“For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14)
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Colin Gale 17 August 2025
Last week our reading from St Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians was full of simple, practical advice for Christian living. ‘Lead a quiet life, mind your own business, and work with your hands, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders’ (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12), that kind of thing.
This week by contrast, the reading throws into the deep end of the frustration the Thessalonian Christians were having at the long delay they were experiencing in waiting for the Lord Jesus to return imminently to wrap up all of human history and gather his faithful people together. They had thought it was all over, bar the shouting, but contrary to their expectation, human history was continuing to roll on, so long that some in the congregation had died of old age waiting. This was a serious problem as far as the Thessalonians were concerned. Since the Lord had delayed his return, how could he gather together those who had already died waiting for him?
Two thousand years later, the Thessalonians’ problem is a difficult one for us to relate to. Many Christians have lost the anticipation of the imminent end of the world as we know it, and regard those who retain such an expectation with a healthy dose of suspicion. A person might be forgiven for wanting to get back to the shallow end of the pool, and just hear some simple, practical advice for Christian living. But the passage we have heard read this morning encourages us first to grapple with the Thessalonians’ problem, second to consider a different paradigm, or point of view, for the solution of the problem, and third to get through to the wonderful promise that forms the basis for all Christian living.
The reason this is important is that no-one can learn to swim in the shallow end of the pool. We need a deeper basis for Christian life than simply to be told to ‘lead a quiet life, and mind your own business’. In fact, there is nothing specifically Christian about this, or any other moral advice, considered in isolation. But in grappling with the Thessalonians’ problem, in shifting the paradigm we use to understand it, and in hearing the promise of the Lord, we can find a secure footing and deep foundations that are located outside of ourselves for living our lives.
The Thessalonians’ problem was as I have already begun to describe it. They lived in the expectation that the Lord would return and wrap up human history in their lifetime. They were unprepared for the fact that some of their number, all of whom they knew and loved, would die waiting, and they had given no thought to their fate.
The resources they had to draw on in trying to understand the situation were more limited than the ones we have available today. We know from Mark 13 verse 27 and Matthew 24 verse 31 of Jesus’ teaching that he would gather the elect from the four winds, and we know from Luke chapter 14 verse 14 and John chapter 5 verses 28 and 29 that he promised a resurrection of the just and the unjust. But the Thessalonians didn’t possess any of the Gospels, or any of the rest of the New Testament, because none of it had yet been written. All they had to go on were the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the memory of the teaching of the apostles who founded the Thessalonian church, and the teaching of the leaders of the church of Thessalonica. All this was not enough to reassure them about the fate of their loved ones who they feared had been lost forever.
The response of the apostle Paul was to do something which was at that time completely without precedent. For the first time in history, he put the apostolic teaching on this question – and others – into writing and sent it to them. His first letter to the Thessalonians is by common consent the earliest book of the New Testament. In this letter, he told them (in chapter 4, verse 15) that ‘according to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep’ – presumably relying on the reports of Jesus’ teaching that later found their way into Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as I have already mentioned. In this letter, he drew a connection (in chapter 4 verse 14) between what the Thessalonians already knew to what they needed to know to dispel the fears they had for their loved ones. “We believe that Jesus died and rose again,” he wrote, “and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him”.
It is difficult for us, as I say, to completely relate to the issue the Thessalonians had. On the positive side, we have been given all the assurance we need of the resurrection of the dead by the gospels and the letters of the New Testament. On the minus side, 2000 years further along we are somewhat in danger of losing the expectation of the Lord’s return entirely. Nevertheless, the death of our loved ones still poses a problem for us. We still speak of having ‘lost’ relatives who have died. ‘Sorry for your loss’, we rightly say to those who are grieving; because in the death of loved ones we do suffer grievous loss. The problem we share with the Thessalonians has to do with the appropriate maintenance of hope in the face of death. We too need reassurance that our loss is not irreversible. With the Thessalonians, we need to hear and receive the apostolic teaching that because Jesus died and rose again, God will also bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
We also need to understand that the phrase ‘fallen asleep’ is not another euphemism for death, of which there are many such euphemisms. Contained within that phrase is, instead, the essence of Christian hope, linked inextricably with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He died a death which was “the wages of sin; and because he endured the full horror implied in that death, he has transformed death for his followers into sleep”,1 and his resurrection is the guarantee of ours. In the final analysis, this is the answer to the problem of death that has faced humanity in every generation. “We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him”.
Earlier I said that those Christians who maintain an expectation of the imminent return of the Lord to earth are often regarded with suspicion by others. I don’t know when you last saw a street preacher with a sandwich board reading ‘the end of the world is nigh’, but you know the kind of thing I mean. When I was a teenager, I heard someone insist that although they did not know the day or the hour of the return of Christ, they could make an informed guess at the month and the year – which was June 2007, in case you were wondering. These kind of preachers, sandwich boards, and actually ill-informed guesses operate within a paradigm, or model of thinking, which is completely foreign and false to the New Testament. When the New Testament speaks, as it often does, of us living in the last days, or even in the last hour, it is operating within a completely different paradigm, or frame of reference.
The best way I can think of to explain this is by saying something about Francis Fukuyama’s concept of ‘the end of history’. In 1989, the same year as the Berlin Wall came down, an American academic called Francis Fukuyama wrote an article, which was later published as a book, called The End of History and the Last Man. In it he reflected on the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War”, he wrote, not just “the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such”. In speaking of the end of history, Fukuyama did not mean the end of time, or the actual cessation of events. Instead, he had in mind “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution”. He believed the ultimate result of this evolution to be “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final [and most perfect] form of human government”. It was not that he thought that the human society was about to come to an end, or that things would stop happening entirely. Instead he thought that the triumph of liberal democratic, free-market capitalism over communism, which he was living through at the time of writing the article and the book, would be the final significant political and economic development of human society, the conclusion of that development. Even if liberal democracy suffered setbacks in the future – from a return to totalitarianism, for example – eventually he thought it would prevail, and that capitalism liberal democracy could not and would not be improved upon. Stuff would still keep happening in the future, but Fukuyama thought that nothing more could take place that was significantly new in terms of the way human society is organized.
There is a parallel here with the New Testament’s concept of ‘the last days’ or ‘the last hour’. Given that the authors of the various books of the New Testament lived the best part of two thousand years ago, what can it mean for them to say that their times were the last times, their days were the last days, their hours were the last hours? Were they perhaps being a little extreme, or a bit bonkers? Were they simply mistaken? And if Christians today affirm, as part of their faith, that they believe themselves to be living at the end of the ages, in the last days, or in the last hour, are they being too extreme? Is this an idea that is just too out-there, too dangerous even, for people to seriously take on board?
No, it’s not, not if we think about the ‘end of the age’ and the ‘last hour’ in the same way as Francis Fukuyama thought about ‘the end of history’. Remember that Fukuyama wasn’t predicting the imminent end of the world back in the late 1980s, or the complete cessation of events. What he was saying was that, in the wake of the triumph of liberal democracy over communism, human society had reached the pinnacle of its political and economic development. Stuff would still keep happening, but he thought there would be nothing significant enough to make us revisit and revise that conclusion. Behind that conclusion lies a secular faith in representative democracy and free markets, a paradigm – or way of thinking – in which they reign supreme. But there is a rival to this secular faith, which is Christian faith in the coming kingdom of God, and Christian faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the true pivot upon which the entirety of human history turns.
In speaking of the ‘last days’, the authors of the New Testament were not saying that after Jesus, the world would soon wind itself down. They weren’t saying that events wouldn’t continue to take place. What they claimed was that his triumph over sin and death by his cross and resurrection had ushered in a paradigm shift. They claimed that there would be no events that could take place in the remainder of human history, no matter how significant the events could otherwise be regarded, no matter long or short human history turns out to be, that could force a re-evaluation of this claim about the centrality of what Christ has done for fallen humanity. If on the day of crucifixion, they thought it was all over, on the day of resurrection they would have to say: ‘It is now!” The writer to the Hebrews gives a one-sentence summary of human history in chapter 9, verse 28, by saying: “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people, and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him”. We have been living between those two times for the past two millennia, and that is how we may understand what it means to be living in the last days, or the last hour. Whether it is a long time, or a short time, until all human history is wrapped up, this is the paradigm within which we may live in expectation of the imminent return of Christ, who is truly the ‘Lord of history’.
And now we approach the wonderful promise of this passage in reading verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4. “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
Please note well: Paul is not here saying that those who have died in the Lord, together with those Christians still living, are going to be snatched from the earth in advance of its total destruction. The day of the Lord’s return will be about his arrival to reign upon the earth, rather than the final turning of his back upon it. It will be about the renewal, rather than the destruction, of the world.
This image of Christ’s followers, both living and departed, being caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air, mirrors the Gospel parable of the ten virgins, whose job it was to look out for the approach of the bridegroom, and to come out, meet him on his way, and accompany him in joyful procession to meet his bride.2 Or think of the football fans who invaded the pitch at Wembley Stadium in 1966 at the precise moment they thought the World Cup Final was all over. Bobby Moore was hoisted up on his team-mates’ shoulders, and the crowd formed a victory escort for the whole team.
This kind of welcome would have been very familiar to the citizens of Thessalonica, because in the classical world it was the custom for the leading citizens of a city to assemble outside the city walls and form a welcoming party when they were expecting visits from conquerors returning from battles and dignitaries on diplomatic missions. The honoured visitor would then be escorted back into the city in pomp and circumstance, just as in 1966 Bobby Moore and the England team was accompanied by cheering crowds off the pitch.
F.F. Bruce, the biblical scholar, tells us that the Greek word used in classical literature for these meetings with returning conquerors is used by Paul in verse 17 of chapter 4 to describe our meeting with the Lord.3 We will be caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air. But our heads won’t stay in the clouds on that day, any more than the crowds remained on the pitch once the team had departed. Still less will the Lord depart the earth, having only just returned. Rather, on that day we will welcome our King to the earth which is rightfully his, and which will be renewed to be a fit dwelling-place for him, just as in the parable, the virgins escorted the bridegroom to his bride, and as in 1966 the crowds escorted their champions. “And so”, Paul says at the end of chapter 4, verse 17, “we will be with the Lord forever”. That is the essence of the promise, and that will be heaven for us, more than we have ever hoped for, far more than we are even able to conceive. That was the hope of my mother, and it was the hope of my father. It was the hope of all our forefathers and foremothers in faith. It is my only hope; and it’s yours as well. “We will be with the Lord forever”.
And this promise, we read in the final verse of our passage, is where we find a solid foundation for true encouragement. “Encourage each other with these words”, it says in verse 18. There is no encouragement to be gained, really, from mere moral advice, not least because we find ourselves incapable before long of abiding by the most basic guidance. Moral advice is the shallow end of the pool. Once we make our way through to the deep end, we will discover that the Lord is there, the risen and exalted one, and that he will carry us through life, and death, and the fear of death.
1 Leon Morris, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians, p. 85.
2 Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: Index Volume with Aids for the Preacher (T&T Clark, 1977), p. 536.
3 F.F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, pages 102-103.
St. George's Church Ramsgate 