'But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that
I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of
God to love one another. 10. And indeed ye do it
toward all the brethren which are in all
Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye
increase more and more; 11. And that ye study to
be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work
with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12. That
ye may walk honestly toward them that are without,
and that ye may have lack of nothing. 13. But I
would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,
concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow
not, even as others which have no hope. 14. For if
we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even
so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring
with Him. 15. For this we say unto you by the word
of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent
them which are asleep. 16. For the Lord Himself
shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17. Then
we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord
in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18. Wherefore comfort one another with these
words.'--1 THESS. iv. 9-18.
'But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye
have no need that I write unto you. 2. For
yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the
Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.'--1 THESS.
v. 1-2.
This letter was written immediately on the arrival of Silas and Timothy
in Corinth (1 Thess. iii. 6, 'even now'), and is all flushed with the
gladness of relieved anxiety, and throbs with love. It gains in pathetic
interest when we remember that, while writing it, the Apostle was in the
thick of his conflict with the Corinthian synagogue. The thought of his
Thessalonian converts came to him like a waft of pure, cool air to a
heated brow.
The apparent want of connection in the counsels of the two last chapters
is probably accounted for by supposing that he takes up, as they
occurred to him, the points reported by the two messengers. But we may
note that the plain, prosaic duties enjoined in verses 7-12 lead on to
the lofty revelations of the rest of the context without any sense of a
gap, just because to Paul the greatest truths had a bearing on the
smallest duties, and the vision of future glory was meant to shape the
homely details of present work.
I. We need to make an effort to realise the startling novelty of 'love
of the brethren' when this letter was written. The ancient world was
honeycombed with rents and schisms, scarcely masked by political union.
In the midst of a world of selfishness this new faith started up, and by
some magic knit warring nationalities and hostile classes and wide
diversities of culture and position into a strange whole, transcending
all limits of race and language. The conception of brotherhood was new,
and the realisation of it in Christian love was still more astonishing.
The world wondered; but to the Christians the new affection was, we
might almost say, instinctive, so naturally and spontaneously did it
fill their hearts.
Paul's graceful way of enjoining it here is no mere pretty compliment.
The Thessalonians did not need to be bidden to love the brethren, for
such love was a part of their new life, and breathed into their hearts
by God Himself. They were drawn together by common relation to Jesus,
and driven together by common alienation from the world. Occasions of
divergence had not yet risen. The world had not yet taken on a varnish
of Christianity. The new bond was still strong in its newness. So, short
as had been the time since Paul landed at Neapolis, the golden chain of
love bound all the Macedonian Christians together, and all that Paul had
to exhort was the strengthening of its links and their tightening.
That fair picture faded soon, but it still remains true that the deeper
our love to Jesus, the warmer will be our love to all His lovers. The
morning glow may not come back to the prosaic noonday, but love to the
brethren remains as an indispensable token of the Christian life. Let us
try ourselves thereby.
II. What have exhortations to steady work to do with exhortations to
increasing love? Not much, apparently; but may not the link be, 'Do not
suppose that your Christianity is to show itself only in emotions,
however sweet; the plain humdrum tasks of a working man's life are quite
as noble a field as the exalted heights of brotherly love.' A loving
heart is good, but a pair of diligent hands are as good. The
juxtaposition of these two commands preaches a lesson which we need
quite as much as the Thessalonians did. Possibly, too, as we see more
fully in the second Epistle, the new truths, which had cut them from
their old anchorage, had set some of them afloat on a sea of unquiet
expectation. So much of their old selves had been swept away, that it
would be hard for some to settle down to the old routine. That is a
common enough experience in all 'revivals,' and at Thessalonica it was
intensified by speculations about Christ's coming.
The 'quiet' which Paul would have us cultivate is not only external, but
the inward tranquillity of a spirit calm because fixed on God and filled
with love. The secret place of the Most High is ever still, and, if we
dwell there, our hearts will not be disturbed by any tumults without. To
'do our own business' is quite a different thing from selfish 'looking
on our own things,' for a great part of our business is to care for
others, and nothing dries up sympathy and practical help more surely
than a gossiping temper, which is perpetually buzzing about other
people's concerns, and knows everybody's circumstances and duties
better than its own. This restless generation, whose mental food is so
largely the newspaper, with its floods of small-talk about people, be
they politicians, ministers, or murderers, sorely needs these precepts.
We are all so busy that we have no time for quiet meditation, and so
much occupied with trivialities about others that we are strangers to
ourselves. Therefore religious life is low in many hearts.
The dignity of manual labour was a new doctrine to preach to Greeks, but
Paul lays stress on it repeatedly in his letters to Thessalonica.
Apparently most of the converts there were of the labouring class, and
some of them needed the lesson of Paul's example as well as his precept.
A Christian workman wielding chisel or trowel for Christ's sake will
impress 'them that are without.' Dignity depends, not on the nature, but
on the motive, of our work. 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery
divine.' It is permissible to take the opinion of those who are not
Christians into account, and to try to show them what good workmen
Christ can turn out. It is right, too, to cultivate a spirit of
independence, and to prefer a little earned to abundance given as a gift
or alms. Perhaps some of the Thessalonians were trying to turn brotherly
love to profit, and to live on their richer brethren. Such people infest
the Church at all times.
III. With what ease, like a soaring song-bird, the letter rises to the
lofty height of the next verses, and how the note becomes more musical,
and the style richer, more sonorous and majestic, with the changed
subject! From the workshop to the descending Lord and the voice of the
trumpet and the rising saints, what a leap, and yet how easily it is
made! Happy we if we keep the future glory and the present duty thus
side by side, and pass without jar from the one to the other!
The special point which Paul has in view must be kept well in mind. Some
of the Thessalonians seem to have been troubled, not by questions about
the Resurrection, as the Corinthians afterwards were, but by a curious
difficulty, namely, whether the dead saints would not be worse off at
Christ's coming than the living, and to that one point Paul addresses
himself. These verses are not a general revelation of the course of
events at that coming, or of the final condition of the glorified
saints, but an answer to the question, What is the relation between the
two halves of the Church, the dead and the living, in regard to their
participation in Christ's glory when He comes again? The question is
answered negatively in verse 15, positively in verses 16 and 17.
But, before considering them, note some other precious lessons taught
here. That sweet and consoling designation for the dead, 'them who sleep
in Jesus,' is Christ's gift to sorrowing hearts. No doubt, the idea is
found in pagan thinkers, but always with the sad addition, 'an eternal
sleep.' Men called death by that name in despair. The Christian calls it
so because he knows that sleep implies continuous existence, repose,
consciousness, and awaking. The sleepers are not dead, they will be
roused to refreshed activity one day.
We note how emphatically verse 14 brings out the thought that Jesus
died, since He suffered all the bitterness of death, not only in
physical torments, but in that awful sense of separation from God which
is the true death in death, and that, because He did, the ugly thing
wears a softened aspect to believers, and is but sleep. He died that we
might never know what the worst sting of death is.
We note further that, in order to bring out the truth of the gracious
change which has passed on death physical for His servants, the
remarkable expression is used, in verse 14, 'fallen asleep through
Jesus'; His mediatorial work being the reason for their death becoming
sleep. Similarly, it is only in verse 16 that the bare word 'dead' is
used about them, and there it is needed for emphasis and clearness. When
we are thinking of Resurrection we can afford to look death in the face.
We note that Paul here claims to be giving a new revelation made to him
directly by Christ. 'By (or, "in") the word of the Lord' cannot mean
less than that. The question arises, in regard to verse 15, whether Paul
expected that the advent would come in his lifetime. It need not startle
any if he were proved to have cherished such a mistaken expectation; for
Christ Himself taught the disciples that the time of His second coming
was a truth reserved, and not included in His gifts to them. But two
things may be noted. First, that in the second Epistle, written very
soon after this, Paul sets himself to damp down the expectation of the
nearness of the advent, and points to a long course of historical
development of incipient tendencies which must precede it; and, second,
that his language here does not compel the conclusion that he expected
to be alive at the second coming. For he is distinguishing between the
two classes of the living and the dead, and he naturally puts himself in
the class to which, at that time, he and his hearers belonged, without
thereby necessarily deciding, or even thinking about, the question
whether he and they would or would not belong to that class at the
actual time of the advent.
The revelation here reveals much, and leaves much unrevealed. It is
perfectly clear on the main point. Negatively, it declares that the
sleeping saints lose nothing, and are not anticipated or hindered in any
blessedness by the living. Positively, it declares that they precede the
living, inasmuch as they 'rise first'; that is, before the living
saints, who do not sleep, but are changed (1 Cor. xv. 51), are thus
transfigured. Then the two great companies shall unitedly rise to meet
the descending Lord; and their unity in Him, and, therefore, their
fellowship with one another, shall be eternal.
That great hope helps us to bridge the dark gorge of present separation.
It leaves unanswered a host of questions which our lonely hearts would
fain have cleared up; but it is enough for hope to hold by, and for
sorrow to be changed into submission and anticipation. As to the many
obscurities that still cling to the future, the meaning and the nature
of the accompaniments, the shout, the trumpet, and the like, the way of
harmonising the thought that the departed saints attend the descending
Lord, with whom they dwell now, with the declaration here that they rise
from the earth to meet Him, the question whether these who are thus
caught up from earth to meet the Lord in the air come back again with
Him to earth,--all these points of curious speculation we may leave. We
know enough for comfort, for assurance of the perfect reunion of the
saints who sleep in Jesus and of the living, and of the perfect
blessedness of both wings of the great army. We may be content with what
is clearly revealed, and be sure that, if what is unrevealed would have
been helpful to us, He would have told us. We are to use the revelation
for comfort and for stimulus, and we are to remember that 'times and
seasons' are not told us, nor would the knowledge of them profit us.
Paul took for granted that the Thessalonians remembered the Lord's word,
which he had, no doubt, told them, that He would come 'as a thief in the
night.' So he discourages a profitless curiosity, and exhorts to a
continual vigilance. When He comes, it will be suddenly, and will wake
some who live from a sinful sleep with a shock of terror, and the dead
from a sweet sleep in Him with a rush of gladness, as in body and spirit
they are filled with His life, and raised to share in His triumph.