Hope and holiness: the Lord's coming and the life that waits for it

The second half of 1 Thessalonians moves from Paul's past with the church to its present needs. The letter was written from Corinth about AD 50 to 51, only months after Paul had been forced out of Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-10). The church was young, mostly Gentile in background (1:9), and under pressure. Timothy's report (3:6) had given Paul good news, but it also revealed some gaps: questions about sexual conduct, about work and dependence, about believers who had died, and about the timing of the Lord's coming. Chapters 4 and 5 answer these in turn, and the phrase 'now about' marks several of the topics (4:9, 13; 5:1).

The moral setting was the Greco-Roman world, in which sexual relations outside marriage, especially for men, were widely tolerated, and idolatrous worship was part of ordinary social life. Jewish believers brought a different ethic, and Paul's call to holiness, as he says, is what he already taught them (4:1-2). The command to work with their own hands (4:11) responds to a situation that becomes sharper in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12, where some had stopped working. The reasons are not stated here; some scholars suggest expectation of the Lord's coming, others the economics of patronage and dependence in the Greek city.

The question about the dead arose because the Thessalonians expected Christ's return soon. When some believers died before it, they feared that those believers would miss it, or perhaps be lost. Paul's reply (4:13-18) is the earliest extended teaching on the resurrection of believers in the New Testament, and it comes before Paul's longer treatment in 1 Corinthians 15.

These chapters belong to the exhortation section of a letter, and the commands should be read as applications of the gospel to a particular church. Paul's pattern is to ground each command in what God has done: holiness is God's will and calling (4:3, 7), love is taught by God (4:9), and watchfulness is based on belonging to the day (5:5). Short commands such as 'Rejoice at all times. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every circumstance' (5:16-18) are brief and compressed; they are best read as summaries of habits of the community, not as a call to speak without pause.

The passage on the Lord's coming (4:13-18) is apocalyptic language, which draws on the Old Testament and Jewish pictures of God's appearing: a trumpet (Exodus 19:16; Isaiah 27:13), clouds (Daniel 7:13), and a loud command. Such language uses images to say something that cannot be described in ordinary terms. Its purpose is stated: 'Therefore encourage one another with these words' (4:18). It is meant to comfort and not to provide a timetable, a point Paul reinforces in 5:1-2 when he says they need no instruction about times and seasons.

Two words need care. In 4:4 the Greek says each should know how to take or control his own 'vessel' (skeuos); this is read as one's own body or as one's wife, and both readings are found in the commentators. And the phrase in 5:23, 'spirit, soul and body', is not an anatomy lesson; most scholars take the three words as a way of saying 'the whole person'.

4:1-8. Paul asks and urges them in the Lord Jesus to live in a way pleasing to God, as they have been taught, and to do so all the more. God's will is their sanctification: they must abstain from sexual immorality, and each must know how to control his own body in holiness and honour, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God. No one should wrong or exploit his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as he warned them. God has called them not to impurity but to holiness, and anyone who rejects this rejects not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to them. The last phrase may echo Ezekiel 36:27 and shows that holiness is a gift as well as a duty.

4:9-12. They have no need for anyone to write about brotherly love, since they are taught by God to love one another, and they show it to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Paul urges them to excel still more and to aspire to live quietly, mind their own affairs and work with their hands, so that they may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. The verb 'aspire' (philotimeomai) is vivid: make it your ambition to live quietly. Christian dignity is shown in ordinary work and good name.

4:13-18. Paul does not want them to be uninformed about those who sleep, so that they may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 'Sleep' was a common word for death, used also for Christians, and it carries the hope of waking. Since they believe Jesus died and rose, God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. By the word of the Lord, those who are alive at the coming will not precede those who have fallen asleep. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then those who are alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so they will always be with the Lord. The Greek word for 'meet' (apantēsis) was used of a delegation from a city who went out to welcome a visiting dignitary and escort him back; some scholars see that image here, and others do not press it. Paul concludes by telling them to encourage one another with these words.

5:1-11. About times and seasons they need no writing: they know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people say 'peace and security', sudden destruction will come like labour pains on a pregnant woman. But the Thessalonians are not in darkness. They are sons of light and of the day. So they must not sleep, but be awake and sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation. God has appointed them not for wrath but for salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for them so that whether awake or asleep they may live with him. Therefore they should encourage and build one another up.

5:12-22. They are to respect those who labour among them and are over them in the Lord, to live at peace, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak and be patient with all. They must not repay evil for evil. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything and hold to what is good.

5:23-28. Paul prays that the God of peace would sanctify them completely and keep them blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, since the one who calls is faithful and will do it. He asks for prayer, a holy kiss for all the brothers, and that the letter be read to all.

The passage teaches that Christian hope is bodily and personal. Death is not the end for believers, because Jesus died and rose, and those who belong to him will rise to be with him. Paul's logic is that the resurrection of Jesus is the ground of the resurrection of believers. This is the main teaching of the passage and the basis of the Christian response to grief: believers do grieve, but not as those without hope.

The passage also teaches that holiness is God's will and God's gift. Sexual purity, love for the brothers and honest work belong to sanctification, which God begins and completes (5:23-24). The faithfulness of the one who calls is the ground of confidence. In the canon this joins the Old Testament call to be holy because the Lord is holy (Leviticus 19:2) with the New Testament teaching on the Spirit's work.

A third teaching is the day of the Lord as both judgment and salvation. For those who say 'peace and security', it brings sudden destruction; for those in Christ, it brings salvation. The image of the thief is also used by Jesus (Matthew 24:43-44) and appears in Revelation 3:3 and 16:15, and the armour of faith, love and hope anticipates the fuller picture in Ephesians 6:10-17. Christian traditions interpret the order of end-time events differently, as the tradition note describes, but all agree in this passage that Christ will return, the dead in Christ will rise, and believers will be with him for ever.

Christ is central at every stage. He is the Lord Jesus who gives authority to the instructions (4:1-2), the one who avenges wrongs (4:6), the one who died and rose, so that those who sleep in him will be brought with him (4:14). He is the Lord who descends from heaven (4:16), the day of whose coming is the day of the Lord (5:2), and the one who died for us so that we may live with him (5:10). Paul takes the Old Testament title 'the day of the Lord' (Joel 2:31; Amos 5:18-20), which referred to the coming of God, and applies it to Jesus, which assumes his divine identity.

The Old Testament connections are mostly echoes. The trumpet of God (Isaiah 27:13; Zechariah 9:14) and the clouds (Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man comes with the clouds of heaven) provide the setting, and Jesus himself spoke of the Son of Man coming on the clouds (Mark 13:26; 14:62). That is a stronger connection, since the New Testament makes it explicit.

The clearest statement is 5:9-10: God has appointed believers to obtain salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for them. The death of Christ for us is the basis of the whole passage; the coming of the Lord is the completion of what the cross began.