Iv. Thanksgiving And Encouragement (2:13-17)
They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
10b Paul leaves the subject of the Man of Lawlessness in the middle of this verse and turns his attention to that evil one's followers. Having said that they would perish, he goes on to the reason56 for this, namely, their wrong attitude to the truth. "Truth" here, as elsewhere in Paul's writings, is not to be thought of simply as an abstract moral quality. It is intimately related to Jesus (cf. Eph. 4:21, "as truth is in Jesus"; John 14:6, "I am ... the truth"). More particularly it is the saving truth of the gospel. This aspect is very marked in the present passage. Receiving it means salvation. This truth should have been received with warm affection (as everyone who has welcomed it knows). Thus Paul speaks not simply of "the truth," but of "the love of the truth," an expression found here only in the Greek Bible (NIV has made a verb "to love" out of the noun "love"). The whole bent of the people he is describing is away from the truth of God. They gave the truth of God no welcome (this is the force of the words rendered "refused," which are more literally "did not receive"; see on 1 Thess. 2:13). They did not receive that truth of God which is expressed in the love that brought about the gospel. This is a deliberate action. It expresses the attitude of their heart. And it is fraught with eternal consequences. The verse concludes with a clause of purpose that emphasizes the magnitude of the gift these people rejected. Other people love the truth with a view to their salvation. It was this on which those who perish had turned their backs.
11 God is not to be thought of as sitting passively by while all this is going on. Invariably the Bible pictures him as taking part in the world's drama. Indeed, the world's drama is nothing other than the working out of his purposes. He has created this universe, and set it running on his own principles. He orders the affairs of people in the way he chooses. And one of the things he chooses is that an inevitable retribution overtakes the sinner.57 Sometimes people today refer to the inevitability of the moral law. But the Bible picture is truer. There is no self-acting moral law. There is a moral God who is operative in the working of moral law.58 In this verse the word "God" is in an emphatic position. Paul leaves no doubt but that God himself is responsible for the action of which he writes.
There is a backward look, "for this reason." What follows is due not to any caprice on the part of God, but to the culpable failure of the people in question to welcome the saving truth that was offered to them. The certainty of the result is underlined with the use of the present tense "sends." Paul sees it before his very eyes, so sure is its coming.59 God sends "a working of error" (NIV, "a powerful delusion"). The genitive is the objective genitive, meaning, as Frame puts it, "an energy unto delusion." God will send a power that will operate to bring about in them a delusion. This is further explained, "so that they will believe the lie." "The lie."60 It is not just any lie that these people accept, but Satan's last and greatest piece of deception, the lie that the Man of Lawlessness is God. They refuse to accept the truth and they find themselves delivered over to the lie.
The principle underlying this verse is of great importance for an understanding of the moral government of the universe. From the foregoing verses it might perhaps be thought that there is a contest in which Satan on the one hand and God on the other make their moves, but with God somewhat the stronger. But Paul has a much grander conception. God is using the very evil that people (and even Satan) do for the working out of his purpose. They think that they are acting in defiance of him, but in the end they find that those very acts in which they expressed their defiance were the vehicle of their punishment. Paul has the same truth in other places. For example, he tells us that God gave certain sinners "over to shameful lusts" (Rom. 1:26). They thought that they were enjoying their sinful pleasures, but it turned out that they were receiving "in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." The same truth is found in other parts of the Bible also.61 God is sovereign. No forces of evil, not Satan himself nor his Man of Lawlessness, can resist God's might. He chooses people's sin as the way in which he works out their punishment.62
12 The judicial purpose of God in thus using evil as his instrument is made clear. "That they will believe the lie" is followed by "so that all will be condemned," the construction indicating purpose. There is method in all that God does in this situation. The verb really means "judged," but in this context it surely implies condemnation (Rutherford and Moffatt both translate "doomed"). But the use of this term rather than one that simply means condemnation stresses the judicial purpose of God. His act is just.
The section concludes with a further characterization of the con demned, bringing out the nature of their offense. Paul returns to their wrong attitude to the truth. Whereas previously he has complained that they had no welcome nor love for the truth, now he says that they did not even believe it. Once more he has the saving truth of the gospel in mind, but these sinners would have none of it. Paul employs a construction that is unusual with him63 (where he has it elsewhere it is mostly in quotations) to emphasize their position. His more usual construction has the thought of personal trust, as in the case of faith in Christ. This one denotes simple credence. The dupes of the Man of Lawlessness are so blinded to reality that they do not even realize that the gospel is God's truth. So does sin blind people.
Not only have they not believed the truth, but they "have delighted in wickedness."64 There is a sharp contrast in both parts of this clause. "Delighted" contrasts with their attitude to the truth. There was no warmth in their attitude to the gospel, no welcome, no love, no belief even. But they actively rejoiced in wickedness, they inclined toward it, they regarded it with favor and goodwill. So, too, "wickedness" is contrasted with "truth." This word has been connected with deceit in verse 10. It is a general term for all kinds of wickedness. The stark contrast reminds us that ultimately we must belong to one or other of two classes, namely, those who welcome and love God's truth and those who take their pleasure in wickedness. Those who begin by failing to accept God's good gift end by setting forward unrighteousness. Notice the way in which they become perverted. These people are not described as sinning through force of circumstances or any form of compulsion. They now find their pleasure in sin. They delight in wrong.65 For them evil has become good.