1 Thessalonians 5

15. The coming again of the Lord is not one single act, as his resurrection, or the descent of the Spirit, or the final coming to judgment, but the great complex of all these, the result of which shall be his taking his people to himself, to be where he is. This receiving is begun in his resurrection, carried on in the spiritual life, further advanced when each by death is fetched away to be with him, fully completed at his coming in glory, when they shall for ever be with him in the perfected resurrection state. A.—Is it not obvious that those believers are in the wrong who allow themselves to be so repelled by extravagances on this subject that they do not make the second coming of our Lord a frequent and joyous contemplation? It was so to the apostles; it should be so to us, as the current language of the New Testament shows. No doubt there are many comings of Christ, many spiritual ones, which are unheralded, save in earnest hearts, some that are noiseless, like the springing of the day, and unobserved as light by blind eyes; but all these are only parts and harbingers of the one coming, which is to be visible, like the rising of the king of day himself. And this expectation is evermore before the Church; all the future is bright with his coming. The faithful Christian is one who “waits for the Lord.” W. I. B.

17. To meet the Lord. Death comes to set the spirit free; and rude though be the hand that knocks off the fetters, and painful though be the process of liberation, what need the prisoner care for that, when it is to freedom, life, home, he is about to be emancipated? Death strikes the hour of the soul’s everlasting espousals, and, though the sound may be a harsh one, what matters that? “Now,” may the fainting passing soul reflect, “now my Lord is coming, I go to meet him—to be with Jesus—to dwell with him in everlasting light and love—to be severed from him no more for ever: O Death lead thou me on!” J. W. A.—18. We are now tossed upon the alternate waves of time, but it is that we may arrive at the port, the blessed bosom of our Saviour, and enjoy a peaceful calm; and “so we shall be ever with the Lord.” Words of infinite sweetness! This is the song of our prosperity and the charm of our adversity; well might the apostle add immediately after, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” Bates.

To the primitive Christians all this was reality. They have left their faith and hope recorded upon the tombs which they constructed in their hiding-places in the subterranean excavations or quarries of the city of Rome. In those long galleries of catacombs, where the bodies of martyrs and persecuted saints were laid to rest, there is not one trace of despondency or gloom. It is written over one and another, “She sleeps”; “In peace”; “With Christ.” The anchor, the cross, the crown, the symbols of the resurrection and immortality, make those dark galleries bright with the presence of an eternal life. This doctrine should inspire the Christian disciples with the glad consciousness of the nearness of the Lord at death. The effort to find for heaven a locality commonly results in placing it at an immense remove in space and time; the attempt to define the features and occupations results in vague imaginings; meantime Paradise comes floating down to us, and Jesus steps to the bedside of one whom we think dying, and says, “I come to receive thee to myself; to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Heaven is around us; if we are Christ’s, one step and we are there. Then why let earth trouble, delude, engross or detain us? And why should death intimidate us? J. P. T.

1. But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For 2 yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For 3 when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as tra- 4 vail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in 5 darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, 6 and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us

7 not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the 8 night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of 9 salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord 10 Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with 11 him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. 12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over 13 you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s 14 sake. And be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that 15 are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both 16 among yourselves, and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every 19 thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not 20 the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and 23 I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of 24 our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray 26 for us. Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epis- 28 tle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

OBEDIENCE to these precepts would make life perfect both in its relations to the outer world and in its innermost relations with God. How peaceful would be the life of one who should never render evil for evil! how beneficent the life that should ever follow toward all men that which is good! how consis- tent and symmetrical the life that, before committing itself to any opinion or action, should test its char- acter, and then adopt and hold fast that which is good! how gracious and gentle would be the life that should minister comfort and support to the weak and needy, and, while decided against every wrong, should be patient under all injury or provocation! and how pure and beautiful the life that should abstain from all appearance of evil. But such outward peace, benignity, consistency, grace, beauty, purity, must spring from that communion with God in which prayer is unbroken and thanksgiving is perpetual; in which no light of the Spirit is ever quenched by earthly passions, no voice of the Spirit drowned by earthly cares, but the whole nature—body, soul, and spirit—is brought into harmony through the pervading, sanctifying presence of the God of peace. For this let us pray without ceasing. Unto this, also, let us daily live. J. P. T.

2-22. And now he goes on to speak of that great day itself in terms which doubtless they in their eagerness fastened upon, and interpreted of its too speedy coming. Now occurs the first of those afterward often-repeated exhortations to walk in light, as children of the day (see also Rom. 13: 12, 13; Eph. 5: 8; Col. 1: 12, 13); now is found the first germ of that description of the armor of God, or of light, which he afterward expanded so glori- ously (Eph. 6: 10). Now, also, first we come to those short insulated admonitions which have been com- pared to strings of pearls, with which in after years he was in the habit of coming toward the conclusion of his Epistles. A.

2. The day of the Lord, yet future, is the day on which, most assuredly, all thoughts will turn to him, whether willingly or by constraint, whether in ter- ror or in joy; the day in which his truth will silence into nothingness all human errors and guesses at truth, in which his justice will take the place of all that is named justice, rightly or wrongly, among the sons of men; the day in which everything else but he will be lost sight of, and will be as though it were not, in which the eternal reality of his rela- tion to the world and to man will also be the ac- knowledged reality. It is the day on which he will bring the vast and complex moral account between himself and his responsible creatures to a close—to a final, irreversible decision. As surely as we have seen this morning’s sunlight, we shall hereafter be- hold the eternal Judge upon his throne, the count- less multitudes before him, the division between his creatures deep and irreversible, the disciplined ac- tivities of his angels, the issues on this side and on that, as all gradually settles down into the last un- changeable award. H. P. L.

3. Usually men are most secure before their own judgment and ruin. “When they shall say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” When security runs riot, and is like to degenerate into utter contempt of God, men are not likely to profit by the word, therefore God takes the rod in hand, that by the severity of discipline he may teach men that which they would not learn by kinder and milder persuasions. T. M.

5. He, the Light of light, will certainly give his especial help, in no ordinary measure, to the man who, for his sake, is striving to live in the light. He will bless the open-hearted man with the highest of all blessings, the sure sense of His presence with him. F. T.—Light . . . darkness. The powers of light and the powers of darkness contend within us and for us. That which is imaged forth in the light of day and the darkness of the night; that which is exemplified in the intimate and central powers of attraction and repulsion, under which all nature lives and grows, is repeated in a higher sphere in the whole history of our race. As the harmonies of nature are but the equilibrium of contending agencies, and its peace is purchased by its elemental strife, so are the harmonies of history and also its peace worked out through its antagonizing forces; so that, if we would learn the rhythm of nature, of history, or of the human soul, we must learn it as the resultant of its struggling powers. Progress through conflict, antagonisms working out a higher unity, is the inmost law of our species. It is seen in the transition from the Jewish to the Christian economy; it is involved in the very genius of Christianity as a redemptive system; it is corroborated by our faith in the final victories of that system; it is read in its deepest meaning by all who are growing in knowledge or virtue in what Plato calls life’s “immortal battle.” H. B. S.

6. Watch. Temptations hover about you in ambush. They are not in great emergencies, but in the little things of your daily life, and hidden under unsuspected appearances. They lurk in the pillows of comfort on which you lay your thoughtless heads; in the emulation where you mistake the pride of excelling for the love of wisdom; in the common labor where the world gambles for your soul; in the merchandise where you are offered gain for falsehood; in the social fellowship where criminality corrupts under the name of cordiality; in the flatteries of your beauty, or your talents, or your disposition, which borrow the silver tones of friendship, and sound so like them that you listen; in the familiar pleasures that make the feet of the hours so swift, and the earth so satisfying, that you feel no need of heaven. Here are your tempters. They are disguised; they take circuitous paths; they carry gifts in their hands, and place crowns on your heads; they are clothed like angels of light. Then watch! and watch yourselves only. For the kingdom of hell, as well as the kingdom of heaven, is within us. All the mischief is there, its origin there, its power there, its fatal result there. There Satan’s seat is. No harm can come nigh you, but through the gate of your own yielding heart, set open by your own perverted will. F. D. H.

8. In a firm, good, Christian hope, sin meets its strongest antagonist. The man who possesses it has a confidence and assurance which will nerve his arm and secure the victory. The breastplate of faith and love is not sufficient without the hope of salvation for a helmet. Homer.

10. Christ died, in that he assumed our nature, and did not die in respect of the essence of eternal life. He suffered in that he assumed a body, that the reality of the body so assumed might be believed; and he did not suffer in respect of the impassible divinity of the Word, which is incapable of any pain. While the anguish of death took not hold of him as God, the realms of death beheld him as man. While he was hanging on the cross, he was shaking the world. While he was being executed, and was receiving wounds, he was bestowing a heavenly kingdom. While he was “made the sin” of all, he was washing away the sins of mankind. Lastly, he died—I say it a second and a third time, with exultation, with triumph—He died, that his death might become the life of the dead; “that we should live together with Him!” Ambrose.

11-15. Here are valuable directions for the collective life and internal peace of the Church. It is a brotherly society, in which every one is so far his brother’s keeper that he is to seek his brother’s welfare. Kindness, consideration, patience, are to mark the intercourse of Christians. Special respect also is due to those who preside over the congregation. D. F.

11. Edify one another. The full meaning is, “Build one another up, that you may all together grow into a temple of God.” The word is frequently used by Paul in this sense. It is very difficult to express the meaning by any single word in English. C.—It is a grand, Scriptural word, and ought always to be thoughtfully used. Building up implies establishment upon a sure foundation, and growth, or steady advance heavenward. B.

12. Rejoice. It is remarkable with what earnestness and frequency Paul enjoins a spirit of rejoicing as an essential part of a spiritual life and his words prove that this injunction is intimately connected with the indwelling of the blessed Spirit. He represents “joy” as one of the fruits of the Spirit, following next in order to “love.” It may be dimmed or overcast by the will of God, as a chastisement, or discipline, teaching its own needful lessons of humility and trust and patient endurance. But joy is a grace to be earnestly cherished, as well as a promised blessing; a duty to be steadily fulfilled, as well as a part of our blessed inheritance. We are expected to “hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Keble

17. Pray without ceasing.** Prayer is the pulsation of the soul. It need not be always expressed in words. There is a prayer which the faithful offer, and which, like the pulse in the veins, never ceases its motion, not by night, not by day, and which can be heard by no human ear. In this inward silent supplication are the faithful continually exclaiming, Abba, dear Father! To pray, that is, to expect nothing except from God and to expect everything of God; to keep our soul incessantly open before him; to lay open before the Father, whom Jesus Christ has restored to us, our wants, our fears, our difficulties; to place ourselves continually in his hands; to accept, by anticipation, whatever it may please him to dispense; to deposit at his feet the burden of our sins; to sigh in his presence after the gift of a pure heart; to place ourselves under the rays of his light, under the dew of his grace; with all the humility of indigence to solicit an asylum under his roof, a place at his hearth; to take shelter under his mercy, and gain warmth upon his heart; such is the grace of graces. A. V.—By the most urgent prayers, uttered only at night and morning, if we did nothing more, the prayers would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the heart and not in the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes, and no man can set himself heartily to wish twice a day for things of which he never thinks at other times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading God’s word, and in thinking about him. T. A.

In this precept there is nothing commanded which may not be fulfilled, when we understand of prayer as the continual desire of the soul after God; having indeed its times of intensity, but not confined to those times; since the whole life of the faithful should be, in Origen’s beautiful words, one great connected prayer. “That soul,” says Donne, “that is accustomed to direct herself to God upon every occasion—that as a flower at sunrising conceives a sense of God in every beam of his, and spreads and dilates itself toward him—in every small blessing that he sheds upon her, that soul who, whatsoever string be stricken, is ever turned toward God, that soul prays when it does not know that it prays.” Thus Augustine: “Can we, indeed, without ceasing, bend the knee, bow the body, or lift up the hands, that he should say, ‘Pray without ceasing’? There is another interior prayer without intermission, and that is the longing of thy heart. Whatever else thou mayest be doing, if thou longest after that Sabbath of God, thou dost not intermit to pray. If thou wishest not to intermit to pray, see that thou do not intermit to desire—thy continual desire is thy continual voice. Thou wilt be silent if thou leave off to love. The coldness of love is the silence of the heart—the fervency of love is the cry of the heart.” T.

18. In everything give thanks.** A duty this which Paul never forgets, and which he considers no mere optional exercise. It is of obligation, because it is God’s will concerning us in Christ Jesus. D. F.—To pray without ceasing, and in everything to give thanks, belong to each other as closely as the breath and the sound of the voice; what is more, the one is promoted by the other. There must be much prayer in order really to give thanks in all things; and, again, fervent thankfulness of itself leads to humbler prayer. Thus, in the compass of seven words, a lesson is brought before us, which the farthest advanced Christian requires to study every day. All his dealings with us must initiate us more deeply into the school of prayer; and the holy aim of redemption in Christ is only reached when in everything thanks and praise are rendered to God by us. This thanksgiving in everything is the infallible touchstone of a faith which, under all circumstances, rests assured of the infinite love of God. Van O.

19. The witness of the Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine like a perpetual star; the witness of the Spirit here in the heart on earth burns like a flickering flame, never to be extinguished, but still not always bright, wanting to be trimmed and needing to be guarded from rude blasts. Else what does an apostle mean when he says to you and me, “Quench not the Spirit”? what does he mean when he says to us, “Grieve not the Spirit”? You have no reason to be discouraged, still less despondent, because you find that the witness of the Spirit changes and varies in your heart. Do not despond because it does. Watch it and guard it, lest it do. Live in the contemplation of the person and the fact that calls it forth, that it may not. A. M.—These familiar exhortations not to grieve and not to quench the Spirit of God, although appropriated to another use, originally had reference to Christians. They teach that this divine influence does not forcibly retain possession of the human heart; but, if it find there no fellowship of holy action, it will leave it as an uncongenial sphere. The true disciple is sanctified and saved only in harmony with his own exertions. It is the Spirit which imparts efficiency to his strength, but, if he do not exert that strength, the Spirit will withdraw his aid. He disdains to abide in a stupid soul. He prefers rather to be the life of those that live. And, if there be one condition of unwonted melancholy, it is that of the Christian who by negligence has forfeited his title to this heavenly aid. Homer.

Draw near to God when he comes to you in the

Spirit as it operates within your heart. “There dwells,” says a heathen writer, “in men a Holy Spirit, who treats us as he is treated by us.” Once turned away, he comes back again the more seldom, and speaks to us with less and less power. But what can I do, you ask, if the voice within me sounds but softly, or if I have disdained it until it has become scarcely audible? Brother, it stands recorded: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” A. T.

20,21. The words ought to stand, “Despise not prophesying, but prove all things”; i. e., on the one hand, do not think lightly of any utterances of the word of God by whomsoever made; on the other, do not be led by everything so spoken, but put all things to the test. A.—Prophesying. These were utterances in the Spirit, more direct than the ordinary tenor of teaching, and directed to the edification of the Church. The Corinthians did not give due place to prophesying, preferring the more showy gift of tongues; and this apostle wrote to correct their ill-judged preference. “Covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.” He is anxious that the Thessalonians should not fall into the same mistake. He wishes them not to make light of prophesying, for these tended to “edification, exhortation, and comfort.” D. F.

21. To be in a state of perpetual equipoise; to be conducting an eternal examination into “evidences”; to be still vaunting what is called “the spirit of inquiry”; to be “ever learning and yet never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”; is to spend a life not only of personal discomfort, where there is any sincerity, but really of little credit or honor to him whose life it is. We are encouraged to ask questions of God and man, to read books, weigh evidence, reject fallacy, in one word, to “prove all things,” but all this with a view to the ending of hesitancy, to the settlement of faith, and the holding fast of “that which is good.” A. R.—Looking to the awful disclosures made by Scripture respecting the great apostasy from the faith, which shall be a feature of the latter days, and looking also at the revolutionary and lawless tendency of the age, as shown in political and social movements, we are quite right in regarding with suspicion, and in narrowly questioning and examining, all new-fangled views whether religious or social. And yet there should be a readiness in us, though not to abandon for one moment the old truth, yet to recognize any new form in which it may be presented. We have been brought up to regard truth—religious, and it may be political and social truth also—in one aspect. But truth is many-sided, like a cube; and we should never be so tenacious of the aspect of it which is familiar to us as not to be ready to come round and view it under another man’s aspect. E. M. G.

22. Many persons have thought it to be an injunction to abstain even from that which seems evil, to avoid all chance of offense. The words mean merely this: “Abstain from every form of evil,” i. e., “from every kind of evil.” And they correspond with the former member of the sentence, which should be divided further by a comma only, “Hold fast that which is good, abstain from every kind of evil.” A.

23. Body, soul, and spirit.** The body—the human affections and passions; the soul—according to the philosophy of that age—the rational powers; and the spirit—that on which God directly operates, and which apprehends the things of God: and the apostle prayed that not this spirit only, but the whole man, might be presented blameless. So we hear him say, “Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon”; that the Christian should have a glorified body, a sanctified intellect, and moral sense, and a spiritual power to love and serve God. F. W. R.—The same soul with its essential powers, the same body with its natural senses, the work of the creator, remains; but in the cleansing of his stained nature, in the sanctifying his faculties that are the springs of his actions, the whole man is quickened into a divine life, and enabled to act in conformity to it. An active principle of holiness is planted in him; every faculty is renewed, and every grace infused that constitutes the divine image. Bates.

24. It is God who calls. Christ has lived, and he asks living followers. He has died a sacrifice, and he asks the spirit of self-sacrifice, the death of evil, in you. He has risen, living evermore; and whatsoever gift of his love ye shall ask, believing, ye shall receive. These are your guaranties, your commission, your grounds of action. This is your “calling of God in Christ Jesus.” It is remarkable how perseveringly the New Testament clings to this particular conception of the Christian relation, setting it forward in all possible connections of phrase, and putting it in contact with each element of the Christian system, as if there were a vitality in it that must not by any means be missed. Disciples are said to be “the called of Jesus,” “called out of darkness into marvelous light,” “called unto liberty,” “called to peace,” “called to eternal life,” “called” first, to be afterward “justified and glorified,” “called to inherit a blessing,” “called in one body” and “one hope,” “called by God’s grace” to “holiness,” to “his kingdom and glory,” with “a holy calling,” “a heavenly calling.” To “walk worthy of the vocation” is made the business of a careful conscience. To make our “calling and election sure” is the grand victory of our warfare. The promise that subdues all anxiety as to the result is in the words, “Faithful is he which calleth you.” F. D. H.

26. An holy kiss.** We find a full account of this custom, as it was practiced in the early Church, in the Apostolical Constitutions (book ii. ch. 57). The men and women were placed in separate parts of the building where they met for worship. It should be remembered by English readers that a kiss was in ancient times, as it is now in many foreign countries, the ordinary mode of salutation between friends when they met. C.

27. “I adjure you by the Lord,” he says, “that this Epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.” Such vehemence would ill become the writer of any mere human letter. And this remark is important considering it is the earliest among his Epistles. He wrote in full consciousness of his apostolic power. A.—This Epistle is well suited at all times to young Christians. It furnishes tests of conversion, corrects errors of inexperience, warns against vain security, and conveys, in a most compact form, wise counsels for the Christian life. It gives prominence to that which should always stand before the minds of disciples young and old—the coming of the Lord from heaven. In every respect it is an Epistle worthy to “be read unto all the holy brethren.” D. F.