Does 2 Thessalonians 2:13 not teach that God chose the Thessalonians for salvation? Admittedly they were to exercise faith, but God chose them beforehand?

This text is from a transcript of talk given by David Gooding entitled ‘The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God’ (1995).

If you follow the manuscripts that the King James Version follows, you will read these verses thus:

But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:13–14)

The context is this. Paul has just issued the solemn statement that when the man of sin arises, with all his lying wonders, God also will intervene. God will send some people a strong delusion so that they believe the lie, that they might be condemned. Why so? 'Because they received not the love of the truth' (2 Thessalonians 2:10). If you won't have the truth, by definition you are siding with the lie. If you persist in that, God will then harden you so that you believe the lie.

In contrast to that, Paul talks to the Thessalonians. Imagine these comparatively young converts. Paul has been telling them of the sad and sorry things that will happen at the end of this age. When the man of sin comes God will send some people a strong delusion so that they will believe the lie. They are saying to themselves, with some anxiety, 'That could happen to us.'

'No', says Paul. 'Right from the very beginning God chose you to salvation. That's what the scheme was—inherent in the gospel by which you were called. The gospel that you heard from the beginning wasn't like this: "Believe this gospel and you can be forgiven and justified—for now! But watch how you behave, for if you don't behave too well you might be deceived by the man of sin. God will send you a strong delusion, and you will be damned in spite of your initial belief."'

What! That wouldn't be a gospel, would it? Yet some people still manage to believe that kind of thing.

'No', says Paul. 'When you think about these things you may put on your head the helmet of the certain hope of coming salvation, to guard your thinking (1 Thessalonians 5:8). You are to know that, right from the very beginning, from the very moment that God saved you, the scheme was to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes again, so that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. That is God's scheme; he invented it; he called you to it by our gospel. God has not appointed you to wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:9). And the reason I go and preach the gospel is so that the elect may come upon that salvation that is with eternal glory. You don't need, therefore, to have any fear about the future.'

That is how I understand the verse.

Let me briefly give you a beautiful little illustration from the Old Testament of escape from the wrath of God. Joshua and the armies of God arrived in the vicinity of Jericho, commissioned by God to execute the judgment of God on that evil civilization in Canaan (see Joshua 2). The spies came to reconnoitre what the psychological position was of the people within Jericho, and eventually landed in the house of this prostitute. She had heard what God did to the Egyptians, and as she looked out her window and saw the armies of God advancing she knew it meant the destruction of Jericho. So she sought salvation from the living God. She said: 'Give me a sincere token that when you come you'll save me alive and all my family.'

The spies said, 'We will.'

But she'd had a lot of men in that house from time to time, who would whisper all sorts of sweet nothings to her, and when she let them out of the door in the middle of the night that was the last she ever saw of them. She wanted to know how she could be utterly sure that they would keep their word and the armies of God would not destroy her and her family.

'Swear an oath,' she said. So they swore an oath to her, poor pagan woman, by the name of God (Joshua 2:14). Here was a woman now who learned where security lies—in the oath and the word of God.

'Tie this scarlet thread in your window', they said, as they got down towards the ground and jumped out of the basket, 'and when the armies come you will be safe.' Now, imagine Rahab looking out of the window. Here were the armies coming to execute the wrath of God. Now that she had come to believe in God, the armies would not execute the wrath of God on her. She had turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for Joshua to come—her deliverer from the coming wrath (cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10). Joshua is very careful to explain that no drop of wrath ever fell on Rahab (see Joshua 6:25).