1 Thessalonians 4

1. FURTHERMORE then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit. 9 But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; and that ye study to be quiet; and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. 13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

THE final scene in the life of Neander is one most characteristic of the man, as well as one of the most striking ever witnessed in the chamber of death. His last thoughts amid the struggles of death were devoted to the great labor of his life. Beginning at the very passage of his Church History where sickness had arrested his progress, he resumed the thread of thought, and, in spite of interruptions, continued to dictate in regular periods for some time. At the close of each sentence he paused, as if his amanuensis were taking down his words, and asked, “Are you ready?” Having closed a division of his subject, he inquired the time. Being told that it was half-past nine, the patient sufferer repeated once more: “I am weary; I will now go to sleep!” Having by the aid of friendly hands stretched himself in bed for his last slumber, he whispered in a tone of inexpressible tenderness, which sent a strange thrill through every heart, “Good night!” It was his last word. He immediately fell into a sleep, which continued for hours, when his great spirit, in the quiet of a Sabbath morning, passed gently into the land of peace. What a commentary on his own exhortation so lately uttered, that “the Christian should ever remember that here all is fragmentary, nothing reaches completion; that even service in the cause of Christ on earth is but the beginning of an activity destined for eternity; that we must therefore not be so absorbed, even in labors consecrated to God, as to be unprepared to obey at any moment the summons to the higher life and service of heaven”! He was so prepared that when his ear caught the summons he could drop the great labor of his life unfinished, lay himself down quietly upon his bed, and with a childlike “Good night” to those whom he left behind, slumber over (as the German beautifully expresses it) into that higher life of heaven. H. C. Conant.

1. “To please God”—what a privilege to lie open to us day by day, and every hour of the day! The materials of an acceptable offering lie all around us, in the work of our callings, in the little calls which divine Providence daily makes to us, in the little crosses which God requires us to take up, nay, in our very recreations. The great point is to have the mind set upon seeing and seeking in all things the service of Christ and the glory of God, and, lo! every trifling incident which that mind touches, every piece of work which it handles, every dispensation to which it submits, becomes at once a sacrifice. E. M. G.

3. The more sound our experience, the more pure our piety, the more shall we understand that “this is the will of God, even our sanctification.” This is the heaven we desire. We shall love it and exult in it, in proportion as we love God and exult in God. J. W. A.—If we look to the eternal election of the Father, if we reflect upon the great work of redemption, if we by faith realize the fulfillment of the promise, and behold the new Jerusalem, everywhere we see holiness as the great object of the divine purpose and the divine acts of grace. Every privilege of the Christian points to this great end. As the children of God, the command follows naturally: “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” As members of the body of which the Son of God is head, it is for us to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, and to remember that the Holy Ghost himself dwelleth in us. A. S.

3-8. The morals of the Gentiles were shockingly corrupt, and what we call sins against the seventh commandment were scarcely considered disgraceful at that period. Those of the Gentiles who were received into the Church were in some danger of relapsing into old habits; and the whole tone of Christian life was apt to be injured by the dissolute manners of surrounding society. Therefore this prominent warning against sensuality. D. F.—If we may judge of their morality by the exhortations and deportations which they received from the apostle, Corinth and Thessalonica were but beginners in holiness. They were but just rescued from heathenism, and we need not wonder if their spirits long bore the scars of their former bondage. If we wish to know what the apostolic Churches were like, we have but to look at the communities gathered by modern missionaries. A. M.

6. The words rendered “in any matter” stand in the original “in the matter,” i. e., in this matter which is now in hand, viz., the unclean lusts of the flesh. The apostle is speaking in language somewhat veiled, for decency’s sake. A.

7. The law, from the moment of closing with Christ, stands as the great rule of our practical walk and conversation; seeing a true believer is “not without law” (a laveless person) “to God,” but is “under the law” (within the bond of the law) “to Christ”; not exempted from his control as the standard of moral action, though delivered from its power and execration as a covenant of works. The rules and precepts of the law are very subservient unto Christ, as they adorn the life with a conversation beseeming a companion of Christ, who calls us not unto uncleanness but to holiness. Crisp.

8. Given us. “The Holy Spirit” to be the soul of thy soul, to new-create thy moral nature in the image of God, to dwell in thee and walk in thee, making thy heart his shrine, a present stream of joy and strength and consolation springing up into everlasting life—“how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” Glorious promise! Free as the air of heaven to those who will but come forth and breathe it. Then come forthwith and claim this mighty boon. Come with strong desire. Let the heart speak rather than the mouth. Come in steadfast faith. And lo! your word is a word of power. Before you call, He answers; and while you are yet speaking, He hears. E. M. G.

9. Love one another. That kind of love which springs from our being all one in Him whose boundless love embraces all for the sake of redeeming them unto eternal blessedness and gladness, unworthy as they are—this is possible for us toward every child of God, the unsightedest, the most disagreeable, the least lovely, the worst. We can not reverse the inwrought laws of taste, attraction, preference, common culture, and common life, which group and distribute men; but we can merge them all in that one common charity which, in the Redeemer himself, was large enough to reach and gather up the vilest, and which in his true followers can see in every human creature this trace of nobleness and beauty—the capacity of being by repentance and faith raised to heavenly places—of wearing the likeness and the righteousness of the Lord for ever and for ever. In other words, all can be loved in him, and will be by those that have their life in him. And we must not be too fastidious about people forsaking their ugliness and correcting their faults before our charity goes out to them. Suppose a moment the grace of God had been measured to us by that thrifty rule. F. D. H.

11. No doubt some of the Thessalonian converts had lost their livelihood on account of their new faith; others, excited by their new position, by their sufferings for Christ, and by the hope of his speedy advent, may have become negligent in business, and given up steady work for daily subsistence. The apostle, therefore, with that practical sagacity which his enthusiasm never clouded, warns them not to become burdensome to others, but to maintain a proper independence. D. F.

When men were converted by the preaching of his apostles, they were not required to give up any honest occupation. If they were found idle, they were set to work, and commanded “to be quiet and mind their own business.” The gospel belongs to man, and reckons nothing that is man’s alien to it. Whatever is open to men that is just and right in business is open to Christians. And they are to give themselves to it, not in any half-hearted way. They are not to be spectators or dreamers, but workers. Whatever their hands find to do, they are to do it with their might. Ker.—God did not send us into the world merely to save our own souls, but to glorify him by our lives while we are in the world. Our lives are very different. Some work with their heads, some with their hands; some not at all, but must serve God by patient endurance—in weakness, in darkness, in decay of vital power. And it is curious to trace how men, in assigning their religious duties, will generally manage to leave out of the account just that very range of circumstances in which those duties really lie. Thy Father’s business is to be done, not only—not principally—on the Sunday, and with thy Bible open before thee; not only, nor principally, when thou removest thy thoughts from this world to another; to think so, is to yield to the devil’s temptation, who is contented if he can only get men to leave their common lives out of their religion, and so to serve him in reality, while their service of God withers up into mere confessions of faith, and forms of worship, and observance of days. No; thy Father’s business is where thou standest from week’s end to week’s end. A.—A Christian life implies a consecration to the work of God. In whatever it is engaged, it serves him. He that serves confesses that he is not his own but the creature of God, the redeemed of grace, a pensioner on the divine beneficence; and so, with holy aims, he strives to put God’s will in all things in place of his own, turning life into a prayer, and making each daily blessing a note in the sweet music of adoration, each hardship a step by which he climbs up toward God. E. H. G.

13-18. This passage appears to have been written in reply to a fear of the Thessalonians lest their friends who had fallen asleep in Christ should be excluded from the triumph and glory of his second coming. They had misunderstood the apostle’s words. Their enthusiasm had outran even the apostle’s plain speaking; they regarded the day of the Lord as actually upon them, and its glories as something which would be missed by those who died before the Lord himself should appear. As far as we can gather, there appear to have been two distinct phases of their misapprehension: the first, concerning their deceased friends; then, when that had been removed by a plain declaration that when Christ should come they would accompany him, another mistake as to the immediate coming of the day itself, which it is Paul’s aim to correct in the second Epistle. A.

13. We must not mourn for those who are released from the world by the call of the Lord, when we know they are not lost but sent before. We must, indeed, long after them, but not bewail them; we ought not, for their sakes, to put on black garments, since there they are already clothed in white. We must not give the heathen an opportunity justly to blame Christians by sorrowing for those whom they speak of as living with God, as if they were lost and perished men. We, who live in hope and believe in God, and are confident that Christ suffurthered for us and rose again, we who abide in Christ, and rise again through him and in him, why do we either ourselves recoil from departing out of this life, or lament and grieve over our friends’ departure, as if they were perished? This is not a passing away, but a passing over, and a transit to things eternal after this temporal journey has run its course. Cyprian.

We are not left to sorrow in darkness. Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We die that we may die no more. So short is our life here, and so endless the life on which we enter at death, that the consideration may well moderate our sorrow at parting. All who live must be separated by the great appointment; and, if the change is their gain, we poorly commend our love to them, more poorly our love to Christ, who came to redeem them and us for the end of taking us to his rest, if we refuse to be comforted. I would revere all grief of this kind, yet I would say there is such a thing as a will of cherishing it, which makes it rather hurtful than improving in its effect. This may be done under a mistaken idea of duty or gratitude to the dead. It may be done as a sacrifice to what we deem is expected of us, or as a thing becoming in the eyes of others. But that bereavement seems rather sanctified which saddens not the heart over much, and softens without withering it; which refuses no comfort or improvement we can profitably receive. H. H.

When the soul leaves the body, it passes at once to Christ, to perfection, and to heaven, thus to abide in peace and glory till the resurrection. The bodies of Christ’s brethren rest in their graves till the resurrection. That union, whereby we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, still endures. They are still his; and from his heavenly throne he watches over them. J. W. A.—Think much of them that are gone before; how safe they are in the arms of Jesus. Would they be here again for a thousand worlds? What would they judge of thee if they knew thy heart began to fail thee in thy journey, or thy sins began to allure thee and to persuade thee to stop thy race? Would they not say, Oh, that he did but see what we see, feel what we feel! Bun.

14. “Sleep in Jesus” ought to be “fell asleep through Jesus,” i. e., by his merits have had their death turned into sleep. “Sleep in Jesus” is a beautiful and true expression; but it is not the one used here. In the same verse, “with him” may be misunderstood. “Him” does not refer to God, but to Jesus: will God bring, at the same time that he brings him, Jesus, through whom they fell asleep. It would be better, therefore, to express it, “together with him,” which can hardly be mistaken. A.—In the book of life, the Scriptures, the death of the saints is called a sleep. It is observable how

the apostle varies the expression, Jesus died, and the saints sleep in him; for he sustained death with all its terrors that it might be a calm sleep to his people. They enjoy as perfect a rest in the beds of dust as even in the softest down. Stephen, in the midst of a shower of stones, fell asleep. Bates.—Sleep is a very impressive and appropriate Christian name for death. If we were not made indifferent by familiarity with it, natural sleep would seem a very solemn and mysterious experience. We might well be familiar with death, for we have a symbol and rehearsal of it every night. We might be familiar with the resurrection, for we have a symbol and rehearsal of it every morning. Aruot.