2 Thessalonians 2:17

The church at Thessalonica was young, founded during Paul’s second missionary journey, and it was under pressure from two sides. Its people were suffering persecution (2 Thessalonians 1:4), as they had from the beginning at the hands of their own countrymen (1 Thessalonians 2:14–16). They had also been shaken by word that the day of the Lord had already come (2 Thessalonians 2:1–2). Paul’s first letter had comforted them about believers who died before Christ’s return (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18), and now a new misunderstanding had brought confusion and fear, and it may have fed the idleness Paul deals with later in this letter.

So Paul has spent most of this chapter explaining what must happen before that day, including the coming of the man of sin. He has reminded them that God chose them for salvation through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and belief of the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:13). Then he told them, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). The prayer follows that command at once. Standing firm in the truth is something believers are told to do, and it is also something God gives and keeps up in them by his grace and comfort. Paul, writing with Silas and Timothy, goes on praying for the church in 2 Thessalonians 3.

Paul names “our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father” together as the one source of everything he asks. The word autós, “himself”, is emphatic. It puts the weight on Christ in person, so that the Lord himself is the one Paul looks to, and with him the Father. The Son and the Father stand side by side as equals, sharing one purpose in saving and keeping their people. The comfort these believers need comes straight from God.

“Which hath loved us” points back to love already shown. In Greek both “hath loved” and “hath given” are past forms (aorist participles), so Paul speaks of a love God has already given and that still holds. Their persecution and confusion had left God’s love for them as it was. That love is the reason for everything else in these verses, and it rests on God’s grace and on nothing in them. Paul writes elsewhere that “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“Hath given” is dídōmi, the ordinary verb “to give”, and here God is the giver. He gives two things, and Paul pairs them.

Verse 17 says what Paul asks the Father and the Son to do. “Comfort” is parakaléō, the verb from which paráklēsis comes. It is built from pará and kaléō, and Strong’s glosses it “to call near”, while in use it means to ask earnestly, invite, exhort, encourage and console. Here it is the sense of consoling and encouraging people in distress, giving them courage and fresh hope so that they can face what is in front of them. The God who has already given everlasting consolation is asked to comfort them now, in this trouble.

The comfort is for their hearts. Kardía is the heart, and figuratively the thoughts and feelings, the mind, and by a further likeness the middle of anything. In Scripture the heart is the centre of a person, where thought, will and spiritual life sit as well as feeling, so this comfort reaches the deepest part of who they are and steadies their inmost thoughts and affections. Paul promises the Philippians the same kind of keeping: “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

“Stablish” is stērízō, to set fast. Literally it can mean to turn resolutely in a certain direction, and figuratively it means to confirm. Paul prays that God will make these believers firm and fixed, grounded in their faith and conduct so that false teaching and hard times leave them standing. Peter uses the same English word in his promise to suffering believers: “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you” (1 Peter 5:10). Paul commands this firmness as well as praying for it, as when he tells the Corinthians to “stand fast in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13). What God commands, he also gives.

The prayer names where they are to be made firm: “in every good word and work”. Pâs, “every”, makes it complete, and agathós is the same “good” as the good hope of verse 16. Lógos, “word”, here means the truth they were taught, the gospel and sound teaching on which their faith rests. Érgon, “work”, is the righteous conduct and obedience that grow out of that faith. The plain kaí, “and”, joins them, and Paul asks for both together, because a believer who is grounded in the truth is meant to live it out.

Paul prays the same way for the Colossians, that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and walk worthy of the Lord, “being fruitful in every good work” (Colossians 1:9–10). Right belief leads to right living, and steadiness in both is what keeps a church from being carried off by deception, worn down by persecution or distracted from its calling while it waits for the Lord’s return.

Christ is named first as the giver of these gifts, and every part of them flows from him. His death showed God’s love (Romans 5:8 above), the comfort he gives reaches us by the Spirit he sent, and the hope looks to his coming again to gather his people, set up his eternal kingdom and complete their salvation. Believers are stablished in him, with “Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20), for “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). He is himself the Word (John 1:1), the truth that every good word holds to. His life was the perfect good work, and he left us “an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). By his Spirit he makes his people both sound in what they believe and upright in how they live.

These two verses show who God is. The Father and the Son together loved us before we asked anything of them, and they have already given a comfort with no end and a hope that is good, all of it freely. Paul’s request rests on that. Since God has given everlasting consolation, he can be asked to comfort hearts today, and since he chose these people and called them by the gospel, he can be asked to make them firm.

The prayer was first prayed for a persecuted, unsettled church, and it fits every believer shaken by trouble or by teaching that unsettles the mind. It is a prayer Paul prayed for others, and it can be prayed in the same way for any brother or sister who is struggling. The answer comes from the God who has already loved us, and his love is where the comfort, the hope and the steadiness all begin.