D. About Believers Who Have Died (4:13-18)
D. ABOUT BELIEVERS WHO HAVE DIED (4:13-18)
13 Brothers and sisters, we515 do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep516 in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord,517 will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left518 will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
With these words we come at last to the first (and only) matter in this letter on which the Thessalonians are receiving instruction for the first time. This is made clear in three related ways: (a) it is the certain implication of the beginning clause, “we do not want you to be uninformed”; (b) it is the only material in the letter that does not contain “reminder” language; (c) Paul returns to this language when turning to further eschatological matters in 5:1-11 (“you have no need for me to write about this”).519 What this also means is that, although clearly related, the present material is but one aspect of the much larger eschatological picture to which he turns (returns?) in 5:1.
We may rightly assume, therefore, that this issue comes from the Thessalonian believers themselves and was brought back to Paul by Timothy.520 At issue appears to be:521 “What has happened to some among us who have died522 before the coming of the Lord?” The reasons for this concern are unknown, and thus open to a great deal of speculation. The most likely reason would seem to be one in which the Thessalonians understood their present sufferings as related to the messianic woes that were expected to precede the Lord’s coming; and now some (or one) have (has) died in the meantime, which has created considerable distress among them, both about “the dead” and the Coming itself. In any case, Paul’s answer is in fact relatively plain and simple:523 Believers who have died will be raised to join the living at Christ’s coming. But for a number of reasons this has appeared to many readers to be too simple. This passage has therefore elicited a considerable literature, not to mention a great deal of eschatological speculation, much of which seems several leagues removed from Paul’s own concern — to offer reassurance to these relatively new believers in Christ regarding a recent death (deaths?) among them. The one thing that seems certain as a presupposition on their part regarding the Parousia (Coming) is its relative “nearness”; otherwise their concern makes very little sense at all.524
The concern, therefore, is not for people in general who have died, but only for those who were a part of the believing community in Thessalonica and who have (apparently unexpectedly) died before the Coming. And even though Paul in the explanatory clause in verses 16-17b elaborates somewhat on the nature of the Coming, his interest throughout is on this singular issue, especially so in that particular explanatory clause.525 Thus Paul’s ultimate concern is twofold, the expression of which serves to enclose the entire passage: that the believers in Thessalonica “do not sorrow as the rest of humankind who do not have this hope” (v. 13), and that they therefore “encourage one another with these words” of Christian hope (v. 18).526 At the same time what lies behind the whole passage is Paul’s conviction, shared with the other early believers and based on Christ’s own resurrection, that a future bodily resurrection lies in the eschatological future of those who believe in Christ.
The flow of thought seems clear enough. The matter is presented in verse 13: the Thessalonians’ sorrow regarding believers who have died and Paul’s concern that the rest live in hope. Verse 14 then offers the basic reason for not sorrowing as though there were no hope. Belief in Jesus’ own resurrection carries with it belief in the resurrection of “those ‘in him’ who have fallen asleep.” This clause also makes it clear that the issue is not with believers who are living at the time of the Parousia, but with whose who have died beforehand. Thus in the next sentence (v. 15) Paul offers a preceding word of explanation — a word attributed to Christ himself — which anticipates what follows, namely that the living do not have any advantage over the dead at the Parousia. His next sentence (vv. 16-17a) then spells out in some detail the nature of what he has affirmed in the preceding two sentences, whose concern nonetheless remains the same: the dead will join the living at the Parousia, so that (v. 17b) both will then be together eternally. He then concludes (v. 18) by telling them what they should do in light of all this: encourage each other. All of this seems so plainly said that one wonders why there has been seemingly endless speculation regarding this passage, which would probably never have happened had it not been for an insatiable desire by so many later Christians to know more than Paul has here told the Thessalonians.527
13 With yet another vocative “brothers and sisters” (the ninth) Paul addresses the community on a matter about which they already have much information (see 5:1-6), but where that information apparently had had some presuppositions to it that now need to be addressed. The “day of the Lord” itself will come suddenly and unexpectedly (5:2-3), which they apparently had understood also to mean “quite soon,” an understanding that caused them to become unsettled over the unexpected death of a (or some) member(s) of their community. So at issue is their needing to be informed “about those who are sleeping,” which for the sake of second-language readers the TNIV translators have clarified as having to do with “sleeping in death.”528 Even though this euphemism for death can be found variously in the ancient world, Paul’s threefold repetition of it in this passage seems to put a degree of emphasis on the nonfinality of death for those whom he will finally call “the dead in Christ.”
Paul begins his explanation with what will become for him something of a stock phrase, “we do not want you to be uninformed [lit. ‘without knowledge’],” a formula that will occur five more times in the Pauline corpus.529 Because these later uses cover such a broad range of concerns, they offer little help as to Paul’s usage here. Most likely in this case he begins with this formula to introduce information that they had no reason heretofore to be concerned about, or perhaps to correct a false understanding regarding both the timing and significance of the Parousia.530
In any event, the purpose clause that follows, “that you do not grieve like the rest,531 who have no hope,”532 offers the reason for the “information” that is to follow in verses 14-17. Unfortunately, it is also a clause that has had its share of abuse in the history of the church, since on the surface it can be read in two ways, even though Paul most likely intended only one of them. His concern is not that they should not sorrow at all, as has sometimes been suggested, as though Christian hope has eliminated all expressions of sorrow as such.533 Rather, his point is that believers who have hope in the resurrection do not sorrow in the same way as others, people who lack that hope. And on this point, the evidence is thoroughgoing that death in pagan antiquity was understood as final and complete,534 so that untimely death often elicited unspeakable sorrow and mourning. Indeed, there is a sense of pitiable finality to death without hope of resurrection, which Paul expresses poignantly in terms of “even as the rest, who have no hope.” The remainder of the passage will go on to spell out the reason for the Thessalonians to live in hope regarding those among them who have died.
14 Paul begins where all Christian hope of a future bodily resurrection lies, with the resurrection of Jesus himself. This is his clear concern in this “just as/so also” sentence. Thus, the protasis states it plainly, “since535 we believe that Jesus died and rose.” What is unique about this clause is the verb for the resurrection, which in most instances in the New Testament is passive (“he was raised”), with God the Father as the assumed subject of the action. But here the emphasis is not on what happened to Jesus, but on what was true about him: He died and rose. The ordinary passive will appear by implication in the apodosis. Furthermore, because of the role of Christ in what follows, God the Father, who is mentioned only this once in the paragraph, is here seen as the active agent of believers’ future resurrection.
Given their belief in Jesus’ resurrection, but without repeating the verb itself, Paul thus goes on to spell out what “we [including them] further believe.” But also given what is said in the protasis, one is set up to expect, “we also believe that those who were in Christ when they died will be raised.” But that is not quite what we get, so that a straightforward reading of this clause in Paul’s Greek text gives one several reasons to pause. Our difficulties are two, and stem in part from Paul’s thoroughly christocentric worldview, so that Christ is mentioned twice in the clause in two different roles: first (apparently) as the active agent of believers’ future resurrection, and second as the one who will accompany them. Thus all of Paul’s present concerns have made their way into this sentence.
Our first difficulty is a conceptual (visual) one, created by the inherent tension between the phrase in this sentence, “God will bring ‘those who have fallen asleep’ with him [Jesus],” and the description in verse 17 that these same believers, as the first item on God’s eschatological agenda, will rise from the grave at the command to do so. Thus the “comfort” expressed in verse 18 has to do with the certainty of their resurrection at Christ’s coming. Here, however, they appear to be pictured as already with Jesus, which under normal circumstances one might expect to be the point of comfort. But not so; that is to be found in their resurrection. So how, one is inclined to ask, are the dead already present with the Lord, but are yet to be raised at the Parousia? The answer would seem to lie primarily with the fact that Paul himself saw no tension here. And since elsewhere he speaks of death in terms of being “absent from the body” but “present with the Lord,” he most likely understood believers who have died to be already present with the Lord — whether consciously so or not is never spoken to. But for Paul this being present with the Lord is not the real thing, as it were; that will happen only at the Eschaton, which is marked by the coming of Christ himself and the resurrection (i.e., the reembodiment) of believers who have died in the meantime.536
Our second difficulty has to do with the phrase “through Jesus,” which in the T/NIV has been translated “in him,” a rendering which in itself points out most of the difficulties. The problem here has to do with the placement of this phrase in Paul’s sentence, which in a word-for-word rendering537 reads: “so also God the sleeping through Jesus will bring with him.” Most likely his intent was, “so also God through Jesus will bring the sleeping with him (Jesus),”538 where Jesus is at once both the one who accompanies the dead who are to be raised and the agent of their being raised. But since this is a minority view, what makes this “most likely” needs elaboration.
The crucial exegetical matter is to note that this sentence is not trying to spell out the “how” of our future bodily resurrection but only the “fact” of it. Our difficulties arise from Paul’s word order, where one ordinarily expects a prepositional phrase like this one (“through Jesus”) to modify what immediately precedes it. Thus most English translations, even those that pride themselves with being “literal,” understandably render it in a way similar to the TNIV, “those who have fallen asleep in him.”539 But the difficulty with this common view is that one can find no parallel in Paul where the preposition dia, which ordinarily expresses secondary agency (i.e., God does something “through” Jesus),540 is used in a locative sense (“in” him).
Our problems at this point have stemmed primarily from three factors: (a) that the subject of the sentence is “God,” who is mentioned only this once in the entire paragraph; (b) the word order itself, where Paul “fronts” the direct object, “those who are sleeping,” since that is the singular concern throughout; and (c) the one already noted, that the phrase “through Jesus” immediately follows “those who are sleeping” in Paul’s sentence, and in the vast majority of such instances would thus be understood to modify what has just preceded it.
(a) We begin by noting that if one momentarily sets aside the troubling phrase “through Jesus,” Paul’s concern is plainly stated. “God will bring with him [Jesus] those who are currently ‘sleeping.’” This singular mention of “God” in the paragraph reveals Paul’s own theological understanding of things, since for him God the Father is always the prime mover and active cause of everything. This change of subject, however, also accounts in part for some of our difficulties. Likewise, Christ the Son is regularly the primary agent of everything God does.541 Thus, given Paul’s overall understanding of things, the present clause can only mean that when Jesus comes again, God will bring with him those who have died, the pronoun “him” at the end of the sentence thus referring back to its immediate antecedent, “Jesus.”
(b) If we were then to rearrange Paul’s word order into something more “normal” for us, the sentence would read, “God will bring those who are sleeping,” rather than, “God those who are sleeping will bring.” Paul’s obtuse word order, which could be found only in poetry in our language, is perfectly acceptable in a highly inflected language like Greek, since case is determined by the formation of words, not by word order. But what this means further is that by Paul’s “fronting” the direct object in this way, the first of the two prepositional phrases that follow is no longer in its “normal” position, even in Greek.
(c) Together these two observations lead us to a resolution of the sentence that makes sense both in terms of Pauline usage and meaning and of his theology, a “solution” that seems quite simple. What Paul most likely intended, in good English word order, is not that “God will bring those who sleep through Jesus with him,” but that “God through Jesus will bring with him those who are currently sleeping in death.”542 Thus, as always for Paul, God is the prime mover, and Jesus is the agent of what God will do.
Finally, we should also note that Christ is twice referred to in this sentence by his earthly name “Jesus,” without either of the further identifiers “Lord” or “Christ.” Two matters are of interest here. First, generally speaking the use of “Jesus” alone is a rare phenomenon in Paul’s letters, occurring only eighteen times in all, three of them in this letter (see on 1:10) and seven more in 2 Corinthians 4:5-14.543 This is basically an indication that, for understandable reasons, in Paul’s letters his primary interest regarding Christ is not in his earthly life per se, but in his death as “for us” and in Christ’s current heavenly role in the ongoing life of the church. It is for this reason, second, that the further mention of “Jesus” in this passage is on first notice a bit unusual, since it is referring to him as presently in heaven, in which instances “Lord” is Paul’s more common way of referring to the Savior. This apparently unusual phenomenon is best explained in light of the present context, where the emphasis is not on the Son’s current heavenly role and reign, but on the fact that it is the risen Jesus who will return for his own at the Parousia.
15 With an explanatory “for,”544 Paul proceeds to spell out in some detail the content of the preceding “thesis” sentence. The explanation itself carries all the way through the middle of our verse 17, and comes to us as either one long sentence in Greek or two or three shorter ones, depending on how one reads the “and” at the beginning of verse 16b and the “then” (TNIV “after that”) at the beginning of verse 17. In either case, almost everyone545 considers all of verses 15b-17b to be a recital of what Paul here calls “the Lord’s word.” Thus he begins, “for this we tell you with/by a/the word of the Lord, namely that. . . .” The slashes indicate areas of considerable debate in terms of understanding what Paul is referring to.
Our difficulties stem from Paul’s unusual anarthrous nouns (i.e., without a definite article), which could be rendered — although no one would think of doing so — a word of a Lord. Nonetheless, some have taken it to say, “a word of the Lord.” But Paul’s usage here is almost certainly a reflection of his using the Septuagint, where when “the Lord” refers to Yahweh, the translators regularly made this clear with a consistently anarthrous usage. Given that Paul is here deliberately echoing the Old Testament, the difficulties for us in the current passage are twofold: to whom does “the Lord” refer; and to “what” or “what kind of” word is he referring.
The first matter in fact is easily resolved, since Paul always and consistently uses “the Lord” (kyrios) to refer to Christ just as “God” (theos) always refers to the Father, a usage which stems from his dividing up of the traditional Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 (see n. 27 above).546 Thus, since for Paul there is only “one Lord,” namely Jesus Christ, this phrase therefore refers to a word that Christ himself has spoken.547 But the “when” and “where” of the speaking of that word is something that cannot be known from this distance. 548 Most likely Paul is here referring to the Jesus tradition that had come down to him; but it is also possible that it refers to a prophetic word Paul has received from Christ.549 In either case, this well-known Yahweh phrase has now been appropriated to refer to Christ, who is the source of the information found in the rest of the sentence (through v. 17b). Thus Paul’s point is simple: the risen Lord, Jesus himself, is the source of what follows. The implied high Christology assumed by this language should not be overlooked, where the Septuagint’s kyrios = Yahweh is now kyrios = the risen Jesus.550
The actual content of this “word of the Lord” begins with a kind of “thesis” statement, which the rest of the long sentence will then elaborate in some detail. The matter at hand has to do with “the Parousia (= Coming) of the Lord.” The contrast is between “the ‘sleeping’ ” and “we the living,551 who ‘remain’552 until the Coming,” a contrast that will be repeated in verse 17; the concern is over the fate of those who have already died. Paul’s “thesis” statement is intended to reassure the living, “those left till the coming of the Lord,” that the dead are not disadvantaged because they have passed away before the Coming. Eventually in the sentence Paul will include “the living” (v. 17); but his obvious concern throughout is with the fate of believers who have died before the Coming. His point is that death has not disadvantaged them; rather, as the first order of things at the Coming, they (those who were “in Christ” when they died) will be raised from the dead so as to join the living, and thus together they will “meet the Lord in the air.”
Two further matters need discussion, since a good deal of misunderstanding has had its day here. First, Paul is not stating that he expects to be alive at the Parousia.553 Rather, he was simply currently among “the living” who are set out in contrast to “the sleeping.” His concern in fact has nothing to do with who will be living, but with the simple fact that they have no advantage over the dead regarding the Parousia. Or to put that another way: to be alive or dead is of no consequence at all regarding the coming of Christ. In other places, including later in this letter (5:10), Paul reckons with either possibility. Similarly, a few years later he can reflect on “whether we are ‘at home’ [in the body] or ‘away from home’ ” (2 Cor 5:6-9) with regard to being alive or dead at the coming of Christ. In any case, Paul’s (and “their” or “our”) being among the living or the dead at the Coming of Christ is ultimately an irrelevancy; that, after all, is quite the point made in the passage as a whole.
Second, nothing in the text implies that the Thessalonians have some kind of “feverish expectation” regarding the Parousia.554 They are simply concerned about those who have died beforehand; and when Paul himself goes on to speak about the “when” in 5:1-11, he makes it plain that they have no need of instruction, since the coming is totally “unexpected” in terms of precise timing. Thus his concern throughout this present passage is singular: to reassure the living that those who have died will in fact be present at the Coming.
16 With this clause Paul goes on to offer an explanation of what he has just affirmed. He does so with a brief description of the nature of the Parousia itself, whose primary feature, “the Lord will come down from heaven,” can easily get lost in the surrounding sights and sounds, “sights” in the sense that Christ’s “coming down from heaven” is otherwise assumed to be visible to those who await him. The description itself is an interesting collage of items, from Scripture and Jewish apocalyptic on the one hand, and from the “coming” of kings/emperors on the other. First of all, and whatever else, what is being described is “fanfare,” the boisterous display that the Thessalonians would recognize as that which accompanied the “coming” (= visit) of the emperor to their city.555 But Paul does this in part by using language from two key Old Testament texts: (a) the primary theophany in Exodus 19:16,556 where Yahweh’s “descent” (v. 18) is accompanied by a “thick cloud” and “a very loud trumpet blast”; and (b) Psalm 47:5 (46:6 LXX), where this “coming” is rehearsed in song, but now regarding Yahweh’s “enthronement” on the temple mount in Jerusalem, whose kingship is celebrated by his people. Paul’s own language is an echo of the latter (put “literally”): “ascended God with a shout, the LORD with the ‘voice’ of a trumpet.”557
Whether the Thessalonians would have caught this is moot; the point is that Paul himself sets out to describe the Parousia of the Lord, Jesus, now by way of language from this well-known psalm regarding the “coming” of the LORD, Yahweh, to Mount Zion. What Paul appears to have done is to apply the language of the “Psalm of Ascent” to describe the coming from heaven of the truly Great King, the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, who is now seen as “descending” in a way similar to the “descent” of Yahweh at Sinai. The psalmist, in celebrating Yahweh’s “ascent” to Mount Zion after he “had subdued nations under us,” thus picks up the motifs of Exodus for the enthronement of Yahweh, which was celebrated by accompanying “shouts of joy” and the “voice of the trumpet.” In Paul’s version a further “adjustment” to the language takes place, since this is now less “fanfare” with regard to the coming of Christ than it is “summoning” language, thus powerful imagery for “waking the sleeping,” which after all is the singular point Paul is making in this context. Paul’s “the Lord himself” is especially noteworthy in this regard, since it is in fact the Lord (Jesus) who had previously ascended on high who himself will return at the sounding of the trumpet.
It should be further pointed out that there is an “and” between only the second and third members of this description; thus, as the TNIV has it: “with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.” In ordinary English this would mean that the Coming is accompanied in three ways: a command, an archangel’s voice, and God’s trumpet. However, what is the standard English practice for a list is almost never used by a Greek writer, who would ordinarily have had two “ands” between the three phrases. What this indicates is, as the published Greek text has it, that the second and third items are intended to stand in apposition to “loud command (= summons).” 558 Thus, “with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God” spell out how the “summons” or “cry of command” will occur at the Coming. Whether Paul would have understood any of this language to be taken literally is in itself moot, since his only reason for including it at all is to give expression to the heavenly summons that is intended figuratively to “awaken the dead.”
“Archangels,” it should be noted, are not mentioned at all in the Old Testament. Rather, this is the language of intertestamental Judaism. Paul’s own phrase is anarthrous, and, as with the preceding “the word of the Lord” (v. 15), it is probably to be understood as the TNIV has it, “with the voice of the archangel.” If so, then most likely Paul had in mind the archangel named “Michael,” mentioned also in Jude 9 and Revelation 12:7, as well as in the somewhat earlier Book of Enoch 20:5,559 whose origins can be traced to the Septuagint of Daniel 12:1.
The second element in the “summons,” the “trumpet call of God,” is a much more common item in the Jewish eschatological tradition.560 As noted, the theme belongs first of all to the primary theophany on Sinai (Exod 19:16), which in turn found its way into Jewish eschatology (esp. apocalyptic) in a variety of ways. In Isaiah 27:13 the trumpet calls the exiles from As-syria and Egypt to worship on Zion; similarly, in Zechariah 9:14, “the Sovereign LORD will sound the trumpet” as he saves his “people on that day” (v. 16).561 But more to Paul’s own point is the eschatological discourse in Matthew 24, where Jesus himself refers to the coming “of the Son of Man . . . on the clouds of heavens” who “will send his angels with a loud trumpet call,” in order to “gather his elect from the four winds” (vv. 30-31). It is thus the perfect imagery to include in a letter to “God’s elect” in Thessalonica, for whom such trumpet calls would accompany state visits from Rome.
Finally, it should be noted again that everything in this description is aimed at the final clause, “and the dead in Christ will rise first,” a phrase which has also had an unfortunate history of misinterpretation. Paul’s own clear point comes in the following clause. His “first” means neither that they are the first to get to heaven, nor that they are the first to be raised — before others who will be raised for final judgment. Rather, as the next clause makes clear, they will be raised as the “first order of business,” as it were, so that all believers, those who have died and those currently living, will be together to meet the coming Lord in the sky. Thus one should not make too much of the phrasing “the dead in Christ,” who are Paul’s only concern here. They are described in this way solely to distinguish them from all others who have died; at this point Paul simply has no interest whatever in the others.
17 This final clause in Paul’s long sentence562 brings “the living” back into the picture, to join the now raised “dead” in the great “meeting” of the Lord “in the air.” It has unfortunately also been the source of a great deal of eschatological speculation that is quite unrelated to Paul’s own interests. Thus he begins by deliberately repeating the description of the living from the beginning of verse 16: “we the living who are left.” As before, this has nothing to do with anyone’s being “left behind”; rather, it simply describes the living from the perspective of those who have died, who are, after all, the primary reason for the passage at all. Having been preceded by those now dead, who will be raised as the first item on the eschatological agenda, the living at the time of the Parousia are simply “the remainder” of those who believe, and who will thus join those now raised from the dead to “meet the Lord in the air.”
This latter phrase (“literally”), “for the meeting of the Lord in the air,” is the point of everything, as the final reassuring clause makes clear: “and so we will be with the Lord forever.” But the description itself (again “literally” and in Paul’s word order), “together with them we shall be caught up in clouds for the meeting of the Lord in the air,” is another fine mixture of Jewish apocalyptic and expectations that have their origin in Jesus himself. We look briefly at each of the five items in the clause, taking them in Paul’s own order.
First, the phrase “together with them,”563 which stands at the beginning of Paul’s clause, is in fact the ultimate concern of the entire passage. The Thessalonians are not to sorrow as those without hope, because at the coming of Christ they will once more be “together with” those from among them who have died. Thus, this is much less a part of the “visual” language of the passage than it is a word of comfort, the first order of business for Paul.
Second, the verb “we shall be caught up,” which could be especially strong imagery for this event,564 is unlikely to be so in this case, in light of Paul’s other use of this language in 2 Corinthians 12:2 and 4. Thus most English translations render it simply as “caught up,” without any overtones of strength or violence.565 Although this verb has been seen by some as referring to a “secret rapture of the church,” Paul himself could hardly have intended such a meaning here. After all, for the Thessalonians themselves so to have understood it they would necessarily have needed prior instruction; but it is clear from this passage as a whole that Paul is informing them for the first time about the relationship of the “living” and the “dead” at the Parousia, so how could they have known about an “event” otherwise unknown in the church until the mid-nineteenth century?
Third, being caught up “in clouds” is the one certain apocalyptic element in the description. In this its only occurrence in Paul’s letters, it is most likely related to the fact that this event is all about “meeting the Lord in the air,” who, according to the first clause in the sentence, is “descending from heaven.” Here especially Paul’s usage can be traced to the appearance of one like “a son of man” in Daniel 7:13, who is described as “coming with the clouds of heaven.” According to the Synoptic records, Jesus himself made the connection between his coming as the Son of Man in final glory and Daniel’s “son of man,” whose coming is described in this way (e.g., Mark 13:26). Furthermore, Luke describes the ascent of Jesus in terms of “a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). These various data suggest that it would be quite natural for Paul to describe the “ascent” of both the living and the dead in terms of being caught up “in the clouds” for their meeting with the Lord in the air, whose descent had come to be understood in this way.
Fourth, the goal of this ascent on the part of followers of Christ, both the present dead and the current living, is “to meet the Lord” in the air. The infinitive (“to meet”) in the TNIV — and almost all other English translations — is actually a noun in Paul’s Greek, which reads (when put literally), “for the meeting of the Lord in the air.” This word in turn has had a considerable history of interpretation to the effect that it was a technical term for the ceremonial reception accorded distinguished persons at their “coming” to a given city or province. But a recent investigation of the word has demonstrated that this is unlikely, and that all the other accoutrements of such ceremonial receptions are altogether missing from this passage.566
Indeed, everything else that may be said beyond what Paul actually says is the result of piecing together various other materials, since many Christians tend not to be satisfied with leaving them “in the air,” as it were. In fact, even though Paul speaks often and in a variety of ways about the final glory awaiting believers, there are only two passages where he explicitly “locates” believers’ final destiny as “in heaven,” 2 Corinthians 5:1 (certainly) and Colossians 1:5 (probably).567 The reason for this is simple: Paul has almost no interest whatever in our final eschatological “geography”; rather, his interest is altogether personal, having to do with their being “with the Lord,” whose “abode” is regularly expressed as “in heaven.” For the one whose life’s motto was “for me to live is Christ; to die is [to] gain [Christ],” location as such is basically an irrelevancy, and is mentioned only in passing when dealing with other matters. Perhaps people on all sides of the theological spectrum have something to learn from this, neither to make too much of Paul’s very few references to our future location, nor to make too little of it, as though final destiny itself were something of an irrelevancy for him. His own concern is what in fact is picked up at the end of this very long sentence: “and so we will be with the Lord forever.”
Fifth, the more surprising element in this description is the final phrase “in the air.” Although, for those familiar with the passage, this seems like a natural thing to say, the fact is that this is the only occurrence in Paul’s letters of this word with its proper first meaning, referring to “the atmosphere immediately above the earth’s surface” (BDAG) — although it is also used in a negative sense to refer to the abode of the present powers of darkness (Eph 2:2). But this is “surprising” to us only because Paul has no reason elsewhere to speak of this “space” at all. His reason for doing so here has altogether to do with the present imagery. The Lord himself is descending “from heaven,” and those who are being caught up to meet him are “from earth.” Hence their place of meeting is “in the air,” thus referring to the “space” between heaven and earth. And with that the description simply comes to an end; anything that one would say after that must be derived by piecing together all that Paul says eschatologically about believers’ relationship to the Coming.
Finally, Paul brings his explanation to a conclusion with the only really important matter in his eschatological understanding of things, already noted in item four above. Here there is no “return” to earth with those who meet him in the air, any more than there is any interest in heaven as the place of final destiny. His singularly driving concern in this entire description is the conclusion: “and so we will be with the Lord forever.” Here in particular one should note the complete absence of “geographical” locational language. The only location that interests Paul is being “with the Lord forever,” which, because the Lord himself is in heaven, means that this, too, is our final destiny. But that, along with almost everything else, is secondary, to the point of being irrelevant, to this singular reality. Probably (and unfortunately) this is also why there has been so much speculation by later believers, for whom “location” is all too often a primary way of thinking about the future.
18 With a final result clause Paul brings this entire discussion to its fitting end, in terms of the existential situation in Thessalonica itself: “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” It is of some interest that the word for “encouraging” one another is the same Greek word as the one whose primary (in the sense of most frequent) meaning in Paul’s letters is “exhort” or “appeal.” On its meaning in this letter, see the discussion of 2:12 above. Although it probably always carries a meaning close to “exhort,” in this case it clearly moves toward the sense of “encourage.” Thus, whatever else may be true of Paul’s “words” in this passage, their reason for being is not to satisfy their — nor our — eschatological curiosity; rather, the aim of everything is encouragement for people who have been recently bereft of those they love, and whose understanding of certain aspects of Christian eschatology was deficient, thus leading them “to sorrow as others who have no hope.” This encouragement will not, nor should it, totally diminish the sense of loss; but hopefully for Paul it will add the necessary dimension of sure hope to their sorrow, and thus qualify it immensely.
It does seem to be something of a shame that later believers have so often gone to this text for the wrong reasons in terms of its own reason for being at all. Thus, it has been the source of untold, and often misguided, speculations about timing, whereas its only reason for existence is to comfort believers in Thessalonica in the face of loss. It is therefore altogether appropriate for it to be read at Christian memorial services, since there it would serve the same purpose as in its original setting. It is equally inappropriate for it to become the basis for the kind of false teaching that one finds, for example, in the “Left Behind” series of books and films that became popular in the last decade of the preceding century. This is about hope, not threat, and should continue to be treated as such in the church.