2 Thessalonians 2:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul now considers the signs of the end. He begins by beseeching the Thessalonians, ‘by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ or as we might say today, in connection with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in connection with our gathering together unto him. The two matters - the coming of Christ and our gathering to him – are closely linked, of course, but the apostle adopts a very kindly tone as he speaks of these things.‘Now we beseech you’, we implore you, appeal to you, ‘brethren.’ My brethren, you might say. Though he has the authority, speaking from God, to command them with regard to what to believe, what to understand, yet he deals most graciously with this subject. We implore you, brothers and sisters, in connection with the coming of Christ. He had taught them about this already, he tells us shortly, but things were going wrong. His teaching had been misunderstood, perhaps deliberately for all we know, by some: stretched and amplified in a wrong direction. And so there was confusion.We implore you in connection with first, the coming of Christ, the Lord’s return. It is all in the First Letter to the Thessalonians. He had taught them about the coming of Christ and about the gathering together of the saints of the redeemed who would be still living on earth in the skies. And yet, what they are now being given to understand by mistaken teachers or their own misunderstanding was that no, Christ would return without such a gathering together. So he introduces his subject concerning the return of Christ and especially in connection with the events that have been described already, the gathering together in the skies.