1 Thessalonians 4 - Introduction

He exhorteth them to go forward in all manner of godliness, to live holily and justly, to love one another, and quietly to follow their own business; and, last of all, to moderate their sorrow for the dead. And to this last exhortation is annexed a brief description of the resurrection, and second coming of Christ to judgment.

Anno Domini 52.

TO make all mankind sensible how worthy of God the Christian religion is, St. Paul and his assistants, in this chapter, appeal to the holy nature of the precepts of the gospel,which they delivered to the Thessalonians from the very first. In reckoning this appeal a third argument in proof of the divine original of the gospel, I think I am not mistaken; because, if the Apostle's intention therein had only been to animate the Thessalonians to a conversation worthy of their Christian profession, there was no occasion for his insisting so earnestly, and so repeatedly, on his having formerly delivered all these precepts to them; but his enjoining them now, in the name of God and of Christ, would have been sufficient.
To this account of the Apostle's design, in calling the attention of the Thessalonians to the precepts of the gospel, I cannot think it any objection that he has not, in so many words, declared it tobe his design. It was not his custom formally to declare the purpose for which his arguments are introduced. That circumstance he leaves his readers to gather from the nature of the things which he writes. In the present case, therefore, seeing he appealed to the commandments which he had given them in the name of the Lord Jesus, the author of the gospel, after putting them in mind of the miracles which he had wrought in their presence, and of his own sincerity and disinterestedness in preaching the gospel, can it be thought that he made such an appeal, in such a discourse, with any other view but to make all who should read this letter sensible that the gospel, being worthy of God, is truly of divine original?

Let us now see how the Apostle states this argument. First of all, he besought and exhorted the Thessalonians, by the Lord Jesus, to abound in that holy manner of living, which he and his assistants had formerly assured them was the way to please God, 1 Thessalonians 4:1.—Next, he told them, they knew what commandments he had given them by order of the Lord Jesus, 1 Thessalonians 4:2.—then repeated some of these commandments, wherebyitappearsthattheyweredirected chiefly against those abominable impurities in which the heathens universallylived, and which many of them practised as worship acceptable to their idol gods. In particular, he had represented to them that God willed their sanctification, and their abstaining from all kinds of fornication, ver.

3.—By declaring this to be the divine will, the Apostle made the Thessalonians sensible, from the beginning,that the will of the true God was a very different will from that of the gods whom they formerly served, who willed their votaries to worship them with the grossest acts of uncleanness and intemperance. He told them, likewise, that God willed them to use their body in a holy and honourable manner, 1 Thessalonians 4:4 not as a passive instrument of lust, after the manner of the Gentiles, who, being ignorant of God, committed these base actions in honour of their false deities, to whom they ascribed the most immoral characters, 1 Thessalonians 4:5.—Also, it was the will of God that no manshouldinjure his brother in respect of chastity, because the Lord Jesus will punish men for all such wicked actions. This the Apostle affirmed he had formerly told and fullytestified to them, 1 Thessalonians 4:6.—Besides, they were to consider that God hadnot called them to be his votaries for the purpose of gratifying any impure lust, as the heathen gods were supposed to have called their votaries, but to a continued life of purity, 1 Thessalonians 4:7.—And therefore he assured them, that whoever despised his precepts concerning purity, despised not man only, but God, who had given him his Holy Spirit, and had inspired him to deliver these precepts in his name, 1 Thessalonians 4:8.—By ending his appeal to the commandments which he had delivered to the Thessalonians from the beginning, with this solemn declaration, the Apostle has directly affirmed that all the precepts of the gospel are the precepts of God, and every way worthy of him. And, by placing them in this light, he holds them up to the view of all mankind, as a clear proof of the divine original of the gospel; or, as the Apostle himself expresses it, chap. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 as a proof that the gospel is the word, not of men, but of God; which it would not be, if its precepts were not precepts of holiness.

To complete this argument, St. Paul shews the efficacy of the doctrines and precepts of the gospel to make men holy, by taking notice that the Thessalonians, since their conversion, were become remarkable for their love to the brethren, 1 Thessalonians 4:9.—not in their own city only, but through all the province of Macedonia. And because, by such a conduct, they greatly strengthened the evidences of the gospel, he exhorted them to abound still more in that excellent virtue, 1 Thessalonians 4:10.—and earnestly to study to be quiet, and to mind their own affairs, and to labour diligently in some honest occupation, as he had formerly commanded them, 1 Thessalonians 4:11.—Because thus they would be esteemed, even by the heathens, and have wherewith to supply their own wants, without being obliged to any person, 1 Thessalonians 4:12.—The lewdness, and idleness, and officious meddling in other peoples' affairs, which the Apostle tells the Thessalonians hehad condemned at his first coming among them, and had forbidden, under the most tremendous penalties, were vices to which the Greeks, in general, were excessively addicted: and therefore, in thusaddressing them, it is evident that he was by no means desirous of accommodating the gospel to the humours of me

The direct and open appeals made, in this Epistle, to the Thessalonians, and to all in whose hearing it was to be read, concerning the sanctity of the precepts which the Apostle deliveredin public and in private, whether at his first coming among them, or when he was better acquainted with them, are clear proofs that the preachers of the gospel did not, like the Greek philosophers, hold two different doctrines, or systems, the one calculated for the learned, and the other for the common people. Their doctrines and precepts were the same in all places, and to all persons. These appeals likewise prove, that the gospel itself differed widely, both from the heathen mysteries, in which great excesses were committed by the initiated; and from the heathen religions, in which the people were encouraged to practise many abominable impurities in honour of their gods; while in none of these religions were there set before the people any just notions of the duties of piety and morality.—The express and solemn prohibitions of all manner of vice, and the earnest recommendations of holiness and virtue, which the preachers of the gospel delivered, every where from the beginning, in the name of God, are no small arguments, if there were need of such, that these men were really commissioned and inspired by God. For if they had been impostors, they would not have prescribed a discipline so contrary to the avowed inclinations and practices of the bulk of mankind. The Apostle, therefore, and his coadjutors, very properly insist on the sanctity of the precepts which they enjoined to their disciples from the first, as a strong collateral proof of the divine original of the gospel; because a pure morality is so essential in any religion pretending to be from God, that if the gospel had, in the least, encouraged its disciples in licentiousness, the other arguments, by which it is supported, would be of less, or no avail, to prove its divine original.

In the remaining part of this chapter, the Apostle calls the attention of the Thessalonians to the dignity of the Holy Jesus, the author of the gospel, and to his power as judge of the world, by foretelling and proving that hewill return to the earth, attended by angels, for the purpose of carrying the righteous with him into heaven. Here, however, it is to be observed, that, although the Apostle's professed design in advancing these things was to moderate the sorrow of the Thessalonians for their dead relations, 1 Thessalonians 4:13.—yet, as shall be shewnin the analysis of chap. 5: his intention likewise, in this display of the dignity and power of Jesus as judge, was, to suggest a fourth argument forestablishing the divine original of the gospel. Accordingly, in proof of Christ's return from heaven to judge mankind, the Apostle appealed to an event which was then past; namely, to Christ's resurrection from the dead; and affirmed, that if we believe Jesus died, and rose again, we must also believe his return to judgment, and his bringing of the righteous into heaven, 1 Thessalonians 4:14.—Next, for the consolation of the Thessalonians, he assured them, by the word or commandment of the Lord, that such of the righteous as are alive at the coming of Christ shall not anticipate them who are asleep, by being glorified before them, 1 Thessalonians 4:15.—Then, to make the Thessalonians sensible of the power and glory of Christ as judge, he told them that the attendant angels will announce his arrival with a shout; that the archangel, who, at Christ's descent, is to preside over the angelic hosts, will utter his voice; that a great trumpet shall sound, to call the dead out of their graves; and that the righteous shall rise first, 1 Thessalonians 4:16.—Lastly, he informs us, that the righteous shall be caught up in clouds, to join the Lord in the air; and so they shall be for ever with the Lord, 1 Thessalonians 4:17.—These great discoveries being very useful for encouraging the disciples of Christ, when persecuted, and for strengtheningtheir faith in the gospel at all times, the Apostle desired the Thessalonians to comfort one another, in their most pressing straits, by making them the subject of their daily conversations, 1 Thessalonians 4:18.