1st Thessalonians: 13th Book in the New Testament
Contents:
That you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing. That you may walk properly toward those who are outside: When we combine the love of our brothers with work, we walk properly. People who are not yet Christians those who are outside will see our example and be influenced to become followers of Jesus.
And that you may lack nothing: Paul completes the thought he began in 1 Thessalonians 3: If they followed his teaching and example, they would lack nothing and come to the place of genuine Christian maturity. But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep: In the few weeks Paul was with the Thessalonians, he emphasized the soon return of Jesus, and the Thessalonians believed it earnestly.
Book of 1 Thessalonians
This was part of the reason that they were the kind of church Paul complimented so highly. Yet after Paul left, they wondered about those Christians who died before Jesus came back. They were troubled by the idea that these Christians might miss out on that great future event and that they might miss the victory and blessing of Jesus' coming. It is with some interest we note that four times in his letters, Paul asked Christians to not be ignorant about something:. Remarkably, these are areas where ignorance is still common in the Christian world.
Who have fallen asleep: Sleep was a common way to express death in the ancient world, but among pagans it was almost always seen as an eternal sleep. Christians called death sleep , but they emphasized the idea of rest. Early Christians began to call their burial places "cemeteries," which means, "dormitories" or "sleeping places.
Though Paul, using idioms common in his day, referred to death as sleep , it does not proved the erroneous idea of soul sleep , that the present dead in Christ are in a state of suspended animation, waiting for a resurrection to consciousness. Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope: For the Christian death is dead and leaving this body is like laying down for a nap and waking in glory. It is moving , not dying. For these reasons, Christians should not sorrow as others who have no hope when their loved ones in Jesus die.
As Christians, we may mourn the death of other Christians; but not as others who have no hope. Our sorrow is like the sadness of seeing someone off on a long trip, knowing you will see them again but not for a long time. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep: We have more than a wishful hope of resurrection. In the resurrection of Jesus we have an amazing example of it and a promise of our own. For the Thessalonian Christians, their troubled minds were answered by the statement " God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
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Their death does not mean that they will miss their share in the Parousia. When Paul wrote about the death of believers, he called it sleep. But in his description of Jesus' death, he did not soften it by calling it sleep , because there was nothing soft or peaceful about His death.
In connection with his teachings about the deceptions of Satan, Paul taught that those who refuse to accept truth will eventually lose the opportunity to receive it. This also makes 1 Thessalonians the oldest book in the New Testament. The first two chapters of the letter speak of imitating the behavior and example of other Christians. Yet it seems that instead, Paul meant to encourage each Christian to possess or hold his own body vessel in a way that honored God. We who are alive means that Paul himself shared in this expectancy. Porter of the Seventy taught:
For them it is but sleep. We believe that Jesus died and rose again: This was the confident belief of the Apostle Paul and the early Christians. We will certainly live, because Jesus lives and our union with Him is stronger than death. This is why we do not sorrow as those who have no hope and why we have more than a wishful hope. When a sinner dies, we mourn for them. When a believer dies we only mourn for ourselves, because they are with the Lord. In the ruins of ancient Rome, you can see the magnificent tombs of pagans, with gloomy inscriptions on them. One of them reads:.
Or one can visit the murky catacombs and read glorious inscriptions. We should look at death the same way those early Christians did. Sadly, not all Christians are at this placed of confidence and peace. Even Christians have, in unbelief, had the same fear and hopelessness about death. The author once read an inscription reflecting this un-Christian despair on an Irish tombstone in a Christian cemetery on the Hill of Slane, outside of Dublin:.
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. By the word of the Lord: Paul emphasized that this was an authoritative command, though we do not know whether Paul received it by direct revelation or if it was an unrecorded saying of Jesus.
One way or another, this came from Jesus and did not originate with Paul. We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep: Paul wanted the Thessalonians to know that those who are asleep - Christians who have died before Jesus returns - will by no means be at a disadvantage.
Those who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede them. God will allow those who are asleep to share in the glory of the coming of the Lord. We who are alive means that Paul himself shared in this expectancy. It wasn't because Paul had an erroneous promise of the return of Jesus in his lifetime. Proper Christian anticipation includes the imminent return of Christ.
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout: When Jesus comes, He will come personally. The Lord Himself will descend , and come with a shout. The ancient Greek word for shout here is the same word used for the commands that a ship captain makes to his rowers, or a commander speaking to his soldiers. Apparently, there will be some audible signal that prompts this remarkable event. It may be that all three descriptions shout , voice , and trumpet refer to the same sound; or there may be three distinct sounds.
The rapture will not be silent or secret, though the vast majority of people may not understand the sound or its meaning. When Paul heard the heavenly voice on the road to Damascus Acts 9: They heard a sound but did not understand its meaning. The entire world may hear this heavenly sound but have no idea what its meaning is.
With the voice of an archangel: This doesn't mean that the Lord Himself is an archangel. The only one described as an archangel in the Bible is Michael Jude 1: Paul means that when Jesus comes, He will come in the company of prominent angels.
With the voice of an archangel means that Paul clearly did not designate a specific archangel. With the trumpet of God: Believers are gathered with the trumpet of God. In the Old Testament trumpets sounded the alarm for war and threw the enemy into a panic, in the sense of the seven trumpets described in Numbers Trumpets also sounded an assembly of God's people, as in Leviticus Here, the trumpet of God gathers together God's people.
There are three other associations of trumpets and end-times events.
One is the last trump of 1 Corinthians The others are the seven trumpets which culminate at Revelation Hiebert compares this trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4 and the seventh trumpet of Revelation The results are different: Here 'the last trump' signals the close of the life the church on earth; there the 'seventh' trumpet marks a climax in a progressive series of apocalyptic judgments upon the living on earth. As to the trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4 and the one mentioned in Matthew Matthew refers to Jewish believers during the great tribulation; Thessalonians refers to the church.
Matthew refers to a gathering of the elect scattered over the earth, with no mention of resurrection; Thessalonians refers to the raising of the believing dead. Matthew refers to living believers gathered from all over the earth at the command of their Lord who has returned to earth in open glory; Thessalonians refers to the uniting of the raised dead with the living believers to meet the Lord in the air.
And the dead in Christ will rise first: Paul's point to the Thessalonians is clear. The prior dead in Christ will not be left out of either the resurrection or the return of Jesus. In fact, they will experience it first. We therefore shall not rise without them. Many wonder how are the dead in Christ raised are first. Some believe that they now have temporary bodies and await this resurrection.
Others believe that they are now disembodied spirits who wait for resurrection. Still others conjecture that the dead in Christ experience their resurrection immediately. There will come a day, when in God's eternal plan, the dead in Christ will receive their resurrection bodies. Yet until that day, we are confident that the dead in Christ are not in some kind of soul sleep or suspended animation.
Paul made it clear that to be absent from the body means to be present with the Lord.
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However God will do it, we are confident that His promise is true. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them: Those alive and remaining until this coming of Jesus are caught up to meet Jesus in the air, together with the dead in Jesus who have already risen.
The verb translated caught up here means to seize, or to carry off by force. In the ancient Greek, the phrase to meet was used as a technical term to describe the official welcoming of honored guests. This passage is the basis for the New Testament doctrine of the rapture , the catching away of believers to be with Jesus. The word rapture is not in the ancient Greek text, but comes from the Latin Vulgate, which translates the phrase caught up with rapturus , from which we get our English word rapture.
Paul's statement, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is both dramatic and fantastic. He speaks of Christians flying upward, caught up … in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. We wouldn't believe this unless the Bible told us it were so, not any more than we would believe that God who became a baby, that He did miracles, that He died on a cross and He lives in us.
Paul's language here is so straightforward and free from figurative speech that there is no missing his intent. Either these details must be received by us as matter of practical expectation, or we must set aside the Apostle as one divinely empowered to teach the Church. Shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: Paul's plain language leaves no doubt regarding the certainty of this event.
Yet the timing of this event in the chronology of God's prophetic plan is a matter of significant debate among Christians. Many - though certainly not all - Christians believe the Bible teaches that there will be an important seven-year period of history before the Battle of Armageddon and triumphant return of Jesus. The debate about this catching away centers on where it fits in with this final seven-year period, popularly known as the Great Tribulation, with reference to Matthew The adherents of these different positions each believe their position is Biblical, and these differences of understanding should not make dividing lines of Christian fellowship.
Nevertheless, this author's opinion is that the pre-tribulation rapture position is Biblically correct. Even other references to the return of Jesus within Thessalonians support this understanding:. The clear implication is that they had hope of His imminent return, not the expectation of an imminent great tribulation. But if Paul believed Christians would go through the great tribulation, he would count the dead in Christ as more fortunate than those living Christians who might very well have to endure the great tribulation.
It would have been logical for Paul to comfort the Thessalonians with the idea that the dead in Jesus were better off because they won't have to experience the great tribulation. But if Paul knew that the church was destined to pass through the great tribulation, it would have been more appropriate for him to warn these Christians about worse trials and suffering ahead, rather than hold the promise of a coming rest.
And thus we shall always be with the Lord: The manner in which Jesus will gather us to Himself is impressive. But the main point is that whatever the state of the Christians dead or alive at the Lord's coming, they will always be with the Lord. This is the great reward of heaven - to be with Jesus. Death can't break our unity with Jesus or with other Christians. We shall always be with the Lord is an important truth with many implications. Therefore comfort one another: Paul did not tell them to take comfort, but to give comfort. In the way God works, we always receive comfort as we give it.
The truth of the return of Jesus for His people, and the eternal union of Jesus and His people is to be a source of comfort for Christians. This concluding statement of Paul only makes sense if the catching away of the previous verses actually delivers Christians from an impending danger. If the catching away only brings humanity to God for judgment, there is little comfort in these words, as understood by Clarke: Comfort a man with the information that he is going to appear before the judgment-seat of God!
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This is not a gospel message that compels people to ignore or forsake the world; instead it calls them to live in it with a distinctively Christian hope. It is situated in the midst of the "Pauline corpus," the collection of letters attributed to the Apostle Paul the books of Romans through Philemon. The opening words of 1 Thessalonians identify the authors as the coworkers Paul, Silvanus identified as Silas in the book of Acts , and Timothy. The Apostle Paul appears to have been the principal writer, but it is noteworthy that the letter almost always speaks in the voice of multiple authors using pronouns such as "we," "us," and "our".
Of all the surviving letters written by the Apostle Paul, 1 Thessalonians is very likely the first to have been written. This also makes 1 Thessalonians the oldest book in the New Testament. It was written in the early 50s, probably in 51 C. The Apostle Paul and his associates write a tender pastoral letter to believers in Thessalonica to reaffirm their strong faith, strengthen their ground for hope, encourage them in holy living, and instruct them about the coming of the Lord.
As with any other New Testament epistle, to read 1 Thessalonians is to read someone else's mail.
Paul and his coworkers had a preexisting relationship with the believers in Thessalonica, and this letter is only one piece of their ongoing communications over a span of time. The letter itself yields clues about the circumstances that prompted Paul and the others to write it, and the content of the letter addresses certain "hot-button" issues that were probably concerns for the members of the church in Thessalonica. Introduction 1 Thessalonians 1: Remembrance, Celebration, and Thanksgiving 1 Thessalonians 2: Living a Life of Holiness 1 Thessalonians 4: On the Coming of the Lord 1 Thessalonians 4: Their expectant hope concerning Jesus' coming should result in watchful confidence.
Commands for Daily Living 1 Thessalonians 5: The passage concludes with a benediction that claims that God is the one who sanctifies and keeps believers. Concluding Words and Benediction 1 Thessalonians 5: Subscribe to this Site. Make personal notes Track your learning. Summary Outline Background Introductory Issues Theological Themes Summary The Apostle Paul and his associates write a tender pastoral letter to believers in Thessalonica to reaffirm their strong faith, strengthen their ground for hope, encourage them in holy living, and instruct them about the coming of the Lord Jesus.
Believers Who Have Died - Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like. This summary of the book of 1 Thessalonians provides information about the title, 13 at the end of this study Bible), that dates Gallio's proconsulship to c.
The letter affords glimpses into the most affectionate aspects of Paul's pastoral and theological guidance to a church he helped found. The themes of future hope and expectant anticipation of Christ's return are prevalent in this letter. Where Do I Find It?
When Was It Written? How Do I Read It?
The epistle itself provides the best evidence for constructing the background of this communication between the authors and the church in Thessalonica. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy write to the Thessalonian Christians after having been away from their city for an indeterminate amount of time.
During a previous visit, some of the Thessalonian Gentiles had warmly welcomed Paul and the others, and had "turned to God from idols" 1: After leaving Thessalonica and being "made orphans by being separated from" the Thessalonians 2:
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