To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “You turned to God . . . to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”

Tests of true faith are found many places in Scripture. One such place is in the opening chapter of 1 Thessalonians. Here, the apostle Paul commends the Thessalonian believers for the ways they demonstrated that they were genuine believers and not hypocrites or false believers. That’s always a concern in any visible church for not everyone who is a part of a visible church is really a part of the true church. You see, it doesn’t matter that we call ourselves Christians or rub shoulders with people that call themselves Christians. In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he warned him of this. He warned him that there were always people within the visible church who had “swerved from the truth,” and as a result were prone to cause all kinds of problems and divisions within the church. He wanted Timothy to be aware of this. And then he makes this statement: “The Lord knows those who are His” (2 Timothy 2:19).

Sadly, some people will deceive themselves until the very end, expecting everything to be fine with them at the time Jesus returns or at the time of their own death, although it certainly will not be. They aren’t really looking forward to this, mind you, but they make a habit of ignoring or otherwise talking themselves out of any concern about their own eternity. To their everlasting shock, however, they will hear these words from the Lord they thought they were following: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23).

So, the message here is that we may fool people within the church regarding who we really are, and we can fool ourselves, but we cannot fool the Lord. Thus, the many tests and warnings from the Word of God regarding this issue, for these warnings and tests are from the Lord Himself as He spoke through His apostles and prophets. He doesn’t want anyone to be deceived. That’s what the devil does all the time, and it’s why he’s called “the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). That’s why we need to study the Word of God and by it and by it alone, examine ourselves “to see whether we are in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

So, what is the test that is given in the verses above as Paul addresses the believers in the Thessalonian church. He says that they had “turned to God.” That turning, also known as “repentance,” is a spiritual about face of 180 degrees. It’s a reorientation of the heart away from what we had been following – which can be anything but God (pleasure, money, sin, friend and familial relationships, etc.) to a new direction in pursuit of God. It’s a new orientation from having no interest in the true God and His Son Jesus Christ, whatsoever, to wanting to know Him, love Him, believe Him, and obey Him.

But another way that this turning reorients a true believer is that it gives him or her a new and certain hope for the future. Rather than fear death and the uncertainly of what that bodes, there is a great anticipation of one day meeting the Son of God, personally, for “we know that when he appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). The true believer lives in the anticipation that Jesus will either come to us, at the time of His second coming, or we will go to Him, at the time of our physical death. It’s a wonderful and glorious hope that always resides in the heart of those who know the Lord. The unbeliever, on the other hand, either lives in great uncertainty about this matter, or fears death, which is a natural response to the idea that there is a certain “wrath to come” for those who have rejected the only Savior of the world.

So what about you? Are you looking forward to seeing Jesus someday? Is it something you are certain of and that you long for? If you are a believer, this should describe you, for it’s the truth of the Word of God. But if this does not describe you, the time is now to “turn” from where you are headed – away from God – and do an about face toward Him. That happens at the moment of the “new birth” which Jesus described in one of His most well-known verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Eternal life: it’s a present possession for the true believer, finding its full realization at that moment we are waiting for – that waiting for the appearance of the Son of God from heaven.