And So We Will Always Be with the Lord

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

It’s been a few weeks since we left off our study of 1 Thessalonians. Here in these last two chapters, the Apostle Paul is giving several commands for how Christians are to live distinctly different from non-Christians. These are not random instructions but are given in response to particular concerns and questions of the Thessalonian believers.

The instructions Paul gives here were immediately applicable to the lives of the original audience. He instructed them on matters of sexual morality because there was transgression on these matters within the community (1 Thess 4:6). He wrote to them about what love for one another in the church ought to look like, explaining that our rhythms of work and rest are not matters of individual concern only but greatly affect how we can love each other more and more (1 Thess 4:9-12). And now he deals with another concern his original audience had, a question “about those who are asleep.” It’s a euphemism, of course, for people who have died.

So the subjects we’ve encountered so far in this last section deal with sexual morality, work and rest, and death. The Bible may be ancient, but it is just as relevant to the issues we face today. And the main point of application in this passage is clear. Paul says in verse 13 that he does not want Christians to “grieve as others do who have no hope.” There is something about the Christian faith that we are to believe and by believing it, we are to live and behave in a very different way than the “outsiders,” than non-Christians.

Specifically, we should grieve differently when dealing with death than non-Christians grieve. This difference becomes clear as we see that while death itself is no hope, death for the Christian is no disadvantage because death is no victor.

Death Is No Hope

First, the Christian grieves death distinctly from the non-Christian because, maybe somewhat ironically, we do not see death itself as offering us any hope. Let me explain.

No Hope in Unbelief

Paul refers to non-Christians as those “who have no hope.” What is it about which a non-Christian has no hope when it comes to the question of death? The answer is not hope in an afterlife. While many non-Christians today may be atheists or material naturalists, not all are, and that certainly was not the primary worldview in Paul’s day. Almost all believed in an afterlife for all who have died, a state or realm in which a person who had died would live on, perhaps in some happier state of existence than they had before death. But what no non-Christian possessed was the hope that someone would die and then be resurrected. Death in the ancient world was all-powerful, a “one-way street,” and no one could either escape it or break its power once it had come.[1]

So what marked non-Christian grief at the death of a loved one was the hopelessness of ever seeing the person alive again. The only way one could possibly ever “see” that loved one again would be by dying and joining him or her in the realm of the dead. Death was final, the afterlife was dark and mysterious, and so death was the ultimate experience of hopelessness because it was the ultimate point of no return.

The Hopelessness of the Afterlife

The Christian distinctive, then, is not the hope of what we often call heaven, the hope of a disembodied, non-physical bliss that pervades our modern conception of life after death. What Paul teaches here is that the distinction between Christians and non-Christians when it comes to the grief of death is not in what kind of existence lies beyond the grave. The Christian hope is not death followed by the experience of heaven. The ancient world, for the most part, believed in an afterlife. What makes Christianity distinctive is not that the afterlife is something to look forward to rather than something to be feared. It is not Christian to look forward to death. Our hope in death lies in something else entirely, not in death itself.

That is not to say that Christians do not believe in a conscious existence of glory after death. This the Bible makes clear elsewhere, and Paul in one sense looks forward to death because he knows that to “be away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). But it is a mistake to read Paul there or anywhere else as if his hope lay in escaping from the body and going to heaven.

The Hope of the Second Coming

You see, what we today call “heaven,” which is the word we tend to use for the afterlife, is not as hopeful as it may seem.

Recall that Paul said elsewhere that it was a difficult decision whether he would rather live or die. While it is far better to die and be with Christ, he said, “to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (Phil 1:24). And then he said that because of that, he was certain he would live a bit longer “for your progress and joy in the faith” (Phil 1:25).

The problem with seeing “heaven” as our hope in death is that it does not put an end to grief. However much it is true that the believer who dies is happy in the presence of the Lord, there is still a separation between us and them, and that is the source of our grief in death.

And even if we die and are reunited to them in heaven, we will leave behind in the land of the living our own loved ones. And so death, even for the Christian, does not really bring us the hope we long for.

The Bible would have us find hope elsewhere. Because we believe that Jesus not only died but also rose again, so also our hope must firmly be placed in the resurrection of the dead. Our hope is not in going to heaven, but in heaven coming to us. Our hope is in what we usually call the Second Coming of Christ.

Death Is No Disadvantage

If the Second Coming of Jesus is the great hope of the Christian, then the question that remains is this: “Will those who have died before the Second Coming be disadvantaged? Will they miss out on this great event?” The answer is no. Death will be no disadvantage. When Christ returns, the entire family of God will be reunited together in life with none missing out on this great reunion.

The Word of the Lord

Verse 15 says, “For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord.” Although what Paul says next is not exactly stated anywhere in the Gospels, it does correspond pretty well to Jesus’s words in Matthew 24.[2]

But the important point to make here is that the Bible does not leave us in ignorance about where his people will be on the great day of our Lord’s return. Whether they have died or not before that day comes, Christian doctrine makes it plain where we will all be.

The Living Will Have No Advantage

When we think about the future, we often speak about being able to live long enough to see some expected thing or event. We speak of wanting to live long enough to see our children get married or to have grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Perhaps we want to live long enough to see some new technology become widely available. Maybe we want to live long enough to see driver-less cars become the norm or to see a human being land on Mars.

We sometimes speculate how some deceased loved one would react had they lived to see the day we are now experiencing. Someone receiving some award or being celebrated for some achievement will talk about how proud their mom or dad would be if they were still alive to see the moment of their child’s success. We feel sorry that they have missed out on the moment. Or, we talk about how they are “up there” watching and try to find some assurance that they are still with us and not at all missing out. But death is a harsh reality, and, no, the dead are not here with us. They are missing out on the current experiences of our day.

So, if the Second Coming is the greatest day there will ever be in human history, then we might imagine that to be alive to see that day would be a huge blessing. That’s true. But Paul says that when that day comes, “that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” And in the next verse he says that when the Lord returns, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” He wants to assure us that those who are alive when Christ returns will not have any kind of advantage or privilege over those who have died.

The Dead Are Raised First

Why? Because when the Lord returns, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” That is, no Christian who has died before the Second Coming will be disadvantaged by their death. If anything, “They will have a place of privilege, if not preeminence,” says one commentator, in the great event of the Second Coming.[3]

So the reason why Christians grieve death differently than non-Christians is because while we grieve death just as they do, we believe that no Christian who has died will miss out on the greatest moment in history that is yet to come. Because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we must also believe in the death and resurrection of all who are united to Jesus. And that means that when Christ returns, all who have died united to Christ will return as well.

Death Is No Victor

And that leads us then to one last reason why Christians grieve death differently than non-Christians do. For Christians, death is no victor. It cannot win. It will not have the final word.

The Lord Will Descend from Heaven

Now again, our hope is not ultimately in going to heaven when we die, but rather in resurrection, in returning back to life, to this life, as it were, but in a resurrected, immortal body. This is what is promised to us when Christ returns, when, as verse 16 says, “the Lord himself will descend from heaven.”

The description of this incredible prophecy is grand and has captured the fascination and imagination of Christians for over two thousand years. Unfortunately, it seems we’ve suffered from quite a bit of strange ideas about the return of Jesus.

First, the idea of Jesus “descending” from heaven does not indicate that heaven is a place somewhere up there in the sky or in outer space some many light years away. The word coming, as in the “Second Coming” of Jesus, simply means presence. It is called a “descent” mainly because when Jesus left, we are told that he “ascended” into heaven. But we know this is more of a description of exaltation, as when a king “ascends” to the throne, than it is a description of physical position.

The Second Coming of Jesus might be better understood as the drawing of a curtain from both sides in a stage production, revealing the actors behind the curtain.[4] Jesus is not now far, far away from us, and the Second Coming is not a long journey from heaven down to earth. Rather, we should think of the Second Coming “as a revelation of [Christ’s] formerly hidden ‘presence.’ The old-world reality will be ripped away, and the dimension of the new, eternal reality will appear along with Christ’s ‘presence.’”[5]

The Triumphant Presence

The event is described with much fanfare. Christ will appear “with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with he sound of the trumpet of God” (v. 16). These are biblical and cultural images that describe Christ’s authoritative presence. What is described here is not some secret coming of Jesus to rapture his church while the rest of mankind is left on earth to endure a 7-year tribulation. It is unfortunate that the Second Coming of Christ is too often understood as our going up to heaven rather than Christ’s triumphant presence on earth. The Bible consistently teaches that Christ’s return marks the end of human history as we know it. The sound of the trumpet indicates the news of Revelation 11:15, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” This is the consummation of the kingdom of God, and at this moment every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The Comfort of the Rapture

To be sure, the Bible tells us here that there will be a “rapture” of believers, both of those who have died as well as those who are then living. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (v. 17). But again, what we have here is a metaphor. The words used here describe the custom of sending a delegation out of a city to meet and accompany a dignitary who was coming on an official visit.[6] The word rapture comes to us from the Latin translation of the primary Greek verb in verse 17. The idea of a sudden disappearance of Christians from the earth, leading to the enormous chaos of pilotless planes falling from the sky and driverless cars veering out of control on the highway comes to us from imaginative speculation and baseless biblical support.

What Paul describes here is meant to be, for the Christian, a source of enormous comfort. One commentator writes this:

This is not the stuff of speculative prophecy or best-sellers on the end times. The text is located at the funeral home, the memorial service, and the graveside. It is placed in the hands of each believer to comfort others in their time of greatest sorrow.[7]

What is our great comfort in death? It is not the consolation prize of a bodiless existence afterward. It is rather that death has no victory. Because we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that those who die in Christ will be raised to life again on the day of Christ’s triumphant return.

“And so we will always be with the Lord.” All of us. Together with Christ forever.

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[1] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003), 81-82.

[2] Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), 222.

[3] Ibid., 225.

[4] Beale, 139.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Green, Letters to the Thessalonians, 226.

[7] Ibid., 229.