His people's moral goodness, and their good pleasure in it every aspiration after goodness which they cherish within their breasts. Hence the Revised Version is to be preferred "every desire of goodness." All genuine holiness, being a cheerful obedience to God's law, is, indeed, the good pleasure of His will; but it is also on the part of His people their "good pleasure and goodness," and it is this which is signified here. The Apostle's prayer is that his friends may have, by God's grace, every desire after holiness brought to perfect realisation, so that they may become full of goodness, finding at last their perfect happiness in perfect sanctification.

J. Hutchison, Lectures on Thessalonians,p. 267.

References: 2 Thessalonians 1:7. Preachers Monthly,vol. iii., p. 361. 2 Thessalonians 1:9. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., pp. 327, 339.