1 Thessalonians · chapter 4 of 5
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1 Thessalonians 4 teaches believers to please God: to abstain from sexual immorality, to love one another more and more, to live quietly and to work with their hands. It then comforts those who mourn their dead: those who have fallen asleep in Jesus will rise first when the Lord descends from heaven, and the living will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord and be with him forever.
After the prayers of chapter 3, Paul turns to practical instruction and to a question that troubled the young church: what happens to believers who have already died? This chapter contains one of the clearest teachings of the New Testament about the return of Christ and the resurrection, along with warnings about daily life that readers coming from the pagan world needed.
Paul asks and urges them in the Lord Jesus to keep living as they were taught, in order to please God, and encourages them to do so more and more. God's will is their sanctification: that they abstain from sexual immorality, that each know how to control his own body (or wife, depending on the translation) in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no one wrong or take advantage of his brother in this matter. The Lord is an avenger in all these things, and God called us not for impurity but for holiness, so whoever rejects this rejects God, who gives his Holy Spirit.
About brotherly love, God himself has taught them to love one another, and they already practice it toward all the brothers across Macedonia; Paul encourages them to do so more. He asks them to aspire to live quietly, to mind their own affairs and to work with their hands, so that they walk properly before outsiders and depend on no one.
He then addresses the death of believers: he does not want them to be uninformed about those who are asleep, so that they do not grieve as others do who have no hope. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, God will also bring with him those who have fallen asleep in him. By the word of the Lord, those who are alive and remain until his coming will not precede those who have fallen asleep. The Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven; the dead in Christ will rise first, then the living will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so they will always be with the Lord. Paul ends by asking them to encourage one another with these words.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
God's will is their sanctification, beginning with abstaining from sexual immorality. Paul does not present holiness as an extra burden, but as the purpose for which God called his people.
Paul does not want them uninformed about those who have died, so that they do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. Because Jesus died and rose, God will bring with him those who died in him. The Christian does weep, but with hope.
The Lord will descend from heaven with a cry of command, the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God; the dead in Christ will rise first and then the living will be caught up with them to meet the Lord. The passage announces the outcome, being with the Lord forever, more than a timetable.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: Their sanctification: that they abstain from sexual immorality. — 1 Thessalonians 4:3
Answer: Not to impurity, but to holiness. — 1 Thessalonians 4:7
Answer: Live quietly, mind their own affairs and work with their hands. — 1 Thessalonians 4:11
Answer: Because they believe Jesus died and rose again, and that God will bring with him those who fell asleep in him. — 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Answer: The dead in Christ. — 1 Thessalonians 4:16
Answer: Encourage one another with them. — 1 Thessalonians 4:18
The first half of the chapter invites us to a simple and faithful life: purity in private, concrete love toward fellow believers and responsible work. In a youth or adult group you can talk about how to cultivate purity without shame or legalism, and what it means in practice not to be a burden on others and to mind your own affairs.
The second half is comfort for grief. Christians weep, but not as those without hope. A good application is to visit someone who has lost a loved one and share these words gently, without getting into arguments about dates or end-times charts.
Paul comforts the Thessalonians with the hope of meeting the Lord. In chapter 5 he continues with the same theme, the day of the Lord, but applies it to watchfulness, encouragement and the daily life of the community.
It is the moment when living believers will be caught up in the clouds together with the resurrected to meet the Lord. Christians understand it in different ways: some believe it happens before a period of great tribulation, others that it happens at Christ's final coming, and others see a single return in which believers go out to meet the Lord like a delegation welcoming a king and escorting him. All agree on the hope: to be with the Lord forever.
Sleep is an image the Bible uses for the death of a believer, which is not final because they will awake at the resurrection. Paul does not detail here the state of the dead before that day; his purpose is to comfort mourners with the assurance that Jesus has already risen and that his people will follow him.
The Greek word can refer to one's own body or to one's wife. Those who read it as body speak of self-control in sexual matters; those who read it as wife speak of living marriage with respect. In both readings Paul asks for holiness and honor, not the passion of those who do not know God.