Good News About God's Church

The person who has a genuine faith in God will view affliction and suffering through the lens of an enduring hope—not the kind of endurance that waits to thank God when the trial passes, but the kind of endurance that thanks God even if the trial does not pass. The very sobering reality of the Christian faith is that the possibility exists that God will not allow your trials to pass. There are tens of thousands of Christians all over the 191world who live under the incessant daily pressure of trials and persecution. This was true of the Thessalonian Christians. They received the gospel through persecution, they were following Christ in persecution, and they were trusting God to deliver them from persecution. For them, trials were more than a bad day at work, and persecution was more than a passing insult from a friend—consequential persecution and trials were a way of life. God may have the same kind of life in store for us. The question is, Do we have the kind of hope that will endure?

We will view everything that happens to us as either an opportunity or an obstacle. Obstacles are things that block our pathway, frustrate our plans, and make our lives difficult. God sometimes places obstacles in our path to accomplish His purposes in us, or even to discipline us (Heb 12:7-21). But if we trust in His sovereignty, we will view the things that happen to us not as obstacles that keep us from getting what we want, but as opportunities to depend more desperately on God to meet our needs. Hardship, trials, and persecution will reveal the genuineness of your conversion and the true depth of your faith. Trying times and adverse circumstances will draw the truly converted to God instead of driving them away from God. Paul knew this to be true from personal experience:

James said that you should "consider it a great joy" when you face hardships and trials because they bring forth the fruit of endurance, maturity, and ultimate happiness (Jas 1:2-10, 12). We can live with an expectant hope because our trials are working for us and not against us. Paul gives us the perspective that we need for facing our trials:

Given the opportunity, most people would gladly opt for a life free from burdens and pain. Some people even believe that if they have enough 192faith, then such a life is guaranteed. Their reasoning goes something like this: "If I fulfill my end of the deal by living faithfully, then God will meet His end of the deal by blessing me abundantly." Whether they admit this or not, many who serve the Lord in full-time ministry believe that this is true. They mistakenly assume that smooth sailing is ahead if they only walk with God, proclaim His Word, and love His people. To be honest, I believed this when I accepted my call to ministry. But 20 minutes into my first pastorate, I learned otherwise. And now, more than 20 years later, I am convinced more than ever that neither ministry nor Christianity is for the fainthearted.

Perhaps now we can begin to get a better picture as to why Paul was willing to "boast" about the Thessalonians "among God's churches" (1:4). Their growing faith and increasing love did not occur in a sterile environment. On the contrary, they were growing in the midst of some very trying conditions. A storm of persecution had settled in and showed little sign of letting up, but rather than being blown away by the storm, they remained firmly anchored to the unshakable foundation of their hope and genuine faith. Any seasoned mariner will tell you that the best way to ride out a storm is to anchor deep. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we have an anchor and a hope that is "safe and secure," and His name is Jesus (Heb 6:19-20).

2 Thessalonians 1:5

We will have difficulty understanding why God uses hardship, suffering, and pain to accomplish His great purposes from our limited earthly perspective. While we may concede their immediate value in producing humility before Him and fostering dependence on Him, most of us never stop to consider that God uses our pain to produce something much bigger than what we presently see. Listen to how John Stott explains this:

It takes spiritual discernment to see in a situation of injustice (like the persecution of the innocent) evidence of the just judgment of God. Our habit is to see only the surface appearance, and so to make only superficial comments. We see the malice, cruelty, power and arrogance of evil men who persecute. We see also the sufferings of the people of God, 193who are opposed, ridiculed, boycotted, harassed, imprisoned, tortured and killed.... We are tempted to inveigh against God and the miscarriage of justice. "Why doesn't God do something?" we complain indignantly. And the answer is that he is doing something and will go on doing it. He is allowing His people to suffer, in order to qualify them for a heavenly kingdom. He is allowing the wicked to triumph temporarily, but his just judgment will fall upon them in the end. Thus Paul sees evidence that God's judgment is right in the very situation in which we might see nothing but injustice. (Stott, Gospel and the End, 147; emphasis in original)

Those are powerful words. In the remainder of chapter 1 we will see how Paul describes the judgment of the wicked. But before jumping ahead to examine this in much greater detail, let's first explore the matter of how suffering counts us "worthy of God's kingdom" (1:5).

A careful reading of verse 5 reveals that our suffering, God's judgment, and our worthiness to enter His kingdom are inseparably linked together. Paul writes, "It is a clear evidence of God's righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom, for which you also are suffering" (1:5; emphasis added). What may appear at first to be a confusing statement is actually one of the most comforting statements that you will find in the Bible. Only God can take the concepts of "suffering" and "judgment" and turn them into words of comfort and expectation. That is exactly the point that Paul is conveying to the Thessalonians. Their suffering was not what secured their salvation; their suffering was the evidence of a salvation already secured when they identified themselves as followers of Jesus Christ (Rom 8:17; 1 Pet 1:6-9; 2:21). Stated another way, they were not made worthy of the kingdom because they suffered; they were counted worthy of the kingdom because they suffered.

As strange as this may sound to our ears, their suffering was evidence that God loved them, not a sign that He had abandoned them. Paul is reassuring them that their suffering has an eternal purpose. This paints an entirely different picture of suffering than many of us have of it. We can imagine how such a picture would dramatically influence the way in which we live. With this picture of suffering in mind, listen to how Paul challenges the Philippians:

Paul could thus rejoice with and brag about the Thessalonians because their enduring faith in the face of suffering was yet another sign of their genuine conversion.

Now that we have a clearer picture of the connection between our earthly suffering and our eternal glory, we are in a better position to understand what Paul means by "God's righteous judgment." While possibly Paul has in mind God's future judgment of the unrighteous (1:6-10), more likely he is speaking about the righteous judgment of believers by means of God's loving discipline. In this sense, the present trials of the Thessalonians would fall under the chastening hand of God. As Leon Morris puts it, such chastening would not necessarily be punitive but would instead be part of God's refining process in the lives of His people as He "uses tribulations to bring His own people to perfection" (Morris, Epistles of Paul, 116). Adding to this thought, James Grant offers the following helpful insight:

The writer of Hebrews helps you see why God disciplines His people:

Did you catch the statement "so that we can share His holiness"? God uses discipline to bring about your sanctification by producing the "fruit 195of peace and righteousness." Therefore, the presence of pain, suffering, and trials are actually proof that God keeps His promise to keep you "sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess 5:23). Through His loving, albeit sometimes heavy, hand of discipline, God is preparing His people for their future home in heaven.

C. S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (Lewis, Problem of Pain, 91). Clearly God was using His megaphone to get the attention of the Thessalonian Christians. Their pain was proving their legitimacy as God's own people. By their faithful endurance they were demonstrating their worthiness to be citizens of God's kingdom. God could have stopped the persecution but chose to use it as a tool in their preparation for the glory that was to come (1 Thess 5:23-24).

God has an eternal purpose for your affliction and pain, but what about an earthly purpose? Is there any present value to your "momentary light affliction" (2 Cor 4:17)? Let's briefly consider two of God's earthly purposes for your pain:

God uses pain to draw us into a more intimate union with Him. Our natural inclination will always be to allow the lesser (though not always unimportant) things of life to crowd out the more important things in life. At the top of this list is our daily walk with God. Nothing in life should be more important than this. Yahweh is a jealous God (Exod 34:14) and is not content to play second string on your team or to play second fiddle in your band. Isaiah reminds us, "This is what the Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts, says: I am the first and I am the last. There is no God but Me" (Isa 44:6).

God yearns jealously for your friendship (Jas 4:4-5) and thus refuses to allow lesser gods to take His place. He also loves you too passionately to allow you to walk away from Him. Therefore, because He yearns for you jealously and loves you passionately, He will use whatever means necessary to bring you back to Him. And the tool that He often uses is pain and suffering. Timothy Keller makes the point well:

Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for 196himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom. (Keller, Walking with God, 47)

The process of preparing you for heaven begins at the moment of conversion and lasts until you finally see Jesus. God is not going to allow your personal sinfulness to derail His purifying work in you. He may choose to use pain, persecution, or both, but God always finishes what He starts.

From the moment of your conversion, God begins the work of shaping and pruning you to be more and more like Jesus (Rom 8:29). Because God is passionate about you reflecting the image of His Christ, you can be confident that He will take the necessary measures to remove anything that distorts His image. When His hands meet your resistance, you can anticipate that discipline will follow. And there is no question that God's discipline will always achieve its intended purposes both in this life and in the life to come (Rom 8:30-39).

How do we evaluate the effectiveness of a church? If we ask ten people that question, we are likely to get ten answers. However, if we are looking for an objective means for determining the overall health of a church, then I suggest we look to the Thessalonians. After all, any church that the apostle Paul was willing to boast about "among God's churches" deserves our careful consideration. Above everything else, the Thessalonian church was a gospel-centered church: their faith in God was rooted in the gospel, their love for one another flowed from the gospel, and their hope for the future was because of the gospel. From this gospel-centered focus we see three essential characteristics for every healthy church: gospel preaching, gospel people, and a gospel passion.

197Gospel preaching. Preaching and teaching must be centered on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel is not an addendum to be hastily added to the end of a sermon; the gospel is the scarlet thread of redemption that must run through every sermon preached. While not every biblical text is evangelistic, every biblical text will be gospel-centered. This raises the question, How evident is the gospel in your church? Would a gospel-centered focus be evident from the moment that a person walks in the door, listens to a sermon, and meets your people? Go back and reread the Thessalonian letters, and you will discover that this church was built on the gospel.

Gospel people. The most effective means by which to measure the depth of gospel preaching in a church is to take a long, hard look at the people in the church. Genuine conversion will always be marked by life transformation. God did not call the church to be a building, but He did call the church to be a body. The church is not a place where a crowd gathers to worship; the church is a people who take their worship with them wherever they go. Gospel preaching always bears the fruit of gospel people who are deep in their love for God and wide in their love for others. The Thessalonians personified the gospel by loving God with all their heart and loving others as they loved themselves (Luke 10:27).

Gospel passion. God never commanded the people on the outside of the church to come inside, but He did command the people on the inside of the church to go out. God calls those who put their trust in Jesus Christ not to sit and play it safe, but to get up and take some risks. However, you will never take the kinds of risks that the gospel demands until you first rest in the hope that the gospel provides. You will never be passionate about something in which you don't fully believe. You may be able to fake your passion for Christ for a season, but it will be sure to wither when the heat of affliction comes. How far you are willing to go and how much discomfort you are willing to experience for the sake of the gospel will say much about what you truly believe.