1 Thessalonians 4

1 Thessalonians 4:13-5

Division 3. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11.)The resurrection of the saints at the coming of the Lord. The Christian hope is prominent in this epistle from the first. The Thessalonians had been converted to wait for God’s Son from heaven, and this became the light for them upon a path which ended in the glory already revealed. Important it surely was that there should be no cloud upon the prospect thus before them in which the opened heavens claimed them constantly; while for the earth also was seen the end of Satan’s power and of the curse, and the regeneration of the earth itself. What power for sanctification this, which made of those possessing such a hope pilgrims indeed; encompassing them continually with the atmosphere and light of heaven and the world to come! For the Thessalonians, however, there was in fact a cloud which shadowed this glorious expectation; and the apostle proceeds to dispel it by the announcement of a new “word of the Lord,” a new revelation, which declares the participation in it of the dead, for whom they were sorrowing as cut off from that which was the hope of the living. On the contrary he shows that the dead will be raised up to share with the living all that was before them. There would be no division of this sort between those alike the people of Christ. And he goes on to remind them that they were not to be (as Israel rightly will be) calculating times and seasons, which would have their place in connection with the day of the Lord, yet to come upon the world as a thief in the night. For the children of the day, suddenly as it might come, it could be no such unwelcome surprise. Let them not, therefore, sleep as others, but clothe themselves with the light as with an armor which would be their defence in a hostile place; assuring themselves that, whether living or dying, they were alike to live with their Saviour-Lord.

1. The apostle does not reprove them for the want of knowledge which they had; and which, if not inevitable, yet at least was not to be wondered at. There was, in fact, as his speaking by the word of the Lord implies, as yet no definite statement of Scripture with regard to that which troubled these young disciples. The, opposite has indeed been asserted; and the phrase itself even taken as a direct appeal to Scripture. But he does not produce any scripture; nor, had he done so, would it seem like Paul to affirm his speaking by it after this manner. The sufficient answer is, however, that no passage has been brought forward which could justify this view; and we may be confident none can be brought forward.

The texts which have been referred to (Matthew 16:27; Matthew 24:31; Matthew 25:1 sq.; Luke 14:14; John 5:28 sq.) are wholly incompetent; so that others have been obliged to imagine an unwritten word of the Lord which had come to Paul’s ears; but why not, then, a fresh communication from the Lord in glory, such as we know he received on other subjects, and others also beside himself received? True it is, indeed, that one might well believe, apart from any positive statement, that the Lord would not, in the way they feared, leave any Of His own in the day of His manifestation under the power of that death which He had Himself passed through, -deprived, not by any fault of their own, of the full participation in the glory which that death of His had entitled them to. The lack of assurance in this respect on the part of the Thessalonians may well show us our dullness in spiritual things. Yet for this the Lord has now made special provision. It is like Him, and we have all of us cause to be thankful for it. No! “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those who have fallen asleep through Jesus will God bring with Him.” Let us notice a little exactly the expressions here: for we may be assured that they are themselves exact, as always in Scripture. “Jesus died;” His saints but “fall asleep.” With Him indeed it was death, and in all its reality and severity as the judgment upon sin, -the sign and type of a deeper judgment. With them it is but “sleep,” -rest and refreshment, from which they rise to a day that knows no ending and suffers no decline, -a rest too, but in the full activity of life, where life is never dormant, but the joy of the Lord is strength indeed. For, if Jesus died, He rose again; and this is what gives His death itself its full power in blessing for our souls. Thus the apostle puts the two together, as the full argument of faith as to its portion from God. It is God who raised up Jesus again. He has answered the cry, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” by putting the Sufferer where all the meaning of His death can now come out. Righteousness sorrowing gave Him up to die; but righteousness joyfully raises Him from the dead. Had He suffered on His own account, He could not have come out of it; His coming out is the testimony of personal righteousness in Himself, and thus of a work done for others, and of its acceptance also in their behalf.

He rises their Representative, even as He died their Substitute; and the honors so acquired He, whose wealth could not be increased, acquired as treasure that He could pour out upon them. Thus His resurrection is full argument for their own; and if God bring Him again into the world, they too shall come with Him; God shall bring them with Him. In the day of His manifestation all must do Him honor: so He comes in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels; and how shall the dominion of death which He has broken keep from Him those who show the value of the work which has set it aside? The apostle here announces only the truth concerning those on whose account they are bearing so needless a burden of sorrow. “God shall bring them with Him,” -His own, from whom He cannot needlessly be separated. Not, as some strangely imagine, bring them as spirits to rejoin the bodies left behind on earth: it is merely the simple and blessed fact, that they will not be wanting in the company that God brings with His Son. Then he goes on to explain how it shall be, and brings in here the assurance of their previous resurrection. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord are in no way to anticipate those who have fallen asleep. Because the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught away together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” Thus we can realize the tenderness of the expression, “those who have fallen asleep through Jesus,” or I think, better “those who have been laid asleep by Jesus,” -by Him who has the keys of death and hades, and their Saviour. Taken in the first way, the meaning would be that “through Jesus,” -through His work for them, -death had become to them merely a sleep; but it would seem a strange manner of expressing this. Taken in the second way, the Lord’s rule over death and His tender care of His people are both implied. To us, for whom the great body of Christians are already among the dead, it cannot be a question that those remaining to the coming of the Lord will not precede the apostles and the multitude of the departed in their entrance into glory; yet, for all that, how little is the significance of this rising “first” of the dead in Christ realized by believers still. The common thought (thank God, less common than it was) of a single day of judgment in which saints and sinners rise together, necessarily destroys it entirely. Here a resurrection of the dead is shown to take place before the living saints are changed even; and then both are caught away together, to meet the Lord in the air. When He appears, therefore, they appear with Him (Colossians 3:4). Here is no promiscuous crowd, clearly: they that are ready go in with Him to the marriage and the door is shut." There is no need for our present purpose to consider what or where this marriage is. This consideration belongs elsewhere, and is to be found where it belongs (Matthew 25:1 sq., notes); but we see at once that here is the company from which the Thessalonians thought their dying brethren might be excluded.

It is not the dead who wait and watch with their lamps trimmed and burning; and they are in fact left out of the picture that our Lord has given us there. The apostle, speaking by the word of the Lord, now adds them to the company of those who thus go forth. As with the living so with the dead, they are not the whole number of those dead, but, as the apostle elsewhere says, they that are Christ’s at His coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23). Those who compose this company are distinctly specified: they are, according to the language of the epistle to the Philippians, the “out-resurrection from among the dead” (Philippians 3:11). Scripture is a perfectly consistent whole; and the faithfulness and love of God shine out in it. Christians may lose sight of what they are to Christ, but it is impossible for Him to deny Himself. They can mingle themselves with the world; but He who has redeemed them out of it can never mingle them. They will come with Him to the judgment of the world -not be judged with it by Him; and this is what the doctrine of the “resurrection from among the dead” decisively bears witness to. But all the details and manner of it are in full harmony with this. Even the prodigal, according to the Lord’s own picture, must be met outside the father’s house, with the father’s arms; and where it is the gathering of Christians finally to their Lord, the “Lord Himself” must come to claim them: “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout of command,” as in supreme authority.

This, although question has been made of it, is His own voice; and thus the “voice of the archangel” follows and is distinguished from it. The highest among angels -those “ministers of His that do His pleasure,” -in sympathetic obedience gives the word (as it would seem) to the angelic host, and the trump of God sounds. “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we” (the living) “shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

Thus the trumpet here is no call to battle, as some have thought it, but answers to the call of the assembly, in Numbers 10:3-4. In Matthew 24:31, the Son of man sends His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. This, as has been shown in the consideration of the passage, is the gathering of dispersed Israel. In our present epistle it is rather what would answer to the gathering of the princes (Numbers 10:4); for the company gathered is that of those who are to reign with Christ over the earth. The announcement here is exactly as in Corinthians: the dead in Christ rise first; then “we who are alive and remain” are “caught away together with them,” -which involves, of course, the change of which Corinthians speaks. We are “caught away in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” It is not perhaps remarkable, and yet we may do well to notice, how throughout this word of comfort that title “Lord” comes in; “the word of the Lord,” “the coming of the Lord,” “the Lord Himself,” “to meet the Lord,” “be ever with the Lord.” It is, no doubt, the time when His lordship will be manifest to all; and that may seem sufficient reason for it. What a joy it will be beyond expression, to see all power put into the Hands alone competent to wield it! to have every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father! But “so shall we be ever with the Lord” sounds somewhat in a different line of thought; and here we perhaps rather expect the sweet familiar “Jesus,” His name on earth, but far from excluding the thought of His divine personality. To fulfil the prophecy that He was to be called Emmanuel, He was called Jesus; and that, too, because He would save His people from their sins. It is a name wonderfully complete therefore in what it expresses. Yet in the thought of eternity, as the apostle realizes it in the passage before us, he does not say, we shall be ever with Jesus, nor even, the Lord Jesus, but simply, “for ever with the Lord.” Some even seem to deem it too cold and distant a title for heaven; but they can hardly have noticed how it is used by the inspired writers.

While, of course, speaking of authority, it is an authority under which they delight to be putting themselves, as it were, continually. With him who, though most free, would ever be known as the “bondservant of Christ,” they are ever proclaiming and exulting in His Lordship.

And for those who have realized the bitter bondage of sin, how blessed the deliverance which could only be achieved by the strong hand of this glorious Master. For them this is not the language of distance, but of joyous worship. Released from such authority, to what would they be released? Will eternity make any difference in this respect? Will they need deliverance from that which wrought deliverance for them? The apostle answers that there, when we reach the end which all before has been hastening on to, -“we shall be ever with the Lord.” It is the answer of heart to Him who has come forth “Himself” in joy of heart to meet them, to Him whose own words were, to those fearing soon to be made orphans by His absence, “I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am there ye may be also.” 2. This is, of course, but the coming of the Lord in one aspect: as it bears upon the condition of the sleeping saints. The apostle goes on now to what is most closely connected with it, but yet not synonymous, as many take it. The “day of the Lord” is, in fact, ushered in by the coming of the Lord: it cannot be before Christ has risen from where He is now seated, on the Father’s throne, to take that which is His as Son of man. In this character it is that all judgment is committed to Him (John 5:22; John 5:27); and thus it is that as the Son of man He comes in the clouds of heaven and sits upon the throne of His glory. But before He thus appears, He has first of all to gather His associates upon the throne of His Kingdom; and this it is which we have been just looking at.

When He appears, we shall appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4); and when He reigns we shall reign with Him over the earth. But for this we must be either raised or changed; and more than this, we must “appear,” or better, “be manifested,” before the judgment-seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10).

As to acceptance of our persons, that is already accomplished; we are “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Thus, personally, as He Himself has told us, he that has heard His word, and believed on Him who sent slim shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life (John 5:24). But the appraisal of our works is another thing, and that there shall be this we are as definitely assured. “We shall be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ.” It is the triumph of divine grace that everything can be brought out thus, and we can “give account of ourselves to God,” without the least sullying of divine holiness; even under the scrutiny of the light of God, “made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). Yet so “shall every one receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” The appraisal is for reward; and we receive reward or suffer loss accordingly. This therefore must be settled before His saints can come forth with their Lord, each in his apportioned place according to the judgment of divine holiness, as well as in manifestation of divine grace. We are to meet the Lord in the air; and then, according to what the tenor of Scripture generally implies, that apportionment of reward takes place. With this also there will necessarily be another thing of incalculable value for the soul, -wisdom gathered for eternity as to sin and holiness, good and evil, and the perfect ways of God’s government as to each. What lessons for the judges of the new Kingdom, who have themselves passed under the searching of inflexible holiness before they come to fill that place! How suited that they should do this; and this accounts on the one side for that which perhaps no single text, but the combined force of many prophetic scriptures assures us will be the case, that between the taking away of the saints to meet their Lord and His coming with them in the clouds of heaven there will elapse a considerable time -in fact some years. This is a matter much in dispute even yet among those who have devoted themselves more than others to the study of prophecy. It would be impossible to take it up in any adequate way here; nor is this the place in which to consider it.

The full unfolding is in the book of Revelation; while the Lord’s own prophecy upon the Mount of Olives, as Matthew has recorded it, is an important link between this and Daniel, the Old Testament revelation. The second epistle here, with its warning as to apostasy from Christianity threatening, and the coming of the man of sin, almost completes the scriptures relating to this subject. But thus it is plain that the day of the Lord begins for the earth as it may be said, secretly, and is characterized in its beginning by judgment, more and more descending upon a world ripening more and more in its iniquity. The true saints in Christendom being removed to the presence of their Lord, it becomes a mere corrupt mass, lapsing into open and defiant infidelity. And now it is that, the Gentile branches being cat off, (because they abode not in the grace received) the natural branches are to be graffed again into their own olive-tree; this too for final and full blessing to the world at large (Romans 11:16-26). A remnant awakened by the Spirit of God to the sense of their national guilt in the rejection of Christ, and purified by the trials through which they pass, in the midst of the apostasy of the mass who receive Antichrist, are prepared for the coming of the Lord, not now into the air, as when He takes away the saints of the present and the past, but to the earth, to judge it. (See the notes on the book of Psalms, passim). It is in connection with Israel that all the Old Testament prophecies find fulfilment; and its history moves in accord with prophecy. For with the blessing of the earthly people comes the blessing of the earth; and when Israel loses her position as a nation, the history of the earth is for the present closed. The interval has indeed the most wonderful history of all; but it is that of a people called out from the earth -from Israel and from the nations both, and destined for heaven. Thus it is plain why the apostle says to the Thessalonians here, that of the times and seasons they had no need that he should write to them. In fact, the Lord had at the beginning told His disciples that it was not for them to know the times and the seasons, which the Father had placed under His own authority (Acts 1:7). Their question, to which this is an answer, shows that, as we know, the heavenly calling of the Church was yet unrevealed. Even now they might not know all that this involved in the way of separation from Jewish and earthly prophecy; but they knew perfectly well that the day of the Lord was to come as a thief in the night. This was evidently the common Christian knowledge, and made it plain that its coming could not be calculated from Daniel’s prophetic periods, for instance. In these, in fact, are found incalculable elements which, until the time comes when they will speak out, will necessarily defeat all attempts at a right estimate.

Had it been possible in the apostle’s days to predict the centuries of delay that have, in fact, elapsed, disciples might indeed still have waited for their Lord, but watched they could not, and no “thief in the night” could have troubled their slumbers. But for the heart expectancy was needed; and they were to watch because they knew not. Thus for these watchers the times could not speak; and in fact when they do it will be for another people than the present Christian Church, and when this is already removed to be with the Lord in the manner which we have just had before us. For mere formal and worldly Christendom, the coming of the thief will then in a sense have taken place. Shut out in the outside darkness, when others have entered the chambers of light, no place of repentance will be left for the despisers of God’s present grace. In a world which, having rejected the true King, will be left for that awful time to experience fully what Satan’s rule is, they will fall under the power of his deception. Not having received the love of the truth that they might be saved, they will believe a lie; and comforting themselves with the cry of “Peace and safety,” sudden destruction will come upon them as upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape! They have chosen darkness, alas, with the light all round them; and for such the darkness is appointed. Impossible is it for the true Christian to be thus overtaken as a thief. A son of the day, the darkness has no title or claim with regard to him. The night is the period when darkness reigns; but the Christian is not of it, -not of the present “age” at all: it is characterized by a rejected Christ, gone from the earth -the Light of the world withdrawn. But the Holy Spirit is come, and the light is restored to faith: faith receives the light from heaven, though the night is unchanged by that; and the sons of light have to be armed against the darkness, which is all around them. Upon those who are in the light it can only come as a spirit of slumber, or as intoxication from the world’s siren cup.

But in the light itself is the remedy for this; and Christ as apprehended in the soul is its armor of defence from both snare and open assault: faith and love cover the citadel of the heart, -are its breastplate, therefore, -while the hope of salvation (the full deliverance at hand) is as a helmet for the head against all stunning of discouragement. We must brace this armor to us, says the apostle, that we may find its full sufficiency; and the expectation speedily of the Lord’s return is cheer indeed, both as to the dead and in the daily conflict of the living: “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; who died for us that, whether we wake or sleep, we may live together with Him.” With this hope we may well encourage one another, as with a hope with which we ourselves are comforted of God. The apostle could, indeed, thank Him as to the Thessalonian Christians, that they were doing this.