1 Thessalonians 4:15

15. For (την παρουσιαν) του κυριου B has του Ιησου (? taken up from 1 Thessalonians 4:14); Marcion (apud Tert5, 15), Christi.

15. Τοῦτο γὰρ ὑμῖν λέγομεν ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου. For this we say to you, in a word of the Lord,—i.e. in the character of a message coming from “the mouth of the Lord”: cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10, “I give charge,—not I, but the Lord”; also 1 Thessalonians 4:8 and 1 Thessalonians 2:13 above; = בִּדְבַר יהוה, 1 Kings 13:17 f., 1 Kings 20:35, &c.; “quasi Eo ipso loquente” (Beza). St Paul reports an express communication from Christ on the question: while the language of 1 Thessalonians 4:16, ὅτι αὐτὸς … οὐρανοῦ, reflects the predictions of Jesus reported in Matthew 24:25, &c., there is nothing in the record of the Gospels which covers the important statement made in this verse. The Apostles are either quoting some ἄγραφον of Jesus, known through tradition, like the memorable dictum of Acts 20:35; or they are disclosing a new revelation made to themselves—either to St Paul (cf. Acts 18:9 f., Acts 27:23; 2 Corinthians 12:1 ff.; Galatians 2:2), or to Silas (see Acts 15:32), or to some other Christian prophet of their acquaintance (cf. Acts 20:23; Acts 21:10 f.). The brief, authoritative form of statement leads us to suppose that the writers are speaking out of their own inspiration; they seem to be giving a message from the Lord received at the time and to meet this specific case.

ὅτι ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλείπομενοι εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου, that we who are alive, who survive until the coming of the Lord. The second designation, carefully repeated in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, qualifies and guards the first—“we the living,—those (I mean) who remain, &c.” St Paul did not count on a very near approach of the Second Advent (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1 f.); but his language implies the possibility of the event taking place within his lifetime or that of the present generation (this is obviously a comprehensive “we”). Christ had left this an open question, or rather a matter on which questioning was forbidden (Acts 1:7; Matthew 24:36); cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:1 ff. below. The Apostles “knew in part” and “prophesied in part,” by piecemeal (ἐκ μέρους), about the mysteries of the Last Things; until further light came, it was inevitable that the Church, with its ardent longing to see its Lord, should speak and think as St Paul does here. The same expectant “we” is found in this connexion in 1 Corinthians 15:51; cf. James 5:8 f.; 1 Peter 4:5 f. But from the time of the crisis in his life alluded to in 2 Corinthians 1:8 f., the prospect of death occupied the foreground in St Paul’s anticipations of his own future; he never afterwards writes “we that remain.” Bengel minimizes the significance of the plural when he writes: “Sic τὸ nos hic ponitur, ut alias nomina Gajus et Titius”; more justly he continues, “idque eo commodius quia fidelibus illius ætatis amplum temporis spatium ad finem mundi nondum scire licuit.” Περιλείπεσθαι, here and in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 only in N.T.; a classical word. For παρουσία, see note on 1 Thessalonians 3:13.

οὐ μὴ φθάσωμεν τοὺς κοιμηθέντας, shall by no means precede (or anticipate) those that fell asleep,—“that had fallen asleep” before the Coming. The shadow cast over the fate of the sleeping Thessalonian Christians is imaginary. Instead of their having no place, these will have, it is now revealed, a foremost place in the Lord’s triumphant return. Though dead, they are “the dead in Christ” (1 Thessalonians 4:16); they departed to “be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:10)—“absent from the body,” but “at home with the Lord,” as St Paul subsequently expressed it (2 Corinthians 5:6 ff.; Philippians 1:23). If so, it is impossible that those remaining in the flesh when Christ returns should be beforehand with them. “God will bring them with Jesus,” for they are with Him already—the tacit link of thought connecting 1 Thessalonians 4:14-15.

Οὐ μή with aorist subj. appears in its well-known use as an intensive negative; see Winer-Moulton, pp. 634 ff.; Goodwin, Gr. Grammar, 1360. For φθάνω, cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:16; this transitive force of the verb is as old as Homer,—Iliad xi. 451, xxi. 262.

That the sleeping saints will be found already “with the Lord,” when He returns to “those living” on earth, is shown by the description of the Advent in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 f. (note the order πρῶτον, ἔπειτα):—