1 Thessalonians 5:10

περι in א*B 17, against all other codd., which have υπερ: cf. the variants in 1 Corinthians 1:13; Galatians 1:4; and see Expository Note.

10. τοῦ�, ἵνα … ἅμα σὺν αὐτῷ ζήσωμεν, who died for us, that … together with Him we might live. Περὶ ἡμῶν specifies “us” as the objects of the Saviour’s death, those “about” whom He was concerned in dying; the reading ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, as those “for the good of” whom He died—but “this distinction is growing dull” in the κοινή (J. H. Moulton); ἀντί would have been required to signalize the vicarious nature of the death, as in 1 Timothy 2:6; Matthew 20:28.

The main point is that His death secures our life; thus it gives a sure warrant for the cherished ἐλπὶς σωτηρίας (1 Thessalonians 5:8) Further, the “life” which Christ’s death secures for those resolved to “win” it (1 Thessalonians 5:9), is a life associated, indeed identified, with His (ἄμα σὺν αὐτῷ: cf. for the phrase, 1 Thessalonians 4:17); He died for the very and that we might partake of His deathless life: cf. John 6:51; John 10:10 f., Job 10:18; also Romans 5:10; Romans 6:4 ff.; 2 Corinthians 4:10 ff; 2 Corinthians 5:14 ff.; Revelation 1:5 f., Job 1:18, &c. In His “dying that we might live along with Him,” Christ’s own resurrection is taken for granted (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:14). The principle which connects the Saviour’s death with the life, present and ultimate, of His people is assumed, but not drawn out, in this passage; it was present to the mind of the readers, or these words would have been meaningless. The propitiatory atonement which Christ made upon the cross for the sins of mankind, constitutes the indispensable link; this clause involves the teaching about redemption by the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is distinctive of the second group of the Pauline Epp.: see Romans 3:21-26; Romans 4:25 to Romans 5:11; Romans 6:1-11; Romans 8:1-4; Galatians 2:10-21; Galatians 3:9-14; 2 Corinthians 5:14 to 2 Corinthians 6:2. The whole theology of the Cross is latent here. In writing to the Corinthians and referring to his preaching at the very time when the Thessalonian letters were penned, St Paul calls his doctrine simply “the word of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:17 f., 1 Corinthians 1:23); cf., for an earlier period, Acts 13:38 f., Galatians 3:1; Galatians 6:14. “In his earliest writings this doctrine was present to St Paul’s mind, though he has busied himself generally in these Epistles with other matters. It was not, therefore, as has been maintained, an aftergrowth of his maturer reflexions” (Lightfoot). See further the Introd. pp. xxv. ff.

In ἅμα σὺν αὐτῷ lies St Paul’s other fundamental doctrine of the believer’s union with Christ in His heavenly life, which is the complement of his doctrine of union with Christ in His sacrificial death for sin: see, on this correspondence, 2 Corinthians 5:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 6:5-11; Galatians 2:19 f.; Romans 14:8 f. Risen from the grave, our Saviour “lives” evermore “to God”; “death no longer lords it over Him.” And those who are Christ’s, being “cemented to the Lord in one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17), share the life which flows from the Head through all His earthly members. This “life hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), is, in St Paul’s view, “life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:19); ζήσωμεν is emphatic: “that … together with Him we might live,”—not dying even though we “sleep”; cf. John 6:50 f., John 11:25 f.

The parenthetical clause, εἴτε γρηγορῶμεν εἴτε καθευδωμεν, takes up into this sentence the comfort the Apostles had given their readers in § 8. The life of union with Christ which He died to procure for men, is untouched by mortality: He “died for us, in order that, whether we be waking or sleeping, together with Him we should live.” Just as our natural life holds its course unbroken through waking or sleeping hours, so our spiritual life in Christ continues whether we are awake to this world or the body lies asleep in the grave (cf. Matthew 22:32); the Christian dead are οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, and return to us σὺν αὐτῷ, when “God shall bring” Jesus back to the world He left (1 Thessalonians 4:14; see notes). Hence we gather that “the sleeping” are living somewhere with and in Christ; their “sleep” makes no vital difference: cf. Romans 8:38 f.; John 14:19 b.

The verbs γρηγορέω and καθεύδω, understood ethically in 1 Thessalonians 5:6 f., by a change of metaphor become synonyms for natural life and death; see note on κοιμάομαι, 1 Thessalonians 4:13. This figurative use of καθεύὁω (= κοιμάομαι) is a Biblical hap. legomenon (cf. καλὸς νέκυς, οἶα καθεύδων, Bion i. 71); it is suggested by the context (1 Thessalonians 5:6 ff.), and γρηγορέω matches it in meaning. See Romans 14:7 ff., where Christ’s lordship over His people is declared to extend to the world beyond death: ἐάν τε ζῶμεν ἐάν τε�, τοῦ κυρίου ἐσμέν· εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ Χριστὸς�, ἵνα καὶ νεκρῶν καὶ ζώντων κυριεύσῃ; cf., in this light, Ephesians 4:9 f. and Revelation 1:18 with the passage before us.

The subjunctive after εἴτε, in place of indic., occurs also in 1 Corinthians 14:5; Philippians 3:11, and might be justified by later Greek usage; but here it appears to be due to the influence of ἵνα just preceding, the subordinate conditional clause being let into the final clause; see Winer-Moulton, p. 368. The aorist ζήσωμεν is antithetical to ἀποθανόντος, denoting the “life” which “Christ died” to procure “for us,” not as a continued state but as a single fact, a definite attainment won for us by Christ’s death and holding good alike in our “waking” or “sleeping.” For the aorist of ζάω, cf. Luke 15:24; Romans 7:9 (contrast ἔζων with ἀνέζησεν), Romans 14:9; Galatians 2:19; Titus 2:12; 1 John 4:9; Revelation 2:8; Revelation 20:4 f.: the present, on the other hand, in 1 Thessalonians 3:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:15 above; Romans 14:8; 2 Corinthians 5:15, &c.