WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 3/26/06

1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 “To Live With Him”

We’re thinking for a few weeks about what it means to live in this “already/not yet” period in which the Age to Come and the Present Age overlap – the time between the First and Second Comings of Christ. We live in the light of all that he did to achieve our salvation in his cross and resurrection, but still as people in whom the battle of good and evil is not finally resolved. We live “in view of his appearing” in power and glory, bringing salvation and judgment in the future.

The confusion of living in two ages, already “saved” but not yet holy, leaves us in need of the Spirit and the Word to make sense of our lives and our world. We talked last week about the perspective on Truth that ought to be part of our new life. Today we look at one of the letters in which the Apostle Paul wrestles with how to think about Death as we live in the “already but not yet.”

1) People Are Dying

Paul’s letters to the church in the Greek city of Thessalonica were occasioned, among other things, by concern among the new Christians there that some of them were dying. They had come to believe, perhaps because Paul had initially taught it, that the Second Coming of Jesus would occur very soon – in their lifetimes. What then about people who died? Would they miss it? Or was it even possible that it had already occurred and they had all missed it?

This is, you will recognize, one of Paul’s earliest letters to the churches, when these issues were still being sorted out. I Thessalonians may be one of the earliest NT writings, probably from around 50 AD – during the period covered by the book of Acts – with Paul apparently in Corinth, responding to news just brought to him from Thessalonica by Timothy. If this is true, then only a few months have elapsed since Paul founded the church in Thessalonica, having spent only a month or two preaching and teaching there. The questions are all very new and fresh.

What to think about people who have died? It was a question then; it still is. What does Christian faith tell us about life after death? The 1^st C world mostly thought of a shadowy place for departed souls; some believed the soul was immortal and was freed from the burden of the body at death. Even Jewish thought was divided over whether there was life to come, and for whom. Overall there was little to hold onto about the afterlife. But Christian writers, including Paul and echoing Jesus, make abundantly clear that there is another life. It is a life with different phases – one during the present time of overlap of the two ages, another when the Age to Come is finally established.

Remember that the NT says very little about the condition of those who die without faith in God until the end of the Present Age. But for those who do have faith, there are several things to say. Paul here describes them as having “fallen asleep.” That is a euphemism, perhaps; but it also points to a specifically Christian understanding of death for believers – that it is temporary, that it is peaceful, and that people can be “awoken” from it. Elsewhere Paul describes this state as being “with the Lord,” “with Christ,” and he echoes Jesus’ own words about “going to prepare a place for you, so that you can be with me,” or of telling the thief on the cross that “today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The Christian belief is that those who have faith in Christ are with him after death. What their exact condition is - what they know, how far they are reunited with their loved ones, and so on - are not explicitly answered. The metaphor of “sleep” could point to a less-than-fully-conscious existence, but we know that they are “with Christ.” Paul and others say without hesitation that this is a “better” place to be than here!

2) At His Appearing

But the NT also makes clear that this is not the end of the story. The great Day of the Lord, which brings the Present Age to an end, will change the state of the living and the dead. With the Second Coming of Christ - his “Appearing” - come also the Resurrection of the dead and the Judgment. The guarantee of this, and the image of what it will mean, is provided by Jesus’ own resurrection.

Believers will be given “new bodies” so that their “sleeping” souls (or spirits) are “re-clothed” and made ready for the life of the Age to Come. Even as Jesus was recognizably the same person but changed after his resurrection, so will be those who have entrusted themselves to him in faith. “We shall be changed,” as Paul says, “putting on immortality and imperishability.” And in the Judgment, those who have trusted themselves to Christ will be saved from the wrath of God; whereas those who have rejected him will be resurrected to judgment and punishment. So evil will be purged from the presence of God, and the Age to Come will be one of peace and righteousness for those who “live with God.”

How will all this come about? Is it possible to miss it? The NT answer, starting from Jesus, is that nobody will miss it. He will come in power and glory, with the voice of the angels and the trumpet call of God, and everyone will hear his call – the living and the dead. Nobody knows when this will occur, but it will be no secret.

(At this point I have to mention the words in this passage that are foundational for those who teach - as J. N. Darby, the Scofield Reference Bible, and the Left Behind series have done - that true believers will be taken out of the world in a “secret rapture.” Paul says “we who are alive... will be caught up in the clouds ... to meet the Lord in the air.” Being “caught up” is the expression that is often called “the rapture,” and it is said that at this point true believers will be taken away secretly into heaven. It’s only fair to point out that not all scholars think this verse supports such an idea; for example, the expression “to meet the Lord” is just the one used in Greek to describe people going out to welcome an important person on their arrival – it was used in Acts 28 to say how the Christians in Rome went out to welcome Paul as he neared the city, or in Jesus’ parable of the wise virgins who went out at midnight to meet the bridegroom (Mt 25). Here it may well mean no more than that Christians will greet the Lord at his Second Coming. And it has to be said that this whole passage hardly speaks of a secret event!).

Be all that as it may, it’s clear that Paul wants believers in Christ to understand that the Day of the Lord will be a joyous one, where salvation will be completed, and those alive and dead will be re-united in the presence of the Lord to live with him forever.

3) Death Now

How should all this affect the way Christians live and die in these days of “already/not yet”? First, says Paul, when someone dies, Christians should not grieve as those without hope grieve. Of course we grieve; the pain of loss and separation are real, and grieving is a part of dealing with that pain, and it takes time. It is helped by the love and concern of other people, but in important ways it has to be born alone – but always with God’s help! But we should not grieve like those who have no hope for the future. The Christian hope is that God never leaves us, and that we will all be united in the presence of Christ, freed from the penalty and power of sin, re-clothed in a resurrection body, and made immortal and imperishable. If you have ever thought about this, you have probably asked yourself “What age will our resurrected bodies resemble?” Will we be like 25 year-olds, or 40-year olds, or what? What would a perfected body be like? There are days when some of us can hardly wait to find out!

We should live and die, and comfort others as they die, as people of hope, as people of faith, as people of love. We should, by the grace and power of God, be alert to the work of God in us and in the world. We should not live as though we were in the dark about everything – because we are sons and daughters “of the light, of the day.” Jesus has overcome death, and for the Christian it is no longer the great horror, the end of everything, the worst thing in the world. He has paid “the wages of sin” for us, and we are now guaranteed that we will always live with him if we put our trust in him now.

That means looking beyond the narrow limits of life that unbelievers experience. We live in a culture that fears death, that does all in its power to delay it, and to disguise it. We encourage the medical profession to extend life to its uttermost limits, past the point where many people want to live. We fantasize and invest in treatments and research that promise to extend lifespan to 120 years or more. We deal with our dead quickly, embalm them so they look good, surround them with soft cushions and flowers and mementoes, and bury them in shiny steel caskets that look as though they are designed to last forever.

On the other extreme, we make death a subject for entertainment, with an abundance of violence in our TV shows and movies. Rarely do the gunshots and wounds cause pain; victims are just “blown away” as though they were simply graphic images in a video game. But there is also a strange and growing taste for images of autopsies, or of graphic depictions of how violence destroys internal organs. Are we trying to tame death? To make it less threatening? Are we morbidly interested in it? Is this “living in the dark”?

Is it possible today to “live in the light,” to be realistic about death, to accept that there are worse things – like being kept “alive” by machines? In our world, are there still things worth dying for? Is there any meaning to all the frenzied activity that we call “life”? Or is it all meaningless, and death is just the end? Should we “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”? Here is the great battle for the modern soul between those who believe and those who do not. If death is the end of life and the start of irreversible decay, then how can anything we do really matter? Enjoy life for the moment, get what you can while you can; as the bumper stickers said in the booming 90s, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” “Vanity of vanities,” said the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes: all our labor and toil, all our projects, all our pleasures are meaningless, a “chasing after the wind.” Death overtakes us all, and who knows what fools may inherit all we have labored for?

But what if that’s wrong? What if the truth is that there will be a Day when every small act that has been done here will be shown to have enormous importance? When those who gave “a cup of cold water” to someone in need will be remembered and rewarded eternally? If this is true, then we have to live in its light, live in view of the appearing of the one who will judge and reward. We have to be alert to God’s gifts, to God’s call, to God’s grace. We have to live with self-control and clear minds. We have to live as people marked conspicuously and indelibly by faith, by love, by hope.

Our hope is in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has promised that those who love him and trust him will live with him forever. “Encourage one another, and build one another up, with these words.”

Let us pray...