Sunday Explanatory Notes: 1 Thessalonians 5

It's a little funny to me that the first whole book of explanatory notes I finish would be 1 Thessalonians. I spent lots of time on Hebrews, but still lack three chapters. I spent a while on Philippians, but lack about a chapter. I have most of Galatians. But the one I actually finish first proves to be 1 Thessalonians. Oh well.

Here are the links to earlier chapters, and I suppose I'll eventually put the whole thing on my archive site.

1 Thessalonians 1
1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:13
1 Thessalonians 4

And now, 1 Thessalonians 5:
_________
5:1-2 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you do not have need to write to you for you yourselves know accurately that the Day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.
After writing of the nature of the resurrection of the dead corpses of believers in 4:13-18, Paul proceeds to discuss the timing of the Lord Jesus' arrival, as well as readiness for living believers. The Day of the Lord, of his parousia, his return from heaven and the Day of Judgment, will come without clear warning. It will come like a thief.

A thief does not announce his (or in theory her) arrival. Similarly, the Lord's arrival will not come on any precise schedule that believers might know or find out.

The fact that the Thessalonians do know these things accurately confirms our initial hunch that Paul's preaching in Thessalonica focused on the arrival of Christ to judge the world and save those who believe. He did not teach about resurrection because of the imminence of Christ's return.

5:3 Whenever they say, "Peace and security," then suddenly destruction comes to them as birth pain to a woman having in the womb and they will never escape.
The Day of the Lord for Paul, as we might expect from the Old Testament usage, refers to the arrival of Christ in his judging role. Those who think they are okay and that they are accountable to no one are in for a rude awakening. They may think they are safe from judgment on their wrongdoing, but they will not escape judgment.

The image of birth pain is particularly interesting. On the one hand, a woman does not know exactly when labor will begin. This part of the metaphor fits well with the thief in the night image of the previous verses. On the other hand, a woman does know she is pregnant. It is not clear that Paul wished the Thessalonians to follow through with this potentiality of the metaphor, namely, that one might know that the child is coming at any time.

In any case, 2 Thessalonians explores the opposite angle on the Day of the Lord, namely, certain general indications that the Day is near.

5:4-5 But you yourselves, brothers, you are not in darkness so that the Day should overtake you as a thief, for you yourselves all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.
Those who are destined for judgment will experience the coming of the Day like a thief, a bad event that takes place at night when it is dark. Paul now shifts his metaphor somewhat and now distinguishes the audience from those for whom the suddenness will not be a pleasant surprise.

The image of the elect as sons of light versus outsiders as sons of darkness is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and so would seem to be an apocalyptic Jewish image. The Day should not be like the coming of a thief for the audience for they are waiting for the arrival and are ready for it, whenever it will come.

5:6-7 Therefore, let us thus not sleep as the rest but let us be awake and let us be sober, for those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are drunk at night.
So while those destined for judgment are asleep and not expecting the thief, believers are awake and are sober. They have not passed out after a night of drunken revelry, but are awake and ready, as if it were day.

5:8 But since we are of the day let us be sober, being clothed with the breastplate of faith and love and as a helmet, the hope of salvation,
The idea of Christian armor appears in its fullest form in Ephesians 6, but here we find an earlier form of it. In Ephesians, of course, it is a breastplate of righteousness, but the helmet is also one of salvation. Ephesians thus corresponds more closely to Isaiah 59:17, from which the image originally comes, although it is applied to God there (see also Wisdom 5:18). Paul will expand on the triad of faith, hope, and love in 1 Corinthians 13.

We hope for salvation because, as we have already seen, salvation is predominantly future oriented for Paul. It is on the Day of Wrath that believers are saved from that wrath.

5:9-10 ... because God has not appointed us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or are sleeping, we might live together with him.
This verse confirms the future orientation of salvation for Paul. When the Day of the Lord comes, believers will not experience God's wrath in judgment but salvation from that wrath. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ has made this salvation possible. Here are the very deeply ingrained assumptions about sacrifice and the wrath of gods. Christ's death accomplishes this "deep magic" of reconciliation to God and avoidance of God's wrath.

Thus far in chapter 5, Paul has used the imagery of being awake or being asleep in reference to readiness for Christ's return, and he has in fact used a different word for sleep than he did in the last part of chapter 4. But as Paul closes out this section on the arrival of Christ, he returns to the theme with which he began the section, namely, those who die before the parousia.

In an inclusio, he changes to speak of those who sleep in reference to those who die before Christ's return (although he uses the word for sleep he has used in chapter 5 rather than the one he had used in chapter 4). Whether we are alive at his return or whether we are sleeping, dead, at his arrival, we will live with him then.

5:11 Therefore, admonish one another and build each other up, each one the other, just as you are even doing.
Paul ended the first half of his discussion of the arrival in 4:18 with an admonition for the Thessalonians to encourage one another with these truths. He ends the second half of the discussion with a similar admonition. In this case, however, the Thessalonians already had an accurate understanding, so he can simply encourage them to continue what they have already been doing.

5:12-13 Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and care for you in the Lord and instruct you. Regard them with the greatest respect in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.
These verses begin the closing of the letter. He will make some final exhortations and greetings and then close it.

This verse apparently indicates that the community had Christian leaders, perhaps some sort of group of elders, who would of course literally be older members of the Christian assembly. These individuals were apparently responsible for Christian instruction and were thought to hold spiritual authority. The admonition for the audience to be at peace, in this context, perhaps refers particularly to peace between these leaders and the rest of the assembly, a relationship in which the potential for conflict is not unfamiliar to us today.

5:14 And we admonish you, brothers, instruct the lazy. Encourage the discouraged. Help the weak. Be patient with all people.
The issue of certain lazy at Thessalonica is taken up particularly in 2 Thessalonians 3. But we should be careful not to overread this comment in the light of 2 Thessalonians. Paul does not clearly have specific individuals in mind here. In any collection of people, we can expect there to be some who do not do their share.

The other admonitions are similarly general. Christians encourage people who are discouraged. They help those who are not able to help themselves. Christians are patient with others. These are all manifestations of Christian love, the fundamental Christian virtue in Paul's thought as far as human relationships.

5:15 Look that someone does not repay someone with evil for evil, but always pursue the good toward one another and toward all people.
The similarity of this comment to Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is often noticed (e.g., Matt. 5:38-48). Clearly the death and resurrection of Jesus were far more important for Paul than any teaching Jesus did on earth. Nevertheless, Paul does occasionally show that he knows some of Jesus' earthly teachings, and this is one such case.

This admonition once again reflects the fundamental Pauline ethic of love toward one's neighbor. Vengeance for wrongdoing is God's business, not a believer's concern. The believer must pursue reconciliation even with those who wrong him or her. They pursue the good not only toward one another within the fellowship of the Christian assembly, but also toward all people who are not believers.

5:16-18 Always rejoice. Be praying constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
This series of admonitions have to do with the believer's attitude. A believer should be a person with a positive attitude, someone who rejoices and gives thanks. The mention of frequent prayer appears in this context of giving thanks to God for the things that happen to you. Paul punctuates these exhortations by noting it is not just him saying them but in fact that this attitude is the will of God, manifested in what he did through Jesus the Messiah.

5:19-22 Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecy. Test all things. Hold fast to the good. Stay away from every form of evil.
The next series has to do with interaction with the spiritual realm. As much as some might like to see Paul as a heady thinker, his ministry was filled with what we today would consider charismatic ministry. He performed miracles. Signs followed him. Although we have no reason to think that tongues played much of a role in his ministry (he only mentions them in 1 Corinthians 12-14, where they are presenting a problem in Corinthian worship), he seems to consider prophecy a regular feature of early Christian worship.

Any individual in the church (including women, as we find in 1 Corinthians 11) may have a word of prophecy. Leaders are not to squelch the possible speaking of the Spirit through anyone. At the same time, they are not to follow the prophecy simply because someone thinks they have a word from God. Such messages must be tested, as Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 14:32 and 1 John 4:1 also indicates.

After the testing of the prophecy, they should cling to what is proven to be good, but stay away from anything bad. Indeed, they are to avoid evil in any form it might take.

5:23-24 Now may the God of peace himself make you thoroughly holy, and may your entire spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One calling you is faithful, who also will do [it].
The rapid fire of brief admonitions in the closing section come to a close, and Paul begins his closing greeting and farewell. 5:23 is a wish for the audience to be thoroughly blameless before God. He wishes the entire assembly of believers to be completely set apart to God as God's in every part of their being and thus be at peace with the God of peace and reconciliation.

We read verses such as this one in context when we do not overread them or take comments down paths that were never the real point. For example, the image is primarily corporate rather than individual in focus. Paul's wish is for the entire assembly collectively to be blameless before God when the Lord arrives.

Further, blamelessness here is not a matter of not being able to do wrong, of never accidentally wronging another, or of having no imperfection. Blamelessness is a matter of doing what one knows is right under the assumption that one knows what is right. God's faithfulness includes His enablement to be blameless in this way (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:13).

Such blamelessness is essential if one is to be saved on the Day. The verb "to sanctify" or "make holy" is used parallel to "becoming blameless." Blamelessness does not exhaust the meaning of making holy, but it is clearly part of what is involved in becoming holy. Sanctification here presumably also involves purification from past sins.

We should not see in the mention of body, soul, and spirit some absolute statement of how God views the make-up of the human psyche. For one thing, this division of the human person is almost unique in the Bible (Heb. 4:12 comes close). The Old Testament and much of the New Testament does not use the word soul (psyche) in relation to a component or part of a person but rather to an entire, living being. Spirit (pneuma), breath, is much more often used in reference to the living part of a person that survives death.

But these are, in the end, simply expressions made from within the paradigms of the ancient world. They are the clothing of the message rather than the point of the message. To try to integrate such images with modern psychology would produce some very strange conceptualizations indeed.

5:25-26 Brothers, be praying for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.
The greeting of one another with a holy kiss indicates that believers are family to each other. And prayer for each other is a regular feature of Paul's own practice.

5:27-28 I adjure you by the Lord to read this letter to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you.
The letter, presumably first to be received by the leaders of the community, should then be read to the entire assembly, most of whom would be illiterate. We do not know who Paul planned to have deliever the letter, but the fact that Timothy had made a first trip makes it not unlikely that he might take another trip with this letter.

Paul then closes with a characteristic ending for him, the wish that God's graciousness be with them in their continued pilgrimage until he saw them or wrote to them again.