When we turn to this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, we find ourselves face to face with language that sounds, frankly, a bit mysterious—and even unsettling. Paul is warning his readers not to be “quickly shaken in mind or alarmed,” even though rumors are circulating that the Day of the Lord has already come. He insists that there are still events to unfold: the “rebellion,” the revealing of the “lawless one,” and the removal of “the one who restrains.”
At first hearing, it sounds like the script for an apocalyptic movie. Yet behind the imagery lies something profoundly pastoral. The people of Thessalonica were anxious. They were worried that they had somehow missed God’s great redemption, that they’d been left behind or deceived. And Paul writes to steady them—to tell them not to be afraid, not to lose their grounding in the truth that has already been revealed in Christ.
Paul says, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” That’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? In our modern ears, “mystery” means something we can’t quite figure out. But in Paul’s time, a “mystery” was something hidden—something that’s real but not yet fully seen.
In other words, Paul is saying there’s a hidden power at work in the world, a distortion of truth that builds itself on lies. The “lawless one” isn’t just a villain out there somewhere in history. This is a symbol of any force—political, spiritual, or cultural—that exalts itself, claiming divine authority while pushing God to the margins. It’s the power of deception. It’s the seduction of falsehood that wears the mask of righteousness.
And Paul warns that this power has been at work for a very long time. It was present in his own day, and if we’re honest, it’s present in ours too.
When Paul wrote these words, the Roman Empire loomed large. Some scholars think that when Paul spoke of “the one who exalts himself in the temple,” he may have had in mind the emperor cult—the claim of men like Caligula or Claudius that they were divine, worthy of worship. Caligula even tried to have his statue placed in the Temple in Jerusalem.
For the early Christians, Rome wasn’t just a political power. It was the embodiment of human arrogance, the system that called good evil and evil good, that exalted cruelty as order and peace. In that sense, Rome was the perfect image of the “mystery of lawlessness”—a pattern that has recurred in empire after empire, generation after generation.
Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Paul might have said the same. The powers that deceive and destroy may change their names, but they always tell the same lies: that truth is relative, that love is weakness, that domination is strength, that some lives matter less than others.
But Paul doesn’t leave us in the shadow of fear. He reminds the Thessalonians—and us—that the breath of the Lord Jesus will destroy the lawless one. The breath—pneuma, Spirit—of his word is stronger than any deception. The truth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection still exposes falsehood for what it is.
We don’t combat lies with more lies, or violence with more violence. We meet deception with truth, despair with hope, cruelty with compassion. The words that Christ has spoken—and the stories we continue to tell—carry real power. They are not relics of the past; they are the living Word that unmasks evil and heals what is broken.
“O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
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