16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” (2 Thessalonians 2:16–17 (ESV)
A SERMON DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 15, 1888.
As I look at my text, a second question comes to my mind. WHY DOES THE APOSTLE SO SPECIALLY ADDRESS THIS PRAYER? Notice to whom he addresses it, “Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father…comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.” Why is this?
It seems to me that, in the first place, in this prayer the whole Trinity is supplicated. When the apostle is desiring comfort to be given, he does not mention the Comforter, for that is needless, it would occur to every Christian mind that the Holy Spirit was necessary, since in comforting and quickening He is only exercising His special office, but the apostle does mention “Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father,” so that, to the mind of the thoughtful reader, the prayer for comfort and establishment is directed to the ever-blessed Three-in-One.
Oh, that we oftener remembered the distinction of the Divine Persons without dividing the divine substance! It becomes instructed believers to remember that one blessing comes from the Father, another blessing from the Son, and a third blessing through the Holy Spirit. There are times when it would seem as if the one blessing must come through the three Divine Persons, that there must be a manifestation of the whole Trinity to produce the result. I cannot help noticing that truth, and reminding you how the Savior is especially placed here side by side with “God, even our Father,” that we may see that equal reverence is to be paid to Him with the Father, and equal prayer to be offered to Him with that presented to the great Father of spirits.
But then, I think next, that mention is here made of “Our Lord Jesus Christ himself” because, as the prayer is for consolation, He is “the consolation of Israel.” The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, but Christ Himself is the comfort, the Holy Spirit gives the consolation, but Jesus Christ is the consolation. Beloved, we are never so comforted as when we turn to our blessed Lord Himself. His humanity, His sympathy with us, His griefs, His bearing our infirmities, His putting away of our sins, His pleading for us at the right hand of God, His everlasting union with His people—all this makes us turn our eye to Him. He is the Sun that makes our day, from Him flows that “river of the water of life” which quenches our thirst.
So you see why the “Lord Jesus Christ himself” is mentioned in this prayer for comfort, since He is the every essence of the believer’s consolation. But then we are reminded of “God, even our Father,” and is not this expression brought to our mind that we may derive comfort from the relation which God bears to His people? O ye children of God, does not the recollection that He is your Father comfort you? Children of the heavenly King, is not the fact of your relationship to Him a well of unceasing consolation? What more do you require to lift your spirits out of the dust, than to know that this manner of love has been bestowed upon you, that you should be called the children of God, “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”?
I do believe that, if the Holy Spirit only lays home to the heart the fact of our new birth, and our adoption into the family of God, we have enough comfort to make us swim through seas of trouble without fear, and also enough motive for the most constant, diligent service, when we know that it is for our Father who is in heaven that we are spending the strength that He Himself gives us.
Do you not see, therefore, why the apostle thus addresses His prayer to “God, even our Father,” and to “our Lord Jesus Christ himself”? And is not this another reason why Paul thus prayed, because he would remind us that it requires the direct action of the Godhead upon our hearts to produce comfort and constancy? This is especially evident at certain times.
Very frequently, when I have to comfort mourners, cases will occur in which a young husband has been taken away, leaving a large family of little children unprovided for, or else, two persons have been together for many years, till their lives have grown into one, and on a sudden, the wife or the husband has been taken away, I have said, and I cannot help saying it often, “My dear friend, I cannot comfort you as I should like to, I have never been exactly in your circumstances, and therefore I cannot enter into your peculiar grief, but I would remind you that one Person of the Divine Trinity has undertaken the office of Comforter, and He can do what nobody else can.”
You must sometimes have felt the power of a single text of Scripture laid upon a wound in your heart, it will staunch the bleeding, and heal by a sort of heavenly magic. Have you not at times felt in a flutter of distress, so that you could not rest? Christian friends have spoken kindly to you, but they only seemed to mock you, then, in a moment, a soft, calming influence has stolen over your spirit, and you have felt that you could bear ten times the weight which had almost crushed you an hour before?
God can comfort to purpose, hence the apostle did not say, “I hope you will enjoy the comfort I have given you, or that, peradventure, your minister next Lord’s-day may give you,” but this was his prayer at this particular juncture, “Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.”
It is grand in your prayers to fall back upon your God, and upon a God whom you know as your Lord Jesus Christ, and your Father, and to feel, “The case is beyond me, but it is not beyond my God. The trial overwhelms me even in my sympathy with the tried one, how much more does it overwhelm the actual bearer of it, but I put you and your sorrow into hands quite equal to the emergency, and leave you there.”
More to come. May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here. Have a blessed day in the Lord.
Soli deo Gloria!
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