Verse 14
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him
Christ’s resurrection and ours
I.
The event predicted. “Will God bring with Him.”
1. This is affirmed to meet the fear that God could not do so. The ground of their sorrow was that their departed friends would be deprived of the glories of Christ’s advent, which was thought to be near. Paul now assures them that the dead will share it as powerfully as the living.
2. The Thessalonians thus believed in Christ’s second coming. This was a subject often on our Lord’s lips, and is a prominent feature in this Epistle. It is kept in the background by many Christians to their disadvantage. Frequent thought about it is requisite to spirituality of mind. Paul says, “Our conversation is in heaven,” and his reason is “from whence also we look for the Saviour.” Heavenly mindedness is the drawing of self to Christ.
3. If God brings departed saints with Him, they are with Him now, otherwise He could not bring them. They are “the general assembly of the first born;” “Spirits of just men made perfect;” “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” The New Testament again and again asserts that the saints after death go direct into God’s presence.
4. When departed spirits are brought by God they will know one another. It is amazing to suppose that we should know each other on earth and not in heaven; that we should have a less amount of perception as to each other’s character and identity there than here. If this be admitted the passage which was intended to comfort is a mockery. How could the Thessalonians be comforted by the coming of their deceased friends if they were not to know them? Read 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20. How could Paul’s converts be his crown of rejoicing if he was not to know them? The same doctrine is proved from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and from the appearance of Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration.
II. Its certainty.
1. If we believe that Christ died and rose again it follows as a necessary consequence that those who sleep in Him He will bring with Him. Observe how everything is based on the death and resurrection of Christ; and in view of that it is no wonder that the first preachers were selected because they were witnesses of the resurrection.
(1) The object of Christ’s death was “to redeem unto Himself a peculiar people.” When God speaks of the results of that death as to its primary purpose, He says, “He shall see His seed;” “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.”
(2) The object of the resurrection was to be the guarantee that the work of redemption was accomplished, and to be the first fruits of its accomplishment; to be followed by its proper results, a harvest. So that if we believe these two facts, i.e., that Christ finished the whole work that the Father gave Him to do, we must believe that the Father will fulfil His covenant part of the transaction and give to Christ the seed, and that the seed shall be perfected and glorified. To this it is necessary that He should bring the spirits of the saints to meet their bodies, which is the assertion of Paul here.
2. It follows, also, that the Church being thus perfected in herself must also be perfected in her circumstances. “Father I will also that those whom Thou gavest Me be with Me,” etc. (1 Thessalonians 2:17).
III. Its object and purpose. The reunion of the saints--
1. With their bodies.
2. With their friends.
3. With Christ, body and soul.
Conclusion: The passage is full of comfort, but there is a tremendous limitation in it. It refers exclusively to those who sleep in Christ and those who are living in Him when He comes. Are you “in Christ”? (C. Molyneux, M. A.)
Christ’s resurrection the pledge of ours
At our birth our bodies became a battleground between life and death. During the first ten years death makes many conquests. At ten years death begins to fall back. At twenty, life is triumphant. At thirty, life foresees the future. At forty, the battle is hot. At fifty, death inflicts some wounds, and life begins an orderly retreat. At sixty, life feels her strength failing. At seventy, the retreat becomes a rout. At eighty, death waves the black flag and cries, “No quarter!” This is no fancy picture; it is no preacher’s dream; it is a fact undeniable, inevitable, universal! Indifference cannot affect its certainty, and scepticism cannot refute its truth. There is only one other fact with which we can confront this fact of death, and that is the resurrection of Jesus. Here fact meets fact. That is what we demand. We want a fact, a case, an instance, one single instance of resurrection. Once a sea captain found his crew on shore apparently dead. The surgeon took one of the men and applied remedies, and the poisoned man stood on his feet. The captain shouted with joy, for in that one risen man he saw the possibility to save them all. So Christ brings life and immortality to light. His resurrection is not metaphysics, but history. Not speculation for the future, but a fact of the past. Not a problem to be solved, but the solution of all problems. (R. S. Barrett.)
The certainty and blessedness of the resurrection of true Christians
I. What is meant by those that sleep in Jesus.
1. Sleep is a metaphor used by sacred and profane writers. The ancient Christians called their place of burial Koimetrion “sleeping place.” The figure is applied to the death of the wicked, but more frequently to that of the righteous (Isaiah 57:2). Fitly is death so called as signifying rest (Revelation 14:13), and as preparatory to waking.
2. Death is called a sleeping “in Jesus” in conformity with 1 Corinthians 15:18; 1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; Hebrews 11:13. To sleep in Christ, to be Christ’s, to die in Christ, to die in the faith, all mean the same; to die in the state of true Christians as to be “in Christ” (John 15:4; Romans 13:1), means to be a Christian. And it is observable that we share all Christ’s acts--die, rise, ascend, etc. with Him.
3. Some think that this is the sleep of the soul, but, on the contrary, Scripture applies the figure invariably to the body (Daniel 12:2; Matthew 27:52; Acts 13:36); and it is inconsistent with those passages which clearly affirm the soul to be awake (Luke 16:22-23; Luke 23:43; Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 5:6).
II. What is meant by God’s bringing with Him them that sleep in Jesus.
1. The death and resurrection of Christ are an argument and proof of ours. Christ’s death is mentioned as part of the argument because the truth of the miracle of the resurrection depends upon it. If Christ did not die He could not have risen. The resurrection is shown in 1 Corinthians 15:20 to be the pledge and first fruits of ours. And that Christ intended to lay great stress upon this argument, appears in that He foretold it so often as the great sign He would give to the Jews to confute their infidelity (John 2:18-19; Matthew 12:39-40). Christ’s resurrection gives us satisfaction in general of immortality, and then of His power to raise us because He raised Himself. And then it assures us of His truth and fidelity that He will perform what He promised. He could not have promised anything more improbable than His own resurrection; and, therefore, since He kept His word in this, there is no reason to distrust Him in anything else that He has promised (Revelation 1:18; Revelation 3:14).
2. Wherein the blessedness of the just shall consist.
(1) In the mighty change which shall be made in our bodies and the glorious qualities with which they shall be invested.
(a) “Equal to the angels” in immortal duration, and “children of God” in the perfect possession of His happiness (Luke 20:35-36).
(b) Fashioned like unto the glorious body of Christ (Philippians 4:20).
(c) 1 Corinthians 15:35, etc.).
(2) In the consequent happiness of the whole man, the body purified from frailty and corruption, and the soul from sin, and both admitted to the sight and enjoyment of the ever-blessed God (Revelation 21:2-4; Revelation 21:27; Revelation 22:3-4). (Abp. Tillotson.)
The dead Christ and sleeping Christians
I. Jesus died that we might sleep. The thought is that He, though sinless, died like a sinner. He took the place of a sinner; was treated as a sinner as far as possible without sinning. He became what we sinners are, that we, the sinners, as far as possible, might become what He, the Righteous, is. Jesus died, then; His disciples sleep. Jesus spake of Lazarus sleeping, but never referred to His own death as sleep: that was not sleep, but death in its utter awfulness. The sting of death, He felt it; the victory of death, He yielded to it; the curse of death, He bore it; the desolation of death, He endured it; the darkness of death, He dreaded it. “O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?” were not words of our blessed Saviour, though they may be of the blessed dead.
II. If we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, we may also believe that those who sleep in Jesus, God will bring with Him. So far as we loved them, we may love them as ever, as we shall yet behold them perfect in Jesus, without a semblance of sin, pure as He is pure. When He died, His sorrows were over, His work was done. And observe a remarkable fact--the body of the Redeemer was preserved from every indignity after the spirit had departed. Up to the moment of His death, He was subjected to every outrage. He was like the sinner; He was acting for the sinner; He was suffering for the sinner; and, while He was a consenting party, every indignity was heaped upon Him. But from the moment His spirit left His body, every honour was done to Him. His body, after His resurrection, was very unlike His body previously--it was “a spiritual body,” invisible, and passing when and where it would and doing what it would. That body will be the model of our bodies; and the prime thought of St. Paul is--He will bring our friends to us again, and we shall know them, and be with them forever with the Lord. (A. Lind, D. D.)
Resting on God’s Word
A pastor in visiting a member of his church found her very sick, apparently dying. He said to her: “Mrs. M., you seem to be very sick.” “Yes,” said she, “I am dying.” “And are you ready to die?” She lifted her eyes upon him with a solemn and fixed gaze, and, speaking with great difficulty, she replied: “Sir, God knows--I have taken Him--at His word--and--I am not afraid to die.” It was a new definition of faith. “I have taken Him at His word,” What a triumph of faith! What else could she have said that would have expressed so much in so few words?
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