John Calvin Commentary 2 Thessalonians 2:1

"Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him;" — 2 Thessalonians 2:1 (ASV)

Now I beseech you, by the coming. It may indeed be read, as I have noted on the margin, concerning the coming, but it is more fitting to view it as an earnest entreaty, derived from the subject at hand, just as in 1 Corinthians 15:31, when discussing the hope of a resurrection, he uses an oath by that glory which is to be hoped for by believers.

And this has much more force when he charges believers solemnly by the coming of Christ, not to imagine rashly that His day is near, for He at the same time admonishes us to think of it only with reverence and sobriety. For it is customary to charge solemnly by those things which we regard with reverence.

The meaning therefore is: “As you greatly value the coming of Christ, when He will gather us to Himself, and will truly perfect that unity of the body which we still cherish only in part through faith, so I earnestly implore you by His coming not to be too quick to believe, if anyone should affirm, on any pretext, that His day is near.”

Since he had in his previous letter alluded to some extent to the resurrection, it is possible that some fickle and fanatical persons used this as an opportunity to designate a near and specific day. For it is unlikely that this error had arisen earlier among the Thessalonians.

For Timothy, on returning from there, had informed Paul about their entire condition, and as a prudent and experienced man had omitted nothing important. Now if Paul had been notified of it, he could not have remained silent on a matter of such great consequence. Thus, I am of the opinion that when Paul's letter had been read, which contained a vivid depiction of the resurrection, some who were inclined to indulge their curiosity philosophized inappropriately about its time.

This, however, was an utterly destructive notion, as were other things of a similar nature, which were afterwards spread, not without Satan's cunning. For when any day is said to be near, if it does not arrive quickly, people, being naturally impatient with longer delay, begin to lose heart, and that loss of heart is soon followed by despair.

This, therefore, was Satan’s cunning strategy: since he could not openly destroy the hope of resurrection, he aimed to undermine it secretly, as if by pits underground, by promising that its day was near and would soon arrive. Afterwards, too, he did not stop devising various schemes, aiming to gradually erase the belief in a resurrection from people's minds, since he could not openly eliminate it.

It is, indeed, a plausible claim that the day of our redemption is precisely determined, and for this reason it is applauded by the masses, as we see that the speculations of Lactantius and the ancient Chiliasts brought much delight; and yet their only real tendency was to overthrow the hope of resurrection.

This was not Lactantius's intention, but Satan, with his characteristic cunning, twisted his curiosity and that of others like him, so that nothing in religion remained certain or settled; and even today Satan does not stop using the same methods. We now see how necessary Paul's warning was, for without it, all religion among the Thessalonians would have been overthrown under a plausible but false pretext.