Rhetorically, the fact that the Lord made this pronouncement makes it even more comforting. What isn’t specified in the gospel account is that the dead believers precede the living ones, so Paul seems to be referring to a general discussion of Jesus some details of which he knows and presents to his congregation, either because those details were not recorded in the gospel accounts or because they were directly revealed to Paul. There Jesus describes the Son of Man returning in the clouds and the angels gathering the elect from the four corners of the earth to meet him. The closest “word of the Lord” is that preserved in Mark 13:26–27 and its parallel Matthew 24:30-31. Paul’s confidence on this matter rests on a word of the Lord, a prophetic phrase that in this instance seems to refer to the words of Jesus. Easter Sunday is not a one-time event, but the beginning of a universal restoration. Believing in Jesus’ resurrection entails within it a belief in the resurrection of his followers (Romans 8:11 1 Corinthians 15:12-13). Paul’s assertions here resonate with his arguments in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8. The sleeping loved ones who also believed in the death and resurrection of Christ are caught up into his eternal life. How will that be possible? Here you get a sense of Paul’s grasping of ideas with the multiple prepositions he employs: it will be through Jesus and also with Jesus. Paul says that if you believe that Jesus died and was raised (the basic Christian affirmation the Thessalonians had accepted), then you can also believe that God will raise our loved ones. Nevertheless, that grief should not have the final word. This is not to say that any grieving is inappropriate, for Jesus provides the example (John 11:35). Not so for followers of Jesus, Paul says. If this life is all one has, its end in death produces considerable grief. Gentile culture, while varied in its beliefs on the afterlife, not only balked at bodily resurrection but also lacked hope for any kind of meaningful and lasting reunion once a friend or family member died. Unlike others around them, the Thessalonians should not be grieving deaths in their community without hope. Now he has to assure them that their friends and loved ones haven’t missed out on the great event they are all anticipating, the return of the Lord (1:3, 10 2:19 3:13). He hadn’t covered that particular situation since he believed that Jesus’ return was rather imminent. ![]() ![]() ![]() It seems that, since Paul’s departure, some among their community of believers had died. These include issues of eschatology, or what happens at the end of life and at the end of time. Writing to a congregation of Gentile converts not long after he introduced them to the faith, Paul clarifies his teachings on a few points where the Thessalonians still remained cloudy.
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