2 Thessalonians 1:1–5,11-12
Paul, Silas, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3We are always obligated to thank God for you, brothers, as is fitting, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love that each and every one of you has for one another is increasing. 4So we ourselves boast about you in God’s churches in regard to your patient endurance and faith in all your persecutions and in the trials that you are enduring. 5This is evidence of God’s righteous verdict that resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also suffer. 11For this reason, we are always praying for you, that our God will make you worthy of your calling and use his power to fulfill every good desire and work of your faith, 12so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and you in him, in keeping with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ. (EHV)
He’s a natural athlete. “That painter is a born artist.” “That girl was ‘born to be’ a gymnast.” Have you heard statements like that?
If someone was “born to be” something, it doesn’t mean they don’t work hard at it. Mary Lou Retton was the first American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. At the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when she was 16 years old, Retton achieved perfect scores in her final two events (the floor exercise and vault) to win a dramatic victory. Was she born for that gold? Retton began dance and acrobatics at age four, and started gymnastics a year later. In 1983 she moved to Houston, Texas, to train with Bela Karolyi, who helped her develop a new revolutionary style that suited her compact, muscular frame. It transformed women’s gymnastics.
Mary Lou Retton didn’t go around saying she was born to be a gymnast. She trained hard for it. A lot of work and effort went into it, including a good deal of pain. If you’re born for something, you still have to do it. You have to work to get better at it. If you want to win the prize you have to give it your all.
You have been born again to be a child and servant of God, St. Paul reminds us today. There’s a prize waiting to be won. But you still have to put in the hard work. Paul says in our text that God has already called us and made us worthy. We were born into His service. Then in the next breath Paul urges us to strive to live in a way that is Worthy of Your Calling.
Being Counted Worthy of God’s Kingdom
3We are always obligated to thank God for you, brothers, as is fitting, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love that each and every one of you has for one another is increasing. 4So we ourselves boast about you in God’s churches in regard to your patient endurance and faith in all your persecutions and in the trials that you are enduring. 5This is evidence of God’s righteous verdict that resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also suffer.
“God’s righteous verdict.” The Bible uses any number of phrases and words to describe how God has saved us. One of them is Justification by faith. As we recently reviewed in one of our Basic Bible Christianity class, a good way to remember the meaning of Justification, is that it means it’s “Just-as-if-I’d never sinned.” God declares us clean, not-guilty, innocent, through faith in Jesus, because Jesus was clean, not-guilty and innocent in our place, and God credits His righteousness to us through faith. He counts it as our own. “God’s righteous verdict … resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom.” What a beautiful passage!
God counts us as worthy, despite us being by nature not worthy. Wayne and Garth were two characters in a regular Saturday Night Live sketch back around 1990. They were two guys who had a local small town cable access channel show they made in their basement. Because they were nobodies, whenever a guest would appear who was actually known, they’d say “We’re not worthy” while bowing down with their hands out. That phrase became pretty well-known. Ultimately their skit was made into a movie called “Wayne’s World.”
We could say in regard to God without any irony at all that “We’re not Worthy” and truly fall on our faces before Him. Because in and of ourselves, we are totally not worthy. We’re not worthy to talk to God, not worthy to have anything to do with God, not worthy to ever meet God, not worthy to expect any mercy from Him. But God has made us worthy. He’s covered us in Jesus’ righteousness. He’s washed us clean of our filthy sins.
“God’s righteous verdict … resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom.” We are now sons and daughters of the King and servants of the Most High God. “All this God did, that I should be His own and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, just as He has risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally. This is most certainly true.” That’s how Luther described what God has done for us in the explanation to the 2nd article of the creed in the catechism.
We live in overlapping kingdoms right now. “The earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof” the Bible tells us, but it also tells us the devil is this world’s prince. We are in God’s kingdom, yet we are also behind enemy lines. In God’s kingdom, we’ve been given officer status. But we’re part of the resistance. Picture yourself working undercover in the realm of the devil in civilian clothes, knowing that one day in a kingdom parade you’d get to wear your dress uniform and march standing tall with medals pinned to your chest, awarded to you by God’s in His grace. We are on our way to the palace. Meanwhile we have kingdom work to do.
God Will Make You Worthy of Your Calling
God’s righteous verdict … resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom…. 11For this reason, we are always praying for you, that our God will make you worthy of your calling and use his power to fulfill every good desire and work of your faith, 12so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and you in him, in keeping with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ.
He’s the one who called you. He started you on your journey. He adopted you as His child. Therefore, He will arrange for your training and help you to accomplish His work as His servant, starting with the Word of God. “…Your faith is growing more and more, and the love that each and every one of you has for one another is increasing.”
In the old days, Sunday School children used to receive stars as they recited memory work. Remember those? There were also Sunday School pins. Those Sunday School children were children of God by baptism, but they were still learning—learning lots! They heard the great Bible Stories for the first time! And then the second and third time. We’re still learning those Bible Stories. On Wednesday mornings, we’ve gone through some of the Bible stories in connection with the daily Bible reading plan in the new hymnal. And I can see it on your faces that some of them are new and some of them you haven’t heard in a long time. That’s what Paul says was happening with the Thessalonians. And the more they learned and reviewed, the stronger their faith got. And the stronger their faith got, the more he could see it in their lives.
“So we ourselves boast about you in God’s churches in regard to your patient endurance and faith in all your persecutions and in the trials that you are enduring. 5This is evidence of God’s righteous verdict that resulted in your being counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also suffer.”
More and more, God was making them Worthy of the Calling He had given them. “…Your faith is growing more and more, and the love that each and every one of you has for one another is increasing.”
“God will make you worthy of your calling and use his power to fulfill every good desire and work of your faith….”
Do you remember the definition of a good work? It is anything done to the Glory of God out of thankfulness to God for the gift of salvation. That definition comes from several Bible passages. Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Ephesians 2:10 tells us that God gives us both the desire and even the deeds to do before we do them. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.” And this text, among others reminds us that good works are not to bring glory to ourselves, but to God. God will make you worthy of your calling and use his power to fulfill every good desire and work of your faith, 12so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and you in him, in keeping with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ.
We have such a beautiful example of that in our Old Testament Lesson. God prepared works in advance that David, Solomon and the people of Israel should walk in them to bring glory to God in the building of the temple.
Was Mary Lou Retton born to be a gymnast? Yes, and she trained to become that gymnast. She then won gold.
Were you born again to be a servant in the kingdom of heaven? Yes, and God is working on us and training us to serve Him, even in hard times, as He graciously pins medals on our chest. Or to use the Bible’s picture from the ancient Olympics, God will put laurel wreaths on our heads as we cross the finish line, which we’ll display at the end of the victory parade before we lay them down at Jesus’ feet.
He called us worthy, declaring us justified in Christ, and He is making us worthy of the calling we’ve received, sanctifying us for good works. So let’s keep training. Let’s keep running. Let’s keep working. Amen.
Pastor Timothy Buelow
Our Saviour Lutheran Church
Lake Havasu City, Arizona
0 Comments