These words of Paul are easy to understand in the sense in which religious people usually understand them, namely within the traditional paradigm, common to many religions, of recompense after death, including...
These words of Paul are easy to understand in the sense in which religious people usually understand them, namely within the traditional paradigm, common to many religions, of recompense after death, including rewards for "right" people and punishments for "wrong" people - "right" and "wrong," of course, from a religious point of view. But another interpretation of the apostle's words is possible, one connected with the concept of the spiritual path in general and the Christian path in particular. And the concept of a spiritual path is fundamentally incompatible with traditional religious notions of recompense, whether in this life or after death.
After all, these traditional religious notions presuppose that a person remains in a kind of spiritual and life sandbox, as usually happens with children watched over by a more or less strict educator who always has a supply of rewards for obedient children and punishments for disobedient ones. But adults, unlike children, cannot be treated this way. Here each person makes his choice freely, without supervision from outside, and answers for it himself. A person who has set out on a spiritual path (any path, whatever he may choose for himself) will have to walk it as an adult, not as a child.
And at the end of the path what will await him is not a reward in the form of a sack hidden in an agreed-upon place with gifts earned along the way (even if they are "spiritual" gifts), but the results of the spiritual path he has walked. Of course, God has always allowed a person to do more on his path than the person himself was capable of doing, and the Savior is always ready to help a person be freed from the consequences of sins committed earlier, if only the person truly repents of them. But even with such support, each person still walks his own path himself, receiving at the end what he was moving toward. There, at the end of the path, it may turn out that different people, in the spiritual sense, were walking in different directions and arrived, symbolically speaking, in different places. But neither the Kingdom nor eternal destruction is a reward or punishment in the traditional religious understanding of either one. They are both only the result of a path, and of the choice that determined the paths of those who walked them.
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1:3 It is highly observable, that the apostle wraps up his praise of men in praise to God; giving him the glory.Your faith groweth - Probably he had heard from them since his sending the former letter. Aboundeth - Like water that overflows its banks, and yet increaseth still.
1:4 Which ye endure - "That ye may be accounted worthy of the kingdom."
1:5 A manifest token - This is treated of in the sixth Th2 1:6 and following verses.
1:6 It is a righteous thing with God - (However men may judge) to transfer the pressure from you to them. And it is remarkable that about this time, at the passover, the Jews raising a tumult, a great number (some say thirty thousand) of them were slain. St. Paul seems to allude to this beginning of sorrows, Th1 2:16, which did not end but with their destruction.
1:8 Taking vengeance - Does God barely permit this, or (as "the Lord" once "rained brimstone and fire from the Lord outof heaven," Gen 19:24) does a fiery stream go forth from him for ever? Who know not God - (The root of all wickedness and misery) who remain in heathen ignorance. And who obey not - This refers chiefly to the Jews, who had heard the gospel.
1:9 From the glory of his power - Tremble, ye stout - hearted.Everlasting destruction - As there can be no end of their sins, (the same enmity against God continuing,) so neither of theirpunishment; sin and its punishment running parallel throughout eternity itself. They must of necessity, therefore, be cut off from all good, and all possibility of it. From the presence of the Lord - Wherein chiefly consists the salvation of the righteous. What unspeakable punishment is implied even in falling short of this, supposing that nothing more were implied in his taking vengeance!
1:10 To be glorified in his saints - For the wonderful glory of Christ shall shine in them.