1 Thessalonians 4:15

The church at Thessalonica was young. Paul founded it on his second missionary journey, in a busy Roman port city, and it was born amid opposition (Acts 17:1–9). Its members received the word “in much affliction” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). Most of them were Gentiles, with some Jews among them, who had turned from idols to wait for God’s Son from heaven (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10). Paul wrote to them around AD 50, so this is one of his earliest letters.

He has just been teaching them how to live in a way that pleases God, in sexual purity and in brotherly love (1 Thessalonians 4:1–12). Then he turns suddenly to the believers who have died, which suggests that the church had a pressing question about them, perhaps after recent deaths in their number. They were expecting Christ’s return soon, and they feared that those who died before it would miss out on its blessings. The whole passage answers that fear.

The world these converts came from offered little comfort at a grave. Greek and Roman beliefs held out almost no hope of a personal resurrection or a joyful life after death, and some philosophers taught that the body was a prison and its end a release. Grief was often loud and unrestrained, with wailing over a loss felt to be permanent. A common epitaph ran, “I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.” New believers had to learn how to grieve as people who belong to Christ.

“I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren” is the phrase Paul uses when he is about to give teaching that clears up a misunderstanding. He calls them “brethren”, members of one family in Christ, and the teaching that follows is given with a brother’s care.

Paul grounds the whole hope in what has already happened to Jesus. In “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again”, the word ei, “if”, has the sense of “since”. It states the premise that Paul and the Thessalonians already share. To believe, pisteúō, is to credit something as true and to entrust yourself to it, and here it is trust in Christ himself, whose death (apothnḗskō) and rising (anístēmi) are the heart of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

“Even so”, hoútō, draws a straight line from Jesus to his people. As he died and rose, so those who sleep in him will rise. His resurrection is the pattern and the guarantee of ours: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). Jesus said, “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19), and “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25). The Spirit of the God who raised up Christ will also give life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), and the risen Lord holds “the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).

“Them also which sleep in Jesus” are the believers who have died. The Greek phrase joins koimáō with diá and Iēsoûs, and it speaks of people whose bond with Jesus holds through death itself. Their death leaves them secure in him, with a full share in his victory.

“Will God bring with him” makes God (theós) the one who acts. The verb ágō means to lead or to bring, and “with him” (sýn with autós) refers to Christ. When Jesus returns, God will bring those who sleep in him along with him, so he comes accompanied by his redeemed and risen people. The reunion rests on God’s own faithfulness and power.

Paul now explains how this will happen, and he begins with his authority: “this we say unto you by the word of the Lord”. Lógos is something spoken, a message or a teaching. Paul is passing on what the Lord has revealed, so the Thessalonians can rest their full weight on it.

The coming of the Lord is his parousía, a word meaning arrival or presence. In ordinary use it described the official visit of a king or a dignitary, an event of majesty and authority. In the New Testament it is the glorious, visible return of Jesus Christ, as the angels promised at his ascension: “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

“We which are alive and remain” are the believers still living when he comes. The word for remain, perileípō, means to be left over, to survive up to that moment.

“The Lord himself” is Jesus. Kýrios means one who holds supreme authority, a master, and Paul’s “himself” stresses that Jesus comes in person. His return is personal and visible, a descent from heaven in the same way that he was taken up (Acts 1:9–11). Jesus himself said that the nations “shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30–31).

Three sounds go with his coming. The shout, kéleuma, is a cry of command, used of a general’s order to his troops or a boatswain’s call on a ship. It is a summons with authority behind it, and it sets the resurrection in motion. Paul does not say who gives it, and it is most naturally the Lord’s own command, showing his power over life and death. Then come the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. Jews would have known the trumpet from God’s dealings with Israel, and people in a Roman city knew the commander’s order and the trumpets that heralded a king’s arrival. The Lord’s coming will be public, authoritative and triumphant.

“Then”, once the dead have risen, “we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds”. The verb harpázō means to seize, to snatch, or to take by force. It describes something sudden and decisive, God’s act of taking his people to himself. The living will be changed in that same moment: “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52). Christ “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–21).

“Together with them” makes this a reunion. The living rise with the believers who had died and were raised a moment before, and the church meets again those it mourned. The clouds mark God’s presence and glory throughout Scripture. The LORD went before Israel in a pillar of a cloud (Exodus 13:21), and a cloud received Jesus out of the disciples’ sight when he ascended (Acts 1:9).

“Wherefore”, hṓste, draws the conclusion. Because these things are certain, Paul tells the church what to do with them. The verb parakaléō means to call someone to your side, and it covers inviting, urging, encouraging and consoling. Here it is giving strength and solace to the grieving by speaking the truths just given. Allḗlōn, “one another”, makes the comfort mutual. Believers are to give it to each other, and every member of the church shares the task, alongside the comfort that comes from Paul and from God. “These words” (lógos once more) are the teaching of verses 13 to 17: the resurrection of the dead in Christ, the catching up of the living, and the meeting with the Lord that never ends. This comfort rests on what God has revealed, which is far firmer ground than sentiment or human wisdom.

Scripture was written for this very purpose, “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). And God is “the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). The comfort we receive from him is meant to be passed on.

When a brother or sister in Christ dies, you may weep, and you weep as someone who knows how the story ends. Paul gives you something true to say to a grieving friend: the one they love is asleep in Jesus and present with the Lord, and when the Lord comes, God will bring that person with him. You will meet again, and together you will be with the Lord forever. Words like these carry more weight than any kind phrase we could make up, because God himself has spoken them.

The same hope shapes the days we have now. Our conversation is in heaven, and we look for the Saviour from there (Philippians 3:20), so we can hold the things of this life loosely and live in readiness for him, with holiness, love for one another, and a faithful witness to a world that grieves without this hope. The Thessalonians waited for God’s Son from heaven, and so do we. The God who raised Jesus will keep every promise in these verses, and the comfort they gave a young, grieving church in the first century is ours in full.