Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer:
All Commentaries on 2 Thessalonians 1:5 Go To 2 Thessalonians 1
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Lastly, there is the matter of Faustus’ crafty insinuation, that the Old Testament misrepresents God as threatening to come with a sword which will spare neither the righteous nor the wicked. If the words were explained to the pagan, he would perhaps disagree neither with the Old Testament nor with the New; and he might see the beauty of the parable in the Gospel, which people who pretend to be Christians either misunderstand from their blindness or reject from their perversity. The vine’s great farmer uses his pruning hook differently on the fruitful and in the unfruitful branches. Yet he spares neither good nor bad, pruning one and cutting off the other. No one is so just that he does not need to be tried by affliction to advance or to establish or prove his virtue. Do the Manichaeans not reckon Paul as righteous, who, while confessing humbly and honestly his past sins, still gives thanks for being justified by faith in Jesus Christ? Was Paul himself then spared of suffering by God whom fools misunderstand? He says, “I will spare neither the righteous nor the sinner.” Hear the apostle himself, “Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelation, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me. For this I asked the Lord three times, that he would remove it from me; and he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is perfected in weakness.” … Paul also, besides recording his own experience, says that the afflictions and persecutions of the righteous exhibit the judgment of God.
