Building A Church Of Thessalonica For The 21st Century | Part 2 | The Second Coming Of Jesus | Dr. Madana Kumar Series

Building a Church of Thessalonica for the 21st century | Part 2 | The Second Coming of Jesus

This is a part 2 of the series on 1& 2 Thessalonians.

In the first part , we looked at the historical background of formation of the Church at Thessalonica and explored several reasons why we should study these two epistles.

Just to recall some of the key highlights from Part 1. We have seen that the Thessalonian church flourished and stood as a model despite organised persecution. They thrived despite the physical absence of the founding leaders. They thrived among idol worshippers. They became an evangelistic church. “The Word of the Lord sounded forth” from this congregation. We are going to see how this small congregation glorified God and remained faithful.

My studies reveal that one of the main reasons why this church became a model church is because of the hope of the second coming of Jesus. The hope of His second coming affirmed the assurance of eternal life, it provided comfort in the face of grief, and it cemented their belief that all believers will be reunited with Jesus Christ when that happens. No wonder that the second coming of Jesus is referred to around 20 times in these two small epistles.

In today’s lesson, we are going to focus on this main theme of these epistles, namely, the second coming of Jesus. It is important for us to understand this concept fully. Many of us have questions. We all know that the word became flesh and lived among us. We all know that Jesus took our sins and nailed them to the cross once for all and paid for our sins, past, present and future on the cross. We all know that Jesus defeated Satan when he gloriously rose on the third day and then ascended to heaven.

So it is right when questions arise on the prevalence of sin all around us today. Questions like, why does sin still exist all around us, not just exist but abound? Why is there pain and suffering if the price has already been paid? Why do the wicked go unpunished? Why do Christians get afflicted with terrible diseases like Cancer or Corona etc.? Many of us have questions.

The answer to many of those questions lies in the fact that we are living in an overlap phase of God’s redemptive plan for humanity. The theological term for that is the mediatorial kingdom. But I won’t burden you with the theological explanations. Let us look at it this way. When God created Adam and Eve, there was no sin, but they had the freewill. Adam had the ability not to sin. So they were a situation what we could call as not-able-to-sin. But they chose otherwise, even though they had the ability not to sin. They chose to disobey God, sinned, and thereby corrupted the whole mankind. Because of their disobedience, humanity went into the second stage of the continuum that we could call as Total depravity, or to use the terminology in the language of sin, not-able-not-to-sin. Human beings lost the ability not to sin. That was the condition of humanity till Jesus’s work of salvation on the cross. When Jesus took all our sins and died on the cross, God’s grace became available to us, and we gained the ability to not sin. We came to the third stage of the continuum we can call as able-not-to-sin. God’s grace working through faith in Jesus Christ enables believers to resist sin and live according to God’s will. Paul reminds us through this letter about who we are. 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 says “But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. 5 You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness”. So we have the ability to stay away from darkness, from sin, but sin is still around. Sin did not go away from the world. The Kingdom of God has come, but the kingdom of sin exists as well. That is why we need Jesus to mediate or intercede between us and the Father. It is by his mediation that we receive grace now. So when will sin completely go away from our world? That is where the second coming is important. When Jesus comes again, sin will be completely eradicated, and a perfect kingdom will be established. Revelation 21:1-5 and 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 speak about the end of the overlap, the end of death, the end of suffering and pain and the final union of humans with God. That is something we all look forward to, isn’t it? A world without sin, a world without pain, suffering and death. The establishment of God’s true kingdom. Back to the Garden of Eden. That is the first hope that this letter brings to us. That the day will come when sin will be completely eradicated from the world.