What Does 2 Thessalonians 2:12 Mean?

(12) **That they all.**—This is God’s purpose in making them believe the lie—“in order that, one and all, they might be judged.” He who desireth not the death of a sinner, now is said actually to lay plans with the intention of judging him: such are the bold self-contradictions of the Bible! It must not, however, be forgotten for a moment that God did not begin to will the sinner’s judgment till after He had offered him freely the love of His own blessed truth, and had been rejected. When once the sinner is incurable, the only way to vindicate truth and righteousness is by hastening on his condemnation, whatever that condemnation may mean. **Who believed not the truth. . . .**—Once more the offence for which they are condemned is insisted upon. Theirs is no fancy sin. What God wanted them to believe was not some fantastical dogma, some fiction between which and the fictions of the Man of Sin there was nothing morally to choose, but the inviolable truth by which God Himself is bound. *But had pleasure in the unrighteousness* (so runs the Greek): *i.e., *consciously gave their moral consent to the unrighteousness of 2Thessalonians 2:10, the unrighteousness which sought to impose itself upon them, and which they would never have been led into had they loved the truth.