2 Thessalonians 2:10

2 Thessalonians 2:10. And in all deceitfulness of unrighteousness. This more comprehensive expression is added to complete the description of the deceitfulness of the Man of Sin; he will come and win acceptance not only by doing wonders which seem miraculous, but by every kind of deceit which unscrupulous wickedness can suggest.

In them that perish. This expression specifies the class of person in whom this deceit of the Man of Sin will take effect, and thus affords a tacit consolation to Christians, involving, as it does, the assurance that in their case the Satanic power shall not deceive them. Those who are deceived have prepared themselves for such deception and destruction.

Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Disinclination to learn the truth of course predisposes men to believe a lie, and gradually incapacitates them from discerning between the true and the false. For various reasons men seek to avoid the truth, to shut their eyes to it for the present, to live as if it were not true, and so doing they become darkened in their minds; they have their wish and cannot see the truth. On the words ‘that they might be saved' Ellicott remarks that they denote the ‘ object that would have been naturally contemplated in their reception of it; and which was negatived and disregarded by the contrary course.

God doth send. ‘The words are definite and significant; they point to that “judicial infatuation” into which, in the development of His just government of the world, God causes evil and error to be unfolded, and which He brings into punitive agency in the case of all obstinate and truth-hating rejection of His offers and calls of mercy' (Ellicott). ‘Of all the fatal effects of sin, none looks so dreadfully, none strikes so just an horror into considering minds, as that every sinful action a man does naturally disposes him to another; and that it is hardly possible for him to do anything so ill, but that it proves a preparative and introduction to the doing of something worse' (South).

A working of delusion. This is the Satanic and delusive ‘working' of the Man of Sin already referred to. Unbelief tends to become superstition. The Jews who rejected the true Christ were led away by false Christs. Newman (Patristical Idea of Antichrist, p. 70) illustrates this state of mind by a reference to the French rejection of God, and worship of liberty and Reason. ‘It would almost be incredible, that men who had flung off all religion should be at the pains to assume a new and senseless worship of their own devising, whether in superstition or in mockery, were not events so recent and so notorious... Men may oppose every existing worship, true and false, and yet take up a worship of their own from pride, wantonness, policy, superstition, fanaticism, or other reasons.'

A lie. We adhere to the Authorised Version, although many of the best interpreters prefer to translate these words ‘the lie,' referring to the falsehood implied in the deceitful coming of the Man of Sin. But this does not afford so precise a contrast to ‘the truth' in the succeeding clause, which evidently means truth in general.