Verse 11
11. For this cause Namely, that they first hated and rejected the love of the truth.
Shall send Rather, present tense, sends; or, as the mischief was already working while St. Paul was writing, is sending.
Strong delusion Greek, a working of deception, that is, the deceiving operations of the man of sin. God, as God of providence, sends these deceptive operations as part of our probation; not to make us sinful, but to afford us means of trial, triumph, and salvation. St. Paul is full and formal in tracing their perdition and their being deceived to their own previous volitional and responsible act, and their mental state in consequence of that act. But for that state and act the delusion would have been no delusion. But, for those who hate the truth, the events sent by the providence of God will furnish ample grounds for being deluded, if they please. Note, Romans 8:11.
That they should believe a lie Greek, to the result that they believe the lie. Men may infer, but the words do not say, that it was the divine intention that they should believe falsehood. It states only a result, a result which the believers were fully, as free agents, able to avoid. We reject the absurd statement of Alford, “whatever God permits, he ordains.” The non-prevention by God of the voluntary sin of a free agent is not the ordaining of it. All that St. Paul affirms here is, that God sends a working of deception (by its own will already existing) to these persons, who are voluntarily predisposed to it. One set of sinners gratifies the willingness to be damned of another set.
A lie Rather, THE lie. The stupendous systematic lie of the “man of sin.”
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