To fill up their sins always. This is a terrible and mysterious expression. Some light may be gained by considering it in relation to the history of the Jews, as it is of these people that it is here written. They had accumulated sin upon sin in slaying Christ and the prophets, in expelling the apostles from their communion, and finally in hindering the Gentiles from receiving that gospel which they had rejected for themselves. But there was to come an end to this tale of wickedness. The time was drawing near when the Jews would no longer have power to hurt the cause of Christianity, and when swift punishment for their accumulated iniquities would descend in the destruction of their city and nation. They were hastening to fill up the sins, which must issue in this fearful doom.

I. THE GREATEST SIN IS THAT OF SINNING WITHOUT RESTRAINT. It is a mistake to speak of every sin as of infinite guilt, or of all sins as equally guilty. Such an assertion is not only false, it tends either to despair or to reckless excess in sinning. However far one has gone in sin, it is better to stop than to go on to greater enormities. To be adding sin to sin, and to be sinning "always," are signs of reckless, abandoned depravity.

II. THERE IS A FULLNESS OF SINS WHICH BRINGS ITS OWN PENALTY. When sin reaches this point the penalty can no longer be stayed. The cup once full flows over in wrath and ruin. It is as though forbearance and guilt were in the scales. When guilt is full the balance dips. There is an end to all possible long-suffering. The more men go on in excesses of sin, the faster do they approach the inevitable day of reckoning. The sooner the sin is filled up to the measure which passes endurance, the sooner must the stroke of doom fall.

III. FULLNESS OF SINS MUST LEAD TO FULLNESS OF PUNISHMENT. They who fill up their sins always will have the wrath "come upon them to the uttermost." The worst debtor must be made to pay the last farthing. The swifter the rush downhill, the greater the crash at the bottom. The more tares that are sown in spring, the more bundles to burn in harvest. He who fills the present life with sins will have the next life filled with wrath.

IV. THERE SEEMS TO BE A LIMIT TO SINS. There is a fullness of sins. There is no fullness of virtues; these can be developed indefinitely. The good man is growing up to a perfection. The bad man is being corrupted, not to a perfection, but to a fullness. Evil has limits; goodness has none. Satan is let loose for a time. God restrains the wrath of the wicked. Sin, through rebellion against God, cannot break away from all Divine control. Sins are limited by several means:

1. Capacity. We have a limited power of sinning.

2. Time. God sometimes cuts the sinner off in the midst of his days, and brings the guilty nation to destruction.

3. Providential control. The fullness of sins is not the amount which God predestines to be committed, for God is not the author of sin, nor does he will or permit it. This fullness is the measure beyond which God stays the evil from proceeding. When the tide of iniquity, driven onwards by rebellious powers, reaches this fullness, God says, "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed," and the storm beats itself out in impotent fury. - W.F.A.

The apostle "goes off" upon the word "Jews" to describe the evil deeds of his countrymen.

I. THE EXPLANATION OF THE INDICTMENT. Various views have been offered.

1. That as the persecution of believers in Thessalonica, though from the heathen, was yet directly instigated by the Jews, it was natural that Paul should turn aside to speak of them and their wickedness.

2. That the apostle, at the very time of writing, was himself suffering at their hands (Acts 18:5, 6, 12). His mind, therefore, we can well conceive, was full of thoughts regarding these Jewish misdeeds, and hence he bursts forth into utterances of sorrowful indignation.

3. That the Thessalonians were converts from Polytheism to a monotheistic religion which was a growth out of Judaism, They could, consequently, hardly fail to stumble by seeing Jews everywhere its most violent opponents. Paul may have striven to meet this state of mind, by showing that the opposition of the Jews was in keeping with their whole character and conduct.

II. ITS SUBJECT MATTER.

1. The culminating point in Jewish wickedness is the casting out and murder of their Messiah. In ignorance they did it, it is true. Yet that ignorance was no justification, for the prophets, whose testimony was to Christ, the Jews had also slain. This is the indictment of the Old Testament, and also of Christ (Matthew 23:29-39). Paul's words are but an echo of his Master's.

2. Seeing, then, that such was their past conduct, Paul adds, as naturally following, "and have persecuted us." What had been meted out to God's servants in the past it was to be expected would be extended to the apostles and believers. Under new conditions the Jewish character would again assert itself.

3. Hence he declares "They please not God and are contrary to all men." The more he came in contact with Gentile life, the more he must have observed the intense dislike with which the Jews were everywhere regarded. Despising other nations, they were themselves only loathed by these nations in return; and now that Paul's feelings had broadened into the love of all mankind, he could not but recognize them as showing what Tacitus called "adversus omnes alios hostile odium." The mark of God's anger had been set upon them, and the Divine judgment had been ratified by men. "When God loathes aught, men presently loathe it too."

4. But here it is not the dislike felt by others towards the Jews as the animosity of the Jews towards all others. "Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles," etc. Like their own Pharisees they would neither enter in themselves nor allow others to enter.

5. In thus standing in the way of the Gentiles' salvation they were acting so as "to fill up their own sins alway" with fearful perseverance; alike before Christ had come, when He came, and now that He had gone, they had been filling up the measure of their guilt.

6. And now retribution was approaching. Wrath had already fallen, and was falling upon them; but in a short fourteen years it came upon them to the utmost in the destruction of their city and the dispersion of their race.

(J. Hutchison, D. D.)

The transition from the old to a new order of things in the progress of religion is not always accomplished without opposition. Age is naturally and increasingly tenacious: and the old religion looks upon the new with suspicion, jealousy, fear, anger. The Jews had resisted the attempts of their own Divinely commissioned prophets to rouse them to a purer faith and life; but their fury reached its climax in their opposition to Christianity. Observe —

I. THE FURY OF THE JEWS IN THEIR INHUMAN TREATMENT OF THE GREAT LEADERS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

1. They plotted against the life of the world's Redeemer; and, in spite of insufficient evidence to convict, and the endeavours of the Roman Procurator to release, they clamoured for His crucifixion, exclaiming, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a self-invoked imprecation that fell on them with terrible and desolating vengeance!

2. The sin of murder already darkly stained their race — the best and noblest of their prophets being the unoffending victims. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Zechariah met with violent deaths. The charge of Stephen was unanswerable (Acts 7:52).

3. The apostles were subjected to similar treatment — "Have chased and driven us out." They drove them out of Thessalonica, afterwards out of Berea, and were at that moment engaged in instigating an insurrection to drive the apostle out of Corinth. The spirit of persecution is unchanged. Wherever the attempt is made to raise the Church, it is met with a jealous, angry opposition. And yet what a wretched, short-sighted policy does persecution reveal! It is the idolized weapon of the tyrant and the coward, the sport of the brutal, the sanguinary carnival of devils.

II. THE FURY OF THE JEWS WAS DISPLEASING TO GOD. They fondly imagined that they were the favourites of heaven, and that all others were excluded from the Divine complacency. They could quote the words of their law, such as Deuteronomy 14:2, with the utmost facility, to support their assumption of superiority and exclusiveness, wilfully shutting their eyes to the difference between the holy intention of Jehovah, and their miserable failure to realize that intention. In all their opposition to Christianity they thought they were doing God service. How fatally blinding is sin — goading the soul to the commission of the most horrible crimes under the guise of virtue.

III. THE FURY OF THE JEWS WAS HOSTILE TO MAN.

1. Their hostility was directed against the world of mankind. "Are contrary to all men." The Jews of that period were the adversaries and despisers of all. Tacitus brands them as "the enemies of all men:" and Apion, the Egyptian, calls them "Atheists and misanthropes, in fact, the most witless and dullest of barbarians."

2. Their hostility was embittered by a despicable religious jealousy. "Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles," etc. Here the fury of the old religion against the new reached its climax. It is the perfection of bigotry and cruelty to deny to our fellow men the only means of salvation! Into what monsters of barbarity will persecution convert men! Pharaoh persisted to such a degree of unreasonableness as to chastise the Hebrews for not accomplishing impossibilities! Julian the Apostate, carried his vengeful spirit to his deathbed.

IV. THE FURY OF THE JEWS HURRIED THEM INTO IRRETRIEVABLE RUIN.

1. Their wickedness was wilfully persistent. "To fill up their sins alway" — at all times, now as much as ever. So much so, the time is now come when the cup of their iniquity is filled to the brim, and nothing can prevent the consequent punishment. The desire to sin grows with its commission. St. Gregory says, "Sinners would live forever that they might sin forever" — a powerful argument for the endlessness of future punishment — the desire to sin is endless!

2. Their punishment was inevitable and complete. "For the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost" — is even now upon them. The process has begun. Their fury to destroy others will accelerate their own destruction. Punishment descended upon the wicked, unbelieving, and resisting Jews; and utter destruction upon their national status and religious supremacy.Lessons: —

1. There is a fearful possibility of sinking into a lifeless formality, and a blind, infatuate opposition to the good.

2. The rage of man against the truth defeats its own ends and recoils in vengeance on himself.

(G. Barlow.)

Bridaine was one of the most celebrated of the French preachers. Marmontel relates that in his sermons he sometimes had recourse to the interesting method of parables, with a view the more forcibly to impress important truths on the minds of his hearers. Preaching on the passion of Jesus Christ, he expressed himself thus: — "A man, accused of a crime of which he was innocent, was condemned to death by the iniquity of his judges. He was led to punishment, but no gibbet was prepared, nor was there any executioner to perform the sentence. The people, moved with compassion, hoped that this sufferer would escape death. But one man raised his voice, and said, 'I am going to prepare a gibbet, and I will be the executioner.' You groan with indignation! Well, my brethren, in each of you I behold this cruel man. Here are no Jews today, to crucify Jesus Christ: but you dare to rise up, and say, 'I will crucify Him.'" Marmontel adds, that he heard these words pronounced by the preacher, though very young, with all the dignity of an apostle, and with the most powerful emotion; and that such was the effect, that nothing was heard but the sobs of the auditory. For the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost —

Bishop Patrick quotes the following affecting inquiry addressed by Rabbi Samuel Moraccanus to a friend in the eleventh century: — "I would fain learn from thee, out of the testimonies of the law, and the prophets, and other Scriptures, why the Jews are thus smitten in this captivity wherein we are, which may be properly termed the perpetual anger of God, because it hath no end. For it is now above a thousand years since we were carried captive by Titus; and yet our fathers, who worshipped idols, killed the prophets, and cast the law behind their back, were only punished with a seventy years' captivity, and then brought home again; but now there is no end of our calamities, nor do the prophets promise any." "If," says Bishop Patrick, "this argument was hard to be answered then, in his days, it is much harder in ours, who still see them pursued by God's vengeance, which can be for nothing else but rejecting and crucifying the Messiah, the Saviour of the world."

Take the case of an earthly parent. Suppose him to be endowed with all the tenderest sensibilities of nature, conceive of him as delighting in the health and welfare of his children, and, in the exercise of every benevolent affection, lavishing on them all the riches of a father's kindness and a father's care. You say, on looking at his benignant countenance and his smiling family, this is an affectionate father. But a secret canker of ingratitude seizes one or more of his children, they shun his presence, or dislike his society, and at length venture on acts of positive disobedience; he warns them, he expostulates with them, but in vain, they revolt more and more; and at length, in the exercise of deliberate thought, he lifts the rod and chastens them; and he who once was the author of all their happiness has become also their calm but firm reprover. And who that knows the tenderness of a father's love will not acknowledge that, severe as may be the suffering inflicted, such a man doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of his love? Again, conceive of a man of benevolent feelings invested with the office of magistrate or judge — conceive that Howard, the unwearied friend of his race, who visited the prisons of Europe to alleviate the miseries of the worst and most destitute of men — conceive of such a man sitting in judgment over the life or liberty of another, and can you not suppose, that while every feeling within him inclined him to the side of mercy, and his every sensibility would be gratified, were it possible to make the felon virtuous and happy, he might, notwithstanding, have such a deep moral persuasion of the importance of virtue and order to the well-being of the state, that he could consign the prisoner to a dungeon or the gallows, and that, too, with the perfect conviction that it was right and good to do so; while still, every sentiment of the heart within him, if it could be disclosed, would bear witness, that he afflicted not willingly, and that he had no pleasure in the death of the criminal? Such a father, and such a judge is God; and the sufferings which he inflicts, whether they be viewed as corrective or penal, are compatible with the loftiest benevolence in the Divine mind.

(Dr. J. Buchanan.)

Paul, ThessaloniansJudea, Philippi, ThessalonicaAlway, Always, Anger, Complete, Continually, Degree, Fill, Forbidding, Form, Fullest, Gentiles, Giving, God's, Heap, Hindering, Kept, Limit, Measure, Nations, Overtaken, Preaching, Prevent, Result, Salvation, Saved, Severest, Sins, Speak, Speaking, Thus, Try, Utmost, Uttermost, Wrath1. In what manner the gospel was brought and preached to the Thessalonians.
18. A reason is rendered both why Paul was so long absent from them, and also so desirous to see them.

1 Thessalonians 2:16

     5790   anger, divine

1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

     8795   persecution, nature of

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

     2426   gospel, responses
     5493   retribution
     6155   fall, of Adam and Eve

The Bible
THE WORD OF GOD "When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God." (1 Thessalonians 2:13.) THE Apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearer of a revelation direct from God; that the words he speaks and the words he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of God, warm with his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with his will. In this same epistle he writes: "For this we say unto …
I. M. Haldeman—Christ, Christianity and the Bible

Thessalonica and Berea
'Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath- days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3. Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. 4. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

The Calling of the Regenerate:
"Whom He did predestinate, them He also called."--Rom. viii. 30. In order to hear, the sinner, deaf by nature, must receive hearing ears. "He that hath ears let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." (Rev. ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6, 13, 22). But by nature the sinner does not belong to these favored ones. This is a daily experience. Of two clerks in the same office, one obeys the call and the other rejects it; not because he despises it, but because he does not hear God's call in it. Hence …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

The Protevangelium.
As the mission of Christ was rendered necessary by the fall of man, so the first dark intimation of Him was given immediately after the fall. It is found in the sentence of punishment which was passed upon the tempter. Gen. iii. 14, 15. A correct understanding of it, however, can be obtained only after we have ascertained who the tempter was. It is, in the first place, unquestionable that a real serpent was engaged in the temptation; so that the opinion of those who maintain that the serpent is only …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Effectual Calling
'Them he also called.' Rom 8:80. Q-xxxi: WHAT IS EFFECTUAL CALLING? A: It is a gracious work of the Spirit, whereby he causes us to embrace Christ freely, as he is offered to us in the gospel. In this verse is the golden chain of salvation, made up of four links, of which one is vocation. Them he also called.' Calling is nova creatio, a new creation,' the first resurrection. There is a two-fold call: (1.) An outward call: (2.) An inward call. (1.) An outward call, which is God's offer of grace to …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

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