About those who fall asleep

[1 Thessalonians 4:13-21]

In a column titled "What the Bible has to say about life after death in 11 verses", a British Christian newspaper Christine Today's columnist, Allana Francis, said it is important to have right understanding about death and the life after death (Internet).  Francis said that many people talk about their last wishes and funeral plans before they die, and death is something we all have to face it someday, but most of us are not prepared practically and spiritually.  She also said that many people think and say death is uncomfortable experience.  Most conversations about what happens after death tend to focus on the most negative ending.  But for Christians, there is another bright, hopeful view of death.  Death will bring the end of many things, but it will gain more than we can get from earthly life.  As Christians, we are not only guaranteed a promised life after death but also eternal life that they will live with God forever.  When we think about death, we have to leave our family and friends as death-facing beings, and in a broad sense we are afraid of death.  But we can receive great comfort through the Word of God.  Francis emphasized that death indeed leads to eternal life, and a better understanding of death is an important part of our faith journey (Internet).

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church saints: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.”  Here, the phrase “those who fall asleep” refers to those who are already dead which is more appropriate translation to the original Greek.  According to John 11:11, Jesus said to His disciples “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” knowing that Lazarus was sick (v. 3) and died.  Then the disciples heard His word and said to Jesus, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better” (v. 12).  Although Jesus had been speaking of Lazarus’ death, but His disciples thought He meant natural sleep (v. 13).  So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead” (v. 14).  In this way the Bible says that Jesus is the One who referred to the dead as one who had fallen asleep.  But beside Jesus, there are other Bible writers who referred to the dead as the one who had fallen asleep.  The writer of the book of Acts Luke also referred to the dead as the one who fall asleep.  Look at Acts 7:60 – “Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.”  Apostle Peter also referred the dead as the one who fell asleep in 2 Peter 3:4 – “and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”  Among the Bible writers, Apostle Paul is the one who mostly expressed dead as the one who fell asleep.  Not only he expressed it in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 but also in 1 Corinthians 15:6, 18, 51: “After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;  …  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  …  Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.”  So Paul repeatedly referred the dead as the one who fell asleep.  In fact, Paul told the Thessalonian church saints about “those who fall asleep” in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, but in verse 16 he said “the dead”.  In the end, Paul wrote this letter to the Thessalonian church saints, saying in 4:9-12 ‘about brotherly love’ and then in verse 4:13-21 ‘about those who fell asleep’ (already dead).  And then he went to chapter 5:1-11 and told them about ‘about times and dates’, that is the time of Jesus’ second coming.  Then the question is ‘Why did Paul write a letter to the Thessalonian church saints about those who fell asleep’, those who were already dead?  The reason for this was because Paul didn’t want them to grieve like the rest of men, who had no hope (4:13).  Here “the rest of men” refers to all who are in this world besides the Christians who believe in Jesus.  In other words, “the rest of men, who have no hope”, who grieve because of those who fall asleep are all non-believers in this world who do not believe in Jesus.  Paul didn’t want the beloved Thessalonian church saints to grieve like the non-believers who had no hope because of the death of the saints who believed in Jesus.

The non-believers who do not believe in Jesus says “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).  So they eat, drink, marry and take life easy like the people in the day of Noah entered the ark (Lk. 12:19; 17:27).  The reason is because they believe death is the end.  In other words, the non-believers grieve without hope as they eat, drink, enjoy and die because they don’t believe in the world after death.  But Christians who believe in Jesus are not.  In other words, we should not grieve like the non-believers who have no hope.  In the meantime, Paul explained why we shouldn’t grieve in 1 Thessalonians 4:14 – “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.”  So I want to mediate 1 Thessalonians 4:13-21, under the title "About those who fall asleep", and think about why we shouldn’t grieve like the non-believers when our beloved fellow brother or sister in Christ dies in two ways:

First, we shouldn’t grieve like the non-believers when our beloved fellow brother or sister in Christ dies because we believe that Jesus died and rose again.

Look at 1 Thessalonians 4:14a: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again  ….”  Do you believe the truth that Jesus rose from the grave three days after he died on the cross?  Or do you only believe that Jesus died on the cross but not His resurrection?  Some of the Corinthian church saints said that there was no resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:12).  If there was no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ had been raised (vv. 13, 15, 16).  And if Christ hadn’t been raised, then Paul’s preaching is useless and so was the Corinthian church saint’s faith (vv. 14, 17).  More than that, Paul and his co-workers who were preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ found to be false witnesses about God (v. 15).  “Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost” (v. 18).  “We believe that Jesus died and rose again” (v. 19).  However, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:20 – “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”  The gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul preached to the Corinthian church, was “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (vv. 3-4).

 Apostle Paul went to Thessalonica and went into a Jewish synagogue, “an on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures” and proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Look at Acts 17:1-3: “When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.  As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.  ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said.”  As a result, some of the Jew were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women (v. 4).  So Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.”  In other words, both Paul and the Thessalonian church saints believed that Jesus died and rose again.  Therefore, Paul encouraged the Thessalonian church saints not to grieve as the non-believers who didn’t believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus because of “those who fall asleep” (v. 13).

Until we believed in Jesus, we were without hope and without God in the world.  Look at Ephesians 2:12 – “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”  “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (v. 13).  We were saved by the grace of God by believing in Jesus Christ (v. 8).  Only by the grace of God we have received eternal life as the gift of God (Rom. 6:23), believing in Jesus Christ who died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4).  So now we have hope.  And that hope is “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23).  At the last trumpet, we will all be changed (1 Cor. 15:51-52).  Look at 1 Corinthians 15: 52-53: “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”  Therefore, we are listening to Scripture Romans 8: 24-25 carefully: “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Second and last, we shouldn’t grieve like the non-believers when our beloved fellow brother or sister in Christ dies because God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

Look at 1 Thessalonians 4:14 – “…  and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”  The Bible says that “hope that is seen is no hope at all” (Rom. 8:24).  “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (v. 25).  Indeed, the Thessalonian church saints were patient with their endurance inspired by hope in their Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 1:3).  In other words, they waited for His Son Jesus from heaven, whom He raised from the dead (v. 10).  Before the gospel came to them with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (v. 5), they were idol worshipers (v. 9).  God loved and chooses such idolaters (v. 4) and called them into His kingdom and glory (2:12).  Therefore, the Thessalonian church saints became Paul’s hope, joy and the crown in which Paul will glory in the presence of his Lord Jesus when He comes (vv. 19-20).

 Our hope is the second coming of Jesus.  And the patience of our hope is to pray, expect, and wait for His second coming.  Do we have this kind of waiting?  We who wait for His second coming, we don’t grieve like the non-believers when our fellow brethren dies (4:13).  The reason is because we believe that Jesus died and rose again (v. 14).  Furthermore, we don’t grieve because we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him (v. 14).  In short, we who are waiting for the second coming of Jesus are joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer (Rom. 12:12).  Also, the Thessalonian church saints’s endurance of hope was to live a holy life.  So when Paul prayed for them who were his hope, joy, crown and glory, he asked God to strengthen their hearts so that they would be blameless and holy in the presence of God and Father when Lord Jesus comes with all His holy ones (3:13).  The reason why Paul prayed like this was because it is God’s will for them to be sanctified (4:3).  Paul urged the Thessalonian church saints to avoid sexual immorality, to learn to control their own bodies in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who didn’t know God (vv. 3-5).  The reason was because God didn’t call them to be impure, but to live a holy life (v. 7).  d

We who wait for Jesus’ second coming should live a holy life.  If we pray, expect and wait for Jesus' return, we must live the holy life according to God's will.  Paul, who was praying to God with thanksgiving in his heart whenever he remembered he remembered the Thessalonian church saints’ endurance of hope in prayer (1:2-3), told them about the saints who died already not to grieve like the non-believers who had no hope because they believed that Jesus died and rose again and God will bring with Jesus those who had fallen asleep in Him (4:13-14).  This presupposes that “t he 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” (v. 16).  In other words, those who are already dead in Christ will be resurrected first in the Lord's second coming, and then God will bring His resurrected saints with Jesus.  Why is Jesus coming back to this world?  Look at John 14:1-3: “"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.  In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  The reason Jesus will come back to this world is to take the redeemed children of God to heaven.  In the end, Paul told the Thessalonian church saints that those who had already died in Christ were be resurrected and that God will bring them with Jesus (1 Thess. 4:14).  After that, those who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (v. 17).  Therefore, Paul exhorted the Thessalonian church saints to comfort each other with these words (v.18).  Let us believe in the truth that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him when we grieve because of the death of our beloved brother or sister in Christ.  And let us believe that the Lord Himself will come down form 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.  Let us believe that 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.  Let us believe that we will be with the Lord forever.  I hope and pray that we may comfort one another with this sure and clear eternal hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are not only guaranteed the promised life after death, but also promised eternal life with God.  When we think about death, we have to leave our family and friends as death-bearing beings, and in a broad sense we are afraid of death.  But we can receive great comfort through the word of God.  The Word of God says that we should not grieve like the non-believers because of the death of our beloved brother or sister in Christ.  The reason is because we believe that Jesus died and rose again.  Jesus' resurrection is our resurrection.  When the Lord Jesus returns, the saints who have already died will be raised again, and the living saints will be suddenly transformed and be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And we will be with the Lord forever in heaven.  May the Holy Spirit comfort you with these words.

Praying, expecting, waiting for the Lord's return,

James Kim