Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Thessalonians 2:3

"let no man beguile you in any wise: for [it will not be,] except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition," — 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (ASV)

Let no man ... by any means —“Whatever device they may adopt—spirit, letter, or what not—they are deceivers or deceived; do not be duped by them.” The form of warning is a mark of St. Paul’s style. (Compare 1 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 5:6)

For ... except —The words between are rightly supplied in our version. Probably, St. Paul’s first intention was to frame 2 Thessalonians 2:5 differently, for instance: “For, except that Man of Sin, and so on, you remember that I told you the day would not come.” The length of the sentence made him break off (as he often does) without regard for grammatical completeness.

A falling away —A great change in the purpose of the sentence is immediately felt when the is substituted for “a.” Only one insignificant manuscript omits the definite article; in our version, the same article is vigorously rendered “that” before “man of sin.” In both cases, the purpose is by no means to utter a new, strange prophecy or to add to the knowledge of the readers, but to remind them of careful teaching given during the first few weeks after their conversion.

“That falling away” must undoubtedly imply that the people so apostatizing had formerly held (or perhaps still professed to hold) the Christian faith; people cannot fall from ground they never occupied. This vast and dreadful Apostasy , so clearly and prominently taught to the ancient Church and so mysterious to us, is further defined by the following words as the Apocalypse or Manifestation of the Man of Sin.

For this revelation of Antichrist, the same word (apocalypsis) is used that is often used for Christ (for example, in 2 Thessalonians 1:7; Luke 17:30; and three times in St. Peter). Therefore, we may expect to recognize him when he comes as clearly as we will recognize Christ. The conception of the Antichrist is not merely that of an opponent of the Christ, but of a rival Christ; there is a hideous parallelism between the two.

That man of sin —It is not absolutely certain from the Greek, but the context makes it tolerably clear that the “Man of Sin” is the head and center of the Apostasy itself and does not form a separate movement from it. The “Man of Sin,” then, will have at one time been (or will still profess to be) part of the Christian Church, and the Apostasy will culminate in him. Thus, for instance, the requirements of the passage would not be fulfilled by (with Hammond) interpreting the Apostasy to mean the early Gnostic movement, followed up by the independent appearance of Nero as the Man of Sin.

The phrase “the Man of Sin” might, perhaps, be only a poetical personification of a movement, a class of people, or a succession of people (for example, Psalms 89:22; Revelation 2:20; Revelation 17:3). However, the analogy of the parallel passages in Daniel 8:11 leads rather to the supposition that St. Paul looked for the coming of some actual, individual man who would be the impersonation of the movement of Apostasy.

The genitive case (see Note on 1 Thessalonians 1:3) is like a forcible epithet: “A man so wicked that, as bad as other men are, wickedness would be his mark by which he is distinguished from all others; a man who belongs to sin, in whom the ideal of sin has become realized and incarnate.” The word itself does not express what kind of sin will be most prominent in him, but the context points clearly to what is, in fact, the crowning sin: spiritual pride and rebellious arrogance (Ephesians 6:12).

The son of perdition —This phrase is used in John 17:12 for the false Apostle. It suits the description of the Man of Sin, who, like Judas, will have “fallen away” from high Christian privileges—and according to one popular interpretation, like Judas, from the privileges of the Apostolate itself. The expression signifies one who belongs by natural ties to perdition, who from his very birth chooses evil, and in that sense may be said to be born to be lost (Matthew 26:24; 2 Peter 2:12). Both his malignity and his doom are implied in this title.