1 Thessalonians 4- B’gate, 16/10/97
Section 1: A Plea for Purity (vv. 1-8)
1. "Finally"- we see that, as in Paul’s other letters, the Apostle selects matters of behaviour to be the last things that ring in the Thessalonians minds. But ironically, the most ’final’ thing about these last two chapters is his description of the very end of this world!
"In the Lord Jesus"- if we only ever exhort people ’in Christ’, then it is hard to push our own desires into that equation.
"more and more"- God is easy to please but difficult to satisfy. We are being "transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Although God is happy0to take us as we are (we can come no other way)- He isn’t conte~t to leave us as we are. He wants to ’fit us for heaven0to live0with Thee there’.
"received from us"- wisdom comes both from lystening to others and, in verse 9, from God Himself. We need other Christians, the Bible and the Holy Spirit speaking within us0all to guide us along the narrow way.
"to please God"- is why we are here! "For Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11).
2. "through the Lord Jesus"- again, if we exhort others, we must do it ’through Christ’ so that our own self doesn’t get into the motive.
3. "Sanctification is that relationship with God into which men enter by faith in Christ, and to which their sole title is the death of Christ...Sanctification is also used in NT of the separation of the believer from evil things and ways. This sanctification is God’s will for the believer" (Hogg and Vine).
Praise God that one of the most important things to Him is the ’setting apart’ of us to Him!
"Fornication" is sexual immorality, sex outside of marriage. This Greek word, porneia, includes adultery, but in some places a separate word is used for that (mocheia). In Revelation 14-19, fornication is "the association of pagan idolatry with doctrines of, and professed adherence to, the Christian faith" (Vine). God feels just the same sense of betrayal at our syncretistic (merging all religions together) practices as a husband would at his wife’s adultery (compare Hosea, and Jeremiah 2-5). So as a wife ’sets herself apart’ for her husband, so should we, the Bride of Christ, set ourselves apart for our Lord.
4. "honour"- according to Vine, there are 19 different senses to this Greek word, time! In this place, the honour is "the husband’s use of the wife, in contrast to the exercise of the passion of lust"...
5. Knowing God and sexual fidelity go close together. Job’s covenant with his eyes also corroborates this, Job 31:1.
6. The sense here is of going beyond, of greedily taking more than what one has a right to. The principle applies to pre-marital purity as well as marital. Someone coming to a marriage defiled has defrauded their spouse. If someone fornicates, then gets married, they have in a sense committed adultery (only retroactively). But we praise God that, though "such were some of you...but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11). If someone makes love to a woman, she may not be somebody else’s wife, but she maybe someone else’s future wife.
God will judge the fornicator and adulterer (Hebrews 13:4). And before we get too smug, remember Jesus said that anyone who looks on a woman in lust commits adultery (Matthew 5:28). Proverbs says there is not wrath like that of a jealous husband- think of God’s wrath towards the unbeliever in that light.
7. God chose us to be blameless before Him (Ephesians 1:4). He took the initiative, and will do it (1 Thess.5:24) faithfully.
8. When David had committed adultery, he cried "against you, and you only have I sinned" (Psalm 51). In our sexual and volitional (acts of the will) misbehaviour we principally reject God who made us to be temples of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:18,19). Our sin against our fellows is mainly that we defile their vessels from being sanctified to Him, not even that we have defrauded another human.
Part 2- A brotherly and orderly life
9. "Brotherly love"- philadelphia. Here Paul stresses the inner resources of the believer- the Holy Spirit who will "guide you into all truth" (John 16:12). Contrast v.2. If there is no need for Paul to write, why is he?!
10. Notice that the love of the Thessalonians extends beyond their own immediate church and city. Those words ’more and more’ again.
11. "Quiet" here has the sense of not only tranquility within, but also "causing no disturbance to others" (Vine). How can we be quiet and warn men of their fate without Christ (Jude 22, 23)?
Perhaps the Holy Spirit warns us against being busybodies here because we might contrue that interference is a form of brotherly love!!
One thing about interfering in others business all the time is that we don’t have time to do our own work. Sometimes perhaps in a Christian community we don’t all pull our weight because we are complacent about the provision others give us- after all it’s their job?!
When is full time Christian ministry justifiably paid for by others? And when is it an abdication of responsibility?
12. Christians do sometimes give the impression of being a bit of a freemasonry club looking out for each other. Also, if we do not work we can be seen as ’too heavenly minded for earthly use’. Paul was a tentmaker and a soulwinner at the same time. The frontline for the Gospel is often the office or workplace. If we are not with those without, how can we walk properly before them (Matthew 5:16). Also- as Christians we should make sure we are solvent and have a reasonable income as we are able- "and God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance of every good work" (2 Cor. 9:8).
What is ratio of spending time with Christians: not-yet-Christians?
What is ratio of spending time breadwinning: menfishing?
What should they be ideally?
Part 3- The comfort of Christ’s coming
13. Ignorance is obviously our natural state of mind concerning life after death!
In what sense are dead Christians asleep?
• A sleep that they will wake from in the Day of the Lord!
• "That the body alone is in view in this metaphor is evident, (a) from the derivation of the word koimaomai, from keimai, to lie down (cf. anastasis, resurrection, from ana, ’up,’ and histemi, to cause to stand); cf. Isa. 41:8, where for ’laid down,’ the LXX has ’fallen asleep’; (b) from the fact that in the NT the word resurrection is uesd of the body alone; (c) from Dan. 12:2, where the physically dead are desribed as ’them that sleep in the dust of the earth,’ language inapplicable to the spiritual part of man; moreover when the body returns whence it came, Gen 3.19, the spirit returns to God who gave it, Eccl. 12:7. When the physical frame of the Christian (the earthly house of our tabernacle, 2 Cor. 5:1) is dissolved and returns to the dust, the spiritual part of his highly complex being, the seat of personality, departs to be with Christ, Phil. 1:23. And since that state in which the believer, absent from the body, is at home with the Lord, 2 Cor. 5:6-9, is described as ’very far better’ than the present state of joy in communion with God and of happy activity in His servicec, everywhere reflected in Paul’s writings, it is evident the word ’sleep,’ where applied to the departed Christians, is not intended to convey the idea that the spirit is unconscious..." (Hogg and Vine).
Essentially, unless we hope in Christ, the Resurrection and the Life to them that believe, we have no hope at all.
14. Our own resurrection has been guaranteed by the Resurrection of Jesus- he is the "firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29). See 1 Cor. 15.
15. The word of the Lord is logos, Jesus Himself (John 1). So this could have been an actual saying of Jesus, or it could be that it carries (as does all Scripture) divine force. If Paul is referring to John 11:21-27, the raising of the dead saints must come after the Tribulation (which precedes the Last Day Martha refers to).
We don’t need to worry about the welfare of the dead in Christ. They have preceded us to Paradise (cf. the thief on the cross).
16. Jesus is coming (parousia, epiphaneia or apocalypse) back....
• At an unknown time (Matthew 24: 36, 1 Thess. 5:2)
• In the way He went away (Acts 1:11)
• Visibly- Matthew 24:23-30: "they shall see the Son of man..." (Rev. 1:7)
• "...coming on the clouds."
• Descending from heaven- "Other things being equal, the word ’descend’ indicates a complete, uninterrupted descent like that of the Spirit at Christ’s baptism and that of Christ in His first advent (John 3:13). Where a reversal from downward to upward motion comes into view, a specific statement to that effect appears, as in Acts 10:11, 16 (’a certain objec t coming down...and immediately the object was taken up into the sky’). In the absence of a statement indicating a halt or sudden reversal of direction, we naturally infer a complete descent to the earth, such as will take place only at the posttribulational advent" (Gundry).
• With a shout
• With great power and glory (Mark 13:26)
• With angels (2 Thessalonians 1:7)
• With the voice of an archangel
• With the trumpet of God (Matthew 24:31, 1 Cor. 15:52)
• To gather the elect, dead and living (Matt 24:31)
• After the Great Delusion, Apostasy, Antichrist and Tribulation (2 Thessalonians 2:3 and passim).
The bodies of the dead in Christ will be raised to be united with their departed souls.
17. The Rapture. We will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
"Always"- does this mean we will be always with the Lord in the clouds and air? Or does it mean that we will always be with the Lord, wherever He may proceed from there?!
"Meet"- apologies to Charlette :-) but quite a lot does hinge on this word, apantesis. "When a dignitary paid an official visit or parousia to a city in Hellenistic times, the action of the leading citizens in going out to meet him and escorting him on the final stage of his journey was called the apantesis"
18. How often do we remind (get alongside) each other of the Second Coming as one of the main NT reasons to cheer up?! Remind another Christian of it this week, or warn an unbeliver of the Judgement!
