Ver. 2. Not soon shaken.—Like a house built on sand when the storm breaks to fury, or like the mobile vulgus in Thessalonica who were only too willing to follow the lead of Jewish agitators (Acts xvii. 13). In mind.—R.V. “from your mind.” “Out of your wits” expresses the apostle’s meaning exactly. They are to behave like men in whom reason is supreme—not like men in a panic. Or be troubled.—The same word was used in reporting our Lord’s counsels on the same subject. “Be not troubled: . . . the end is not yet” (Matt. xxiv. 6). By epistle as from us.—Either by misinterpretation of something St. Paul had written, or by a forged letter purporting to have come from him.
Ver. 3. Let no man deceive.—R.V. “beguile or cheat you.” A falling away.—Lit. “the apostasy,” a desertion from the army of God; a recantation of faith in Christ. Our Master foretold that when “iniquity shall abound the love of many shall be blown cool” (Matt. xxiv. 12). That man of sin.—Another reading is “lawlessness.” The man in whom sin gathers itself up into a head—the last product of sin. The son of perdition—par excellence, sharing the title with him whom Christ so named (John xvii. 12). Abaddon (Rev. ix. 11) may claim him as his own ultimately.
Ver. 4. Who opposeth and exalteth himself.—The participle rendered “who opposeth” is used twice by St. Luke in the plural as “adversaries.” So in the singular (1 Tim. v. 14). The compound word for “exalteth himself” occurs (2 Cor. xii. 7), and is given as “exalted-above-measure.” Above all that is called God.—The shudder of horror in these words reminds us how a monotheistic Jew must regard the impious act. We can understand that a Roman emperor would regard the God of Jew or Christian as a tutelary deity; but the acme of profanity is reached in this act of Antichrist. Or that is worshipped.—R.V. margin, “Gr. an object of worship.” “The very name Sebastos, the Greek rendering of the imperial title Augustus, to which Dieus was added at death (signifying ‘the one to be worshipped’), was an offence to the religious mind. . . . Later, Cæsar or Christ was the martyr’s alternative” (Findlay). Showing Himself that He is God.—Or, as we would say, “representing Himself to be God.” Compare Herod’s acceptance of the worship (Acts xii. 22).
Ver. 6. What withholdeth.—R.V. “that which restraineth.” “A hint was sufficient, verbum sapientibus: more than a hint would have been dangerous” (Ibid.).
Ver. 7. He who now letteth.—R.V. “there is one that restraineth.” The old word for “obstruct” is found in Isa. xliii. 13: “I will work, and who shall let (i.e. hinder) it?” “Where then are we to look . . . for the check and bridle of lawlessness? Where but to law itself? The fabric of civil law and the authority of the magistrate formed a bulwark and breakwater against the excesses both of autocratic tyranny and of popular violence” (Ibid.).
Ver. 8. And then shall that Wicked be revealed.—R.V. “and then shall be revealed the lawless one.” Outward restraint being withdrawn, there is no inward principle to keep him back: he is “lawless.” And shall destroy.—R.V. “bring to nought.” It is the same word as that which describes the effect of the revelation of the Gospel on “death” in 2 Tim. i. 10—to render absolutely powerless. With the brightness of His coming.—R.V. “by the manifestation of His coming.” Lit. “by the epiphany of His presence.”
Ver. 9. Even Him, whose coming, etc.—These words look back to the beginning of ver. 8. “The two comings—the parousia of the Lord Jesus and that of the Man of Lawlessness—are set in contrast. The second forms the dark background to the glory of the first” (Ibid.). Power and signs and lying wonders.—Simulating the supernatural evidences of the Gospel as the magicians of Egypt those of Moses.
Ver. 10. Deceivableness of unrighteousness.—R.V. “deceit.” The deceit which is characteristic of unrighteousness, or marks its methods. They received not the love of the truth.—The sine qua non for an answer to Pilate’s question (John xviii. 38) is this love of the truth.
Ver. 11. God shall send them strong delusion.—R.V. “God sendeth them a working of error.” “It is a just, but mournful result, that rejecters of Christ’s miracles become believers in Satan’s, and that atheism should be avenged by superstition. So it has been and will be” (Ibid.). One is reminded of the old saying that “the gods first drive mad those whom they mean to destroy.”
Ver. 12. Believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.—Here again we have the mental rejection of truth consequent on a liking for that which truth condemns. If “the heart makes the theologian,” the want of it makes the infidel.