1 Thessalonians 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul urges the Thessalonian believers to keep growing in the way of life he taught them: staying away from sexual sin, treating their own bodies with holiness and honor, not cheating fellow believers, loving one another more and more, and living quietly by their own work. He then answers a concern about believers who have died, saying they will not be left behind. He describes the Lord coming down from heaven with a shout, the trumpet of God, and the voice of the archangel; the dead who belong to Christ rise first, and the living are caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. He tells the readers to encourage one another with these words.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • The writers address the recipients as brothers.
   • The writers ask the recipients.
   • The writers exhort the recipients by the Lord Jesus.
   • The recipients received from the writers how they ought to walk and to please God.
   • The writers ask that the recipients abound more and more in this.
2. 4:2
   • The recipients know what commandments the writers gave them.
   • The writers gave those commandments by the Lord Jesus.
3. 4:3
   • This is the will of God: the recipients' sanctification.
   • God's will is that the recipients abstain from sexual immorality.
4. 4:4
   • Each one of the recipients should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor.
   • It is unclear whether the vessel a man is to possess means his own body or his wife.
5. 4:5
   • A man is not to possess his vessel in the passion of lust.
   • The Gentiles act in the passion of lust.
   • The Gentiles do not know God.
6. 4:6
   • No one is to overstep and defraud his brother in this matter.
   • The Lord is the avenger of all such things.
   • The writers had already told the recipients this beforehand.
   • The writers solemnly testified this to the recipients.
7. 4:7
   • God did not call us to uncleanness.
   • God called us to holiness.
8. 4:8
   • Therefore the one who rejects this does not reject a man.
   • The one who rejects this rejects God.
   • God gives his Holy Spirit to us.
9. 4:9
   • Concerning brotherly love, the recipients have no need that it be written to them.
   • The recipients themselves are taught by God to love one another.
10. 4:10
    • The recipients do this toward all the brothers in all Macedonia.
    • The writers beseech the recipients, called brothers, to increase more and more.
11. 4:11
    • The recipients are to make it their aim to be quiet.
    • The recipients are to do their own business.
    • The recipients are to work with their own hands.
    • The writers had commanded the recipients this.
12. 4:12
    • The purpose is that the recipients walk becomingly toward those outside.
    • The purpose is that the recipients lack nothing.
    • It is unclear whether they are to lack nothing or to be dependent on no one.
13. 4:13
    • The writers do not want the recipients, called brothers, to be ignorant concerning those who are asleep.
    • The purpose is that the recipients not sorrow as the rest do.
    • The rest have no hope.
14. 4:14
    • We believe that Jesus died.
    • We believe that Jesus rose again.
    • God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.
    • It is unclear whether 'through Jesus' describes those who fell asleep or how God will bring them.
15. 4:15
    • The writers say this to the recipients by the word of the Lord.
    • We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who are asleep.
16. 4:16
    • The Lord himself will descend from heaven.
    • He will descend with a shouted command.
    • He will descend with the voice of an archangel.
    • He will descend with the trumpet of God.
    • The dead in Christ will rise first.
17. 4:17
    • Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds.
    • We will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
    • So we shall always be with the Lord.
18. 4:18
    • The recipients are to comfort one another with these words.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

"Walk" is the King James rendering of a standard biblical idiom for the whole conduct of a life, not for physical walking. It appears again in verse 12. "Beseech" and "exhort" translate two verbs of urging; the second of them, parakaleo, is the same word translated "comfort" in verse 18.

4:2

The King James says "commandments." Here it means instructions for how to live, given by Jesus.

4:3

"Sanctification" translates a Greek word built on the root meaning set apart or made holy. The same root produces "sanctification" in verse 4 and "holiness" in verse 7, so one idea runs through the whole section, though the King James uses different English words for it. "Fornication" translates porneia, a broad Greek term covering sexual activity outside marriage of any kind. In modern English "fornication" has narrowed to sex between unmarried people; the Greek word is wider than that.

4:4

"Possess his vessel" is literally "acquire" or "gain control of his vessel," and readers have understood it two ways since antiquity. "Vessel" may be a figure for a person's own body, so the sense is self control; or it may mean a wife, as a term for the partner one takes, so the sense is marrying honorably rather than out of lust. The Greek allows both, and the verse does not settle it. The King James "honour" is the 1611 spelling of honor.

4:5

"Concupiscence" is a now obsolete English word for strong craving or desire, usually sexual. The phrase "the lust of concupiscence" translates a Greek pair meaning passion of desire, that is, craving allowed to drive behavior. "Gentiles" translates the Greek word for the nations, meaning everyone who is not Jewish. Paul is writing to non Jewish converts and still uses the word for the outside world they came from.

4:6

"Go beyond" translates a verb meaning to overstep a boundary, and "defraud" a verb meaning to take more than one's share at someone else's expense. "His brother" means a fellow member of the community, not a blood relative. The King James "in any matter" could also be translated "in this matter," since the Greek has the definite article. On the first reading the warning covers business dealings generally; on the second it is still about sexual conduct, and the wrong is against another man's marriage. Translators are divided.

4:7

"Uncleanness" translates a word for impurity that in Jewish usage covered both ritual defilement and moral corruption. Here it is set against "holiness," the state of being set apart, which continues the vocabulary of verses 3 and 4.

4:8

"Despiseth" does not mean hates or looks down on. In 1611 it carried the older sense of setting something aside or refusing it, and the Greek verb means to reject or disregard an instruction. The line is about brushing off the teaching, not about contempt for a person.

4:9

"Brotherly love" translates philadelphia, a single Greek word for the affection between members of one family. Early Christians borrowed it for the bond among members of a congregation, who addressed each other as brothers and sisters. "Taught of God" uses "of" in its older sense of by, so it means taught by God.

4:10

Macedonia was a Roman province covering the north of what is now Greece. Thessalonica was its largest city and administrative center, and other congregations Paul had contact with, such as Philippi and Berea, were in the same province.

4:11

"Study" in 1611 English meant to strive after or make it one's ambition, not to read or research. The Greek verb is one normally used of seeking public honor, so the phrase is close to a deliberate paradox: make it your ambition to be unambitious. "Work with your own hands" points to manual labor, which in a Greek city was widely regarded as beneath a free man of standing; the alternative for some was living off the support of a wealthy patron.

4:12

"Honestly" in 1611 meant decently, respectably, in a way that looks right to others. It did not mean truthfully. "Them that are without" is a standard early Christian phrase for people outside the community. The closing phrase is ambiguous in Greek. It can mean "have need of no one," that is, not be financially dependent on anybody, or "have need of nothing," that is, not go short. The King James takes the second; many modern translations take the first.

4:13

"Asleep" is a common ancient euphemism for death, used by Jews, Greeks and Romans alike, and found on gravestones. It appears again in verses 14 and 15. The point of the word here is that death is a state one is brought out of, but the metaphor itself was ordinary language, not a special Christian coinage. "Others" translates a phrase better rendered "the rest," meaning everyone outside the community, the same people called outsiders in verse 12.

4:14

The Greek phrase order leaves an ambiguity the English keeps. "Them also which sleep in Jesus" can attach "in Jesus" to the sleeping, meaning those who died as believers, or to the bringing, meaning that God will bring them through Jesus. Both readings are old and neither is ruled out by the grammar.

4:15

"Prevent" is the most misleading word in this chapter for a modern reader. In 1611 it meant to go before or arrive ahead of, from the Latin praevenire, and it had no sense of hindering or stopping. The line says the living will not get there first, ahead of the dead. "By the word of the Lord" marks what follows as a message received rather than an opinion; the phrase is standard prophetic language in the Old Testament.

4:16

"Shout" translates keleusma, a word used for a commander's order shouted to troops or a coxswain's call to rowers: a short loud word of command, not a cheer. "Archangel" means chief or ranking angel, from Greek words for first and messenger. "Trump" is simply the older English word for trumpet. In Israelite practice trumpet blasts summoned the assembly, signaled war, and announced the arrival of a king, and all three associations sit behind the image.

4:17

"Caught up" translates harpazo, a verb meaning to seize or snatch away suddenly and by force. The Latin version used rapere, which is where the English word rapture comes from; the word itself does not appear in this text. "To meet the Lord" uses apantesis, a noun with a specific civic use in the Greek world: the formal going out of a city's citizens to greet an arriving ruler or dignitary outside the walls and escort him in. Whether Paul intends that picture here, and so whether the escorted party then continues on to earth, is debated; the sentence says only that the meeting happens in the air and that the result is being with the Lord permanently.

4:18

"Comfort" translates parakaleo, the same verb rendered "exhort" in verse 1 and "beseech" in verses 1 and 10. It covers both consoling someone and urging them on, and English has no single word that does both.