Chapter Four

Exhortations by the Apostle to his readers toward Christian advancement (1) according to the commandments of the Lord Jesus (2) through preserving purity, brotherly love, and diligence (3–12). The resurrection of the dead and their participation together with the (glorified) living at the second coming of Christ (13–18).

With Chapter 4 begins the hortatory section. The Apostle, having briefly pointed out in 1 Thess 3:10 the shortcomings (υστερήματα) in the faith of the Thessalonians, of which Timothy had informed him, now turns to a detailed discussion of these shortcomings. “Furthermore” (Το λοιπόν)—shows that the whole essence of the epistle is given in 1 Thess 1-3, which contains an apology for the Apostle Paul’s relationship to the Thessalonian Christians. With 1 Thess 4 begins the continuation of the first three chapters. The shortcomings (Yστερήματα) mainly concerned two subjects—Christian morality (1 Thess 4:1-12) and the second coming of Christ (1 Thess 4:13-5:11). The end of the epistle is occupied by brief, but deeply meaningful aphorisms concerning both the general life of the church and personal conduct.

1 Thessalonians 4:1. Furthermore then, brothers, we ask and urge you by Jesus Christ, that just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, you do so more and more; 1 Thessalonians 4:2. for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. The Apostle here indicates the foundation of his asking and urging—they are based on the divine authority of Christ (έν Κυρίφ Ί ησοϋ), recognized also by the Thessalonians. As a servant of Christ, in His name, and carrying out His commandment, the Apostle addresses his followers in Thessalonica with insistent, earnest, and authoritative exhortation, that they, having received from him instruction on how to please God, would advance in this more and more. “Δει” here indicates moral necessity. “To please God—‘Αρεσκαν Θεφ’—the chief conception with the Apostle Paul, and in fact a biblical conception, of true life for man, in which both religion and morality are united as they arise from the believer’s personal relationship with God” (Zindlay op. c. 81). But the Apostle reminds them that all this exhortation is based on what is already known to them and has been transmitted to them as the Lord’s commandments, made manifest in His name (δια—points to the name and authority of Jesus Christ as the sanction for them).

1 Thessalonians 4:3. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 1 Thessalonians 4:4. that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, 1 Thessalonians 4:5. not in the passion of lust, as do the Gentiles who do not know God; 1 Thessalonians 4:6. and that no one wrong his brother or defraud him in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we have already told you and solemnly warned you. 1 Thessalonians 4:7. For God called us not to uncleanness, but to holiness. 1 Thessalonians 4:8. Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not man, but God, who gives you His Holy Spirit. Here the Apostle touches the most sensitive point in the moral life of the Thessalonian Christians, information about which he had received through Timothy. The recently converted Thessalonians could not at once break free from their past, when many things were considered indifferent, especially in the realm of sexual life. The Apostle again reminds the Thessalonians of the decree of the Jerusalem council: “keep yourselves from sexual immorality,” for “the will of God,” which has already sanctified them, requires perfect purity from them. Hence—it is necessary that each one know (είδέναι—to know as a result of practice, “for purity is not a fleeting impulse, but exercise, practice” – Lightfoot) how to “control his own body in holiness and honor” (Russian translation). Here the main difficulty arises from how to understand the word σκεύος. There are two possible understandings: according to one—σκεύος—is our body; according to the other, it is a metaphorical expression used here instead of the word “wife.” The second interpretation is defended by Theodore of Mopsuestia and St. Augustine (suum vas possidere, hoc est, uxorem suam in c. jul. Pelag. IV:10) and many modern commentators. The designation of a wife as a “vessel” is not something unexpected (though 1 Pet 3:7 has no bearing here); it is found in rabbinical writings; and the verb κτάσθαι in the sense of “to marry” is used in the LXX (Ruth 4:10 and others). If we accept this interpretation, the thought would be somewhat the same as in 1 Cor 7:2, though with a different nuance. “While on the negative side πορνεία is forbidden, on the positive side it is equally clear that purity and holiness are enjoined in regard to God’s commandment given in Gen 1:28” (Ellicott Thessalonians, p. 53). But against this interpretation two considerations can be raised: a) the word σκεύος in this sense is never found anywhere in the New Testament; and b) if the Apostle had used this expression, we would be right in attributing to him an extremely base and sensual view both of woman and of marriage. Better therefore to rest upon the first interpretation, accepted by Tertullian (Caro… vas vocatur apud Apostolam, quamvis in honori tractare – De resurrectione carnis. 16), Chrysostom, Theodoret, and others. The designation of the body as a vessel is found even in antiquity—thus, for example, in Lucretius in his De rerum natura, III, 440: “corpus, quod vas quasi constitit ejus”… Such use of this expression is also found in the Apostle Paul himself in 2 Cor 4:7, and it appears in the apostolic fathers, for instance, in the Apostle Barnabas in his epistle, Chapter VII, “το σκεύος του πνεύματος.” The difficulty lies only in the verb κτάσθαι, which in this case must be translated as “to possess,” “to keep,” which meaning this verb has only in the past perfect κέκτησθαι. “But if we judge from papyrus evidence, it appears that at least in common colloquial speech this meaning was no longer limited to the past tense” (Milligan, op. c. 49 p.). “Not in the passion of lust”—when lust takes on the character not of external temptation but of an inward working passion, internal indulgence in sin, a principle holding sway over the inner man (Rom 6:12). “As do the Gentiles, who do not know God”—the immorality of the pagan world, in the thought of the Apostle Paul, owes its existence to ignorance of the true God. “Saint Paul knows nothing of the prevalent (but superficial) distinction between religion and morality. He regards them as inseparable” (Lightfoot, op. c. 56). Verse 6 continues to clarify the thought of verses 3–4. Verses 3–4 forbid sexual immorality; verse 6 points to the extreme reprehensibility of adultery. Thus on this verse Saint Chrysostom says: “here he speaks of adultery; above also of all sexual immorality” (Migne, Series Graeca, tom. 62, p. 424). To understand this verse in the sense of forbidding covetousness and greed is not permitted, first of all, by the context of speech, and especially verse 7, and, secondly, by the expression “in this matter” (in the Slavic version; in Russian: “ни в чем”—in no matter), which, being with the article, directly points to the subject now under discussion—namely, the sins of the flesh. Verse 7 clearly indicates why the Thessalonians should refrain from sexual immorality and adultery: they are called by God not to uncleanness, but to holiness. The latter must be the all-pervading atmosphere in which the life of a Christian must grow and unfold. The one who rejects this state rejects God, who gave him the pledge of sanctification—the Holy Spirit. “This gift of the Spirit,” as the Apostle says, “places you in a completely different relationship to God than you were before. This gift—testimony in your souls against uncleanness. This gift—a sign that God has sanctified you for Himself, but it is also a pledge of vengeance if you defile that which no longer belongs to you but to God” (according to Lightfoot, op. c. p. 58). Compare 1 Cor 3:16.

1 Thessalonians 4:9. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 1 Thessalonians 4:10. and indeed you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more, 1 Thessalonians 4:11. and to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 1 Thessalonians 4:12. so that you may walk properly before those outside and be dependent on no one. These verses contain an exhortation to advancement in brotherly love and a call to a quiet, modest, and independent life. The Apostle frankly acknowledges that the Thessalonians are blameless in the first regard, for their love extends to the brothers “throughout Macedonia.” From the Acts we know that churches of Christ existed in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. But it must be thought that Christianity spread to other major places, such as Amphipolis, Pella, and others; hence the explanation of the Apostle’s expression “throughout Macedonia.” But, having pointed out the need for advancement in brotherly love, the Apostle touches upon a sore point in the life of the Thessalonian community—the appearance of “disorderly ones” in it (verse 11). It must be thought that the broad Christian charity provoked great abuses and created a class of persons who preferred to live at the expense of others, abandoning quiet and independent working life. Having been freed from labor, they devoted themselves entirely to agitation, and probably were the cause of the abnormal growth of eschatological expectations and hopes among the Thessalonians. Their “restlessness” disrupted the peaceful course of life of the Thessalonian Christians and unconsciously undermined the authority of the Christian community among the pagans, forcing them to regard it as an assembly of idle and harmful people, occupied only with “cloud-dreams.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13. Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. In this and the following verses of the epistle, the discussion turns to two of the most important topics: the fate of those who die before the parousia of Christ, and the signs of the parousia itself. The thought of verse 13 is not separate from 1 Thess 4:11-12. The intense development of expectation of the parousia of Christ, while weakening attention to the ordinary routine of life on one hand, on the other hand could provoke the insistent question of what the fate of those would be who would die, or had died, before the parousia. It must be thought that some cases of death had already occurred; the difficulty was not entirely imaginary. Timothy, during his time in Thessalonica, undoubtedly noticed this difficulty and reported it to Apostle Paul. The Apostle does not wish to leave the Thessalonians without an explanation on this very important subject—namely, “concerning those who have fallen asleep”—the dead. The Vatican and Sinai codices read κοιμωμένων—which, in the opinion of English scholar Bishop Lightfoot, “is the more expressive term, pointing forward to future awakening, and thus containing within itself a hint at resurrection in a more definite manner than κεκομημένων.” (Notes, p. 63). The purpose of the Apostle is that they not grieve as οι λοιποί—as the Gentiles do. Here it is not grief in general that is forbidden, which is partly natural to man, but its excessive display, as among the Gentiles, who regarded the fact of separation from the world now with despair, now with that sorrowfully hopeless, yet partly swaggering feeling, which is well expressed there in the Roman poet Catullus: “To us, when once the brief light has set, there is one eternal night in which we must sleep.” (See Catulli, Tibulli, propertii carmina, Lipsiae, 1890, p. 3: V:5–6). Among the Thessalonians, however, there was mixed with this a fear for the fate of the dead.

1 Thessalonians 4:14. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. There is no basis whatsoever for this fear. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, the fate of the dead is in safe hands. The death and resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Christian hope. But how is the expression “through Jesus”—δια τού Ί ησοϋ—to be understood? It certainly clarifies the “those who have fallen asleep,” but the expression is still quite unexpected. Bishop Lightfoot remarks beautifully here: “The justification for δια is probably to be found in the fact that κοιμηθήναι is not synonymous with θανεϊν, but contains within it the idea, first, of a peaceful, quiet death, and, second, of awakening. Christ made the death of a Christian a peaceful slumber” (p. 65, op. cit.), hence the instrumental character of the preposition δια. Therefore, there is no need to understand this verse as indicating the departed who died in Jesus “by martyrdom,” through suffering for Him.

1 Thessalonians 4:15. For we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. “By the word of the Lord”—the Apostle Paul probably refers here not to some saying of Christ that is unrecorded and has not reached us, but to a revelation personally granted to him. This understanding is somewhat justified by the use of the expression “word of the Lord” in the New Testament. “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord”… Can we, on the basis of this expression, conclude that the Apostle Paul himself hoped to be a witness to the parousia of Christ? In speaking of the living, does he mean himself and his generation, or is “the living” here simply the general class of those living at any time? Is this not merely a vivid manner of speech? Certainly we can regard οι ζώντες as merely a figurative expression, referring to all the living in general. “Remaining” (Περιλειπόμνοι) seems to be an explanation of the first term, and the whole question is whether the Apostle considered it possible and likely for himself to find himself among these “remaining ones.” “It will apparently be fair and proper to state,” writes Ellicott, “that ‘remaining’ is simply the present tense, and that the Apostle Paul should be understood in the sense that he places himself among those “left on earth,” although this in no way means that he had any exact and definite expectations concerning himself. At the time when he wrote these words, he was one of the living and remaining, and as such, he distinguishes himself and others from the sleeping ones, and naturally identifies himself with the class of people to whom he then belonged” (op. cit, p. 64). Yet despite this, we are inclined to the opinion that the Apostle might have hoped to be a living participant of the parousia. He would not have said “we who are alive” if the speech concerned a completely distant event. It must be remembered that the Apostle Paul preserved the vivid expectation of the parousia until the end of his life, as is testified by Phil 4:5 and 1 Cor 16:22.

1 Thessalonians 4:16. because the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first; “The Lord Himself”—Jesus Christ—see 1 Thess 1:10. The cry of command—κέλευσμα—a general call, a summons to the living and the dead, which probably will come from the Lord Himself and will find an echo “in the voice of an archangel and in the sound of the trumpet of God”—(compare all this with Matt 24:30).

1 Thessalonians 4:17. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them on the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. “On the clouds” (compare Acts 1:9, Matt 24:30). “In the air”—εἰς ἀέρα—that is, in the atmosphere surrounding our earth. The Lord will come down into the region immediately adjacent to the earth, where He will meet all His faithful, waiting for His parousia.