1 Thessalonians 4

This is the fourth of the five chapters of 1 Thessalonians. Through 1 Thessalonians 3, Paul expresses his thanksgiving for the church and recounts the news brought back by Timothy. Beginning with the opening word of chapter 4, rendered "Furthermore" in the KJV (in the sense of "finally"), the letter turns to exhortations about Christian conduct.

Outline

• Verses 1–2 Paul urges the believers to walk according to the instruction they have already received and to abound more and more in pleasing God.
• Verses 3–8 He declares that the will of God is their sanctification. They are to abstain from fornication, not to pursue lust as the Gentiles do, and not to wrong a brother in this matter. He warns that whoever rejects this teaching rejects God, who has given the Holy Spirit.
• Verses 9–10 He acknowledges that the believers love all the brethren throughout Macedonia and urges them to increase in that love still more.
• Verses 11–12 He tells them to live quietly, to do their own business, and to work with their own hands, so that they may walk honestly toward those outside the church and lack nothing.
• Verses 13–14 He tells them not to grieve over believers who have already died, "them which are asleep," as others who have no hope. Just as Jesus died and rose again, God will bring them with Jesus.
• Verses 15–17 He states that the Lord will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. Then the dead in Christ will rise first, and those who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
• Verse 18 He concludes by telling them to comfort one another with these words.

Key Verses

• 1 Thessalonians 4:3 "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification": frequently cited in discussions of sanctification.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:14 "Even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him": grounds the believer's hope of resurrection in the resurrection of Jesus.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:17 "Caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air": the principal text from which the term rapture derives.

People and Places

• Paul: the apostle who wrote the letter. According to 1:1, he sent it together with Silvanus and Timothy.
• Thessalonica: the city in which the church that received the letter was located.
• Macedonia: the Roman province (an administrative region) to which Thessalonica belonged.
• The archangel: mentioned in verse 16, though he is not named.

Interpretive Considerations

• "Vessel" in verse 4: The Korean Bible renders this word as "wife," but the original word means "vessel" (KJV: "his vessel"). Two interpretations have long existed side by side: one takes it to mean a wife, the other one's own body.
• The timing of the rapture: Dispensational premillennialism sees verses 16–17 as the basis for a pretribulation rapture, in which the saints are caught up before the Second Coming. Historic premillennialism, amillennialism, and other views read the passage as describing one and the same event as the Second Coming. Interpreters holding these views sometimes understand "to meet" in light of the custom of going out beyond the city to greet an honored guest and then escorting him back in. The text itself says nothing about a seven-year tribulation or the timing of the rapture.
• "Them which sleep": Most denominations understand this as a gentle euphemism for death. The Seventh-day Adventist Church cites it as one basis for its teaching that the dead remain in an unconscious state until the resurrection.
• Related passages: The trumpet and the resurrection of the dead connect with 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 and Matthew 24:30–31. The teaching on the times of the day of the Lord continues in 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11. The exhortation to work is taken up again in 2 Thessalonians 3.

In the Korean Church

Verses 13–18 are frequently read at funeral services and graveside committal services. Around 1992, when a date-setting end-times movement that predicted the day of the rapture became a social problem in Korea, this passage was also cited as the movement's principal basis.