Theopedia

First Epistle to the Thessalonians

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command… and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

— 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (ESV)

Overview

1 Thessalonians is a letter from the apostle Paul to the young church he had recently planted in Thessalonica, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia.1 Paul wrote to encourage believers facing persecution, to answer a question that had troubled them about Christians who had already died before Christ’s return, and to press them further toward holy living.2

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Author and Date

The letter names Paul, together with Silvanus (Silas) and Timothy, as its senders (1 Thess. 1:1). Silas traveled with Paul only during his second missionary journey, and the letter’s own reference to Timothy’s report from Macedonia matches that same journey’s events at Corinth, where Paul was staying when Silas and Timothy rejoined him.2 On these grounds 1 Thessalonians is usually reckoned the earliest, or among the earliest, of Paul’s letters, written from Corinth around AD 53.2

Historical and Literary Context

Paul’s stay in Thessalonica had been brief, cut short when opposition from the local synagogue forced him to leave for Berea by night (Acts 17:1-10). He remained anxious for the young church he had left behind, since its converts were undergoing a severe trial through persecution.1 Twice hindered from returning himself, Paul sent Timothy to learn how the Thessalonians were faring; Timothy’s good report, brought back while Paul was at Corinth, is what occasioned the letter.1 Paul’s gratitude for their faith, love, and patient endurance under trial runs through the opening chapters, alongside a defense of his own conduct and motives while he was among them, before he turns to the questions and misunderstandings the young church had developed in his absence.1

Structure

  1. Paul’s ministry among the Thessalonians and thanksgiving for their faith (1:1-3:13)
  2. Exhortation to holy living (4:1-12)
  3. The return of Christ and the fate of believers who have died (4:13-5:11)
  4. Final exhortations (5:12-28)

Major Themes

Comfort for grieving believers regarding the dead in Christ. Some in Thessalonica feared that believers who died before Christ’s return would miss out on the blessing of that day. Paul answers that at the Lord’s coming “the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16), and gives this assurance so that the church would not “sorrow as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). Boettner ties this directly to how a Christian should grieve a believing loved one: Scripture’s teaching on the matter is “clear enough,” and Paul’s purpose in writing was that the Thessalonians not sorrow as those without hope, since the loss is the mourner’s own, not the departed believer’s.3

The Day of the Lord’s suddenness. Paul tells the Thessalonians they have no need of instruction about “the times and the seasons,” because they already know that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2). Hodge reads this as Paul correcting an overrealized expectation: though the day of deliverance was certain, it was not imminent in the sense some supposed, and much remained to occur before it arrived.4 Bavinck likewise places this verse among the texts in which “all the apostles echo” Christ’s own teaching that the timing of his return is deliberately hidden, coming without warning like a thief.5

Sanctification and holy living. Paul grounds the call to holiness in God’s own will: “this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4:3). Magnuson notes that Paul singles out sexual purity for a congregation he elsewhere holds up as an example to others (1 Thess. 1:2-10), even though God’s will and the believer’s sanctification plainly extend further than that one point.6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 472-473. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Barrows, 473. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Loraine Boettner, Immortality (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1956), chap. 1, sec. 10, “Christians Not to Sorrow As Those Who Have No Hope”: “That this is the teaching set forth in Scripture is clear enough. Writing to the Thessalonians Paul said: ‘But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope,’ I Thess. 4:13… But we rejoice that they have gone to the heavenly home. The loss is ours, not theirs.” ↩

  4. Charles Hodge, “Second Advent,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 811. ↩

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 24, “The Return of Christ”: “All the apostles echo this language: Christ comes like a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5:1-2; 2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 3:3; 16:15).” ↩

  6. Ken Magnuson, “6. Sexual Ethics,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020). ↩