1st Thessalonians Chapter 4

From The Open Bible Project

4:1 Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that you abound more and more.

• (1) Various exhortations, the foundation of which is this, to be mindful of those things which they have heard from the apostle.
• (a) That you labour to excel more and more, and daily surpass yourselves.

4:2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

4:3 For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality,

• (2) This is the sum of those things which he delivered to them, to dedicate themselves wholly to God. And he plainly condemns all filthiness through lust, because it is altogether contrary to the will of God.
• (b) See (John 17:17).

4:4 that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honor,

• (3) Another reason, because it defiles the body.

4:5 not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don't know God;

• (4) The third, because the saints are distinguished by honesty and purity from those who do not know God.

4:6 that no one should take advantage of and wrong a brother or sister in this matter; because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as also we forewarned you and testified.

• (5) Secondly, he reprehends all violent oppression, and immoderate desire, and shows most severely as the Prophet of God, that God will avenge such wickedness.

4:7 For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.

4:8 Therefore he who rejects this doesn't reject man, but God, who has also given his Holy Spirit to you.

• (c) These commandments which I gave you.

4:9 But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that one write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another,

• (6) Thirdly, he requires a ready mind to every manner of lovingkindness, and exhorts them to profit more and more in that virtue.

4:10 for indeed you do it toward all the brothers who are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brothers, that you abound more and more;

4:11 and that you make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, even as we instructed you;

• (7) He condemns unsettled minds, and such as are curious in matters which do not concern them. (8) He rebukes idleness and slothfulness: and whoever is given to these vices, fall into other wickedness, to the great offence of the Church.

4:12 that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and may have need of nothing.

4:13 But we don't want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don't grieve like the rest, who have no hope.

• (9) The third part of the epistle, which is mixed in among the former exhortations (which he returns to afterwards), in which he speaks of mourning for the dead, and the manner of the resurrection, and of the latter day.
• (10) We must take heed that we do not immoderately mourn for the dead, that is, as those do who think that the dead are utterly perished.
• (11) A confirmation: for death is but a sleep of the body (for he speaks of the faithful) until the Lord comes.

4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

• (12) A reason for the confirmation, for seeing that the head is risen, the members also will rise, and that by the power of God.
• (d) The dead in Christ, who continue in faith by which they are ingrafted into Christ, even to the last breath.
• (e) Will call their bodies out of their graves, and join their souls to them again.

4:15 For this we tell you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left to the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep.

• (13) The manner of the resurrection will be in this way: the bodies of the dead will be as it were raised out of sleep at the sound of the trumpet of God. Christ himself will descend from heaven. The saints (for he is referring to them) who will then be found alive, together with the dead who will rise, will be taken up into the clouds to meet the Lord, and will be in perpetual glory with him.
• (f) In the name of the Lord, as though he himself spoke to you.
• (g) He speaks of these things, as though he should be one of those whom the Lord will find alive at his coming, because the time of his coming is uncertain: and therefore every one of us ought to be in such a readiness, as if the Lord were coming at any moment.

4:16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with an order, with the sound from the archangel, with God's trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first,

• (h) The word which the apostle uses here, properly signifies that encouragement which mariners give to one another, when they altogether with one shout put forth their oars and row together.
• The word translated "order" is more commonly translated "shout". The Greek word here is keleuma, which Thayer identifies as an "order, command, spec. a stimulating cry...to soldiers by a commander (with a loud summons, a trumpet call)". Paul's picture is one of the Lord commanding His army. The implication is that what is happening in this passage is a battle or invasion rather than a search and rescue operation.
• The sequence of "with" phrases (Gk. en + dative) appear to be coreferential. This is because both the word keleuma and the archangel's phone (lit. 'sound, tone') are terms commonly used in reference to the blast of a trumpet. The genitive archangelou would be a genitive of source/cause (i.e., the sound is created by the archangel blowing the trumpet of God). Each phrase in the succession seems to expound upon the previous: the order comes from an archangel by means of a trumpet.
• The grammatical construction en + dative often functions as an instrumental construction, or more specifically the dative of manner, and may be conceived of as doing so here; hence, the Lord's signal of attack was the manner in which the Lord descended. The more traditional reading here is that the construction signifies accompaniment, i.e. along with the descending Lord came the order, etc.

4:17 then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to receive the Lord in the air. So we will be with the Lord forever.

• (i) Suddenly and in the twinkling of an eye.
• The phrase rendered "to receive" is eis apantesin, which together with the verb forms a syntagm referring to a greeting party going out to usher in a coming dignitary. This meaning clarifies the following phrase by excluding heaven as the location of the dwelling with the Lord: "So the Lord will be among us forever." (See also Mat 25:1 and Acts 28:15).

4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.