The Man of Sin (1)
Martha asked about the Man of Sin. The text is 2
Thessalonians 2:1-12. Some Thessalonians were distressed because they
had been urged to believe that the day of the Lord had already come
(2:2). Half believing it, I suppose they would wonder what had become of
their loved ones that had died, the ones Paul said in 1 Thessalonians
4:13-18 Christ would bring with him? There was no sign of them.
Paul assures them that the day of the Lord hadn’t come and he reminds
them of what he used to teach them while he was with them. And what was
that? He taught them that an apostasy would come and that it would be
connected with "the man of lawlessness" who would be destroyed by the
Lord at his coming (2:3,8). For that to be true the apostasy would have
to come first, come to focus in "the man of sin" and then he would be
destroyed at the coming of the Lord.
It’s clear from this that Paul is banking on their realizing that the
apostasy hadn’t yet developed and that the "man of lawlessness" had not
yet appeared in order to be destroyed by the Lord’s coming.
[All kinds of interesting things develop here and one of them is
this: The Thessalonians must not have connected the coming of the Lord
with the literal destruction of the earth and heaven. If Paul had taught
that when the Lord comes the earth was literally to be burned up, why
would he bother to talk of an apostasy and the rest? Why didn’t he just
say something like, "How can you believe the Lord has already come when
the earth has not been burned up?]
The "man of sin" will be revealed in connection with apostasy, he is
presently restrained, but he will be fully revealed when the
"restrainer" is removed and the Lord will destroy him at his coming.
Those appear to be explicitly affirmed by the text.
I think there are two things we need to keep in mind while wrestling
with this section. One is that the rise of the "man of sin" is imminent
when Paul writes. I say that because he says, "the secret power of
lawlessness is already at work" (2:7) and were it not for some
"restrainer" the Man of sin would be out in the open. There’s no
suggestion that Paul wrote that on Thursday and that by Sunday of the
following week the "man of lawlessness" should be standing in a temple
somewhere but some degree of imminence is surely conveyed. Since
Paul had already told the Thessalonians who or what "the restrainer"
was it’s difficult to see the restrainer as some still future person or
structure. Especially since the restrainer was already at work nearly
two thousand years ago. I think the commentators sense this
imminence element since they identify the restrainer as perhaps Paul,
the gospel proclamation to the nations (compare Matthew 24:14), the
ordered society created by Rome, the Roman empire and such like.
Assuming the imminence of the lawless one’s appearance generates some
tensions for us. One commentator sees the imminence, takes it that this
is some specific individual who was to be destroyed at the Lord’s
coming and concludes that Paul taught that the Lord was soon to return.
He says that the only reason we don’t accept that is because we don’t
want Paul to be mistaken about the coming of the Lord. I think the
commentator is correct to speak of the lawless one’s imminence, I think
he is mistaken in saying that he was some individual and I think he is
mistaken to think that what Paul said implied that the Lord was
returning very shortly.
The second one is this, Paul doesn’t say that the appearance of the "man of lawlessness" coincides with
the time of the Lord’s coming. He says you can be sure that the Lord’s
coming is yet future because the apostasy hasn’t taken place and the
"Man of sin" has not yet been fully revealed. The most common way of
reading this section is something like this. "The Lord hasn’t come yet
and the proof of it is that there has been no major apostasy and the Man
of Sin has not appeared. You see the Man of Sin is to appear just prior
to the return of Christ."
I can see that that makes sensible reading but maybe it isn’t what
Paul said. The crucial link is missing. Paul says nothing here that
would lead us to think, "The Man of Sin is to appear just prior to the return of Christ."
The Lord hasn’t come yet
The apostasy hasn’t yet occurred
The Man of lawlessness has not yet been (fully) revealed
These two events must occur before Christ returns
Christ will destroy him when he returns.
That looks like a summary of the basic proposals in the text and
there’s no mention or indication that the Lawless one’s full
manifestation occurs just prior to the coming of the Lord.
What is it that makes us think that the text does suggest
this about the Man of Sin’s appearance? I think the primary motivation
is that we take the Man of lawlessness as a particular individual. It
certainly reads like it’s a particular individual. If it’s a particular
person we don’t want him appearing sometime, say in the first century,
and living long enough to be around when Christ comes, say in the 21st century. This would mean we have an individual somewhere in our midst who’s about 2,000 years old.
So we don’t want the Man of sin to come on the scene in the first
century because we would have to choose between having this very old man
or that Paul was wrong about the coming of the Lord. The question of
imminence appears to me to be of critical importance. It seems we should
choose between:
There is no imminence in the text—neither the coming of Christ nor the rise of the Man of sin is imminent.
There is imminence in the text—the revelation of the Man of sin.
There is imminence in the text—both the revelation of the Man of sin and the coming of the Lord.