About Those Who Are Asleep
“But we do not want you
to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve
as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen
asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
We Americans don’t deal well with death. When
death occurs, as it inevitably will, it is minimized as much as possible. Sometimes,
this takes place as a simple, private gravesite affair. The more popular method
in our culture, however, is a funeral service that doesn’t talk about death.
Not quite knowing what to do with death other than run away from it, our
society has turned to services that feature more comedy and light-heartedness
than reverence and hope. The purpose of such services is, supposedly, to
“celebrate life” and to “let the healing begin.” As eulogies recall what the
person did in life, and Christ is put off to the side, death becomes the
elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
The prevalence of such shallowness is brought
to my attention after almost every funeral I conduct. It never fails; at least
one person will come up to me and remark how good it was to hear the Gospel of
Christ crucified at a funeral. “That was just like funerals used to be,” they
say. “I always know when I come to [this church] I’m going to hear God’s Word
proclaimed.” When they talk about how meaningful and reverent the service was,
I say, “That’s why I follow the service in our hymnal. It keeps me from getting
in the way and leaves Christ as the center.”
There’s a reason why our funeral services are
structured the way they are, and why we resist any change to them. It’s spelled
out in our epistle as it begins: “But we do not want you to be uninformed,
brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who
have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,
through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians
4:13-14).
That determines our funeral service. We mourn,
but not as those who have no hope. We hope because Christ died and is risen
again.
Like many today, the Thessalonians did not know
how to think or talk about death and what happens after death. With that in
mind, Paul tells them what is going to happen at the return of the Lord. He has
a practical, pastoral purpose for venturing into these deep waters. Some
Christians in Thessalonica have died, and the others are not sure what to
believe about where these people are and what has or will happen to them. They’ve
mistakenly thought only those alive at Christ’s return will be saved. So,
naturally they fear that their loved ones who are already dead have forfeited
any share in the coming glory. For this reason, they are going around grieving
like their pagan neighbors, “who have no hope.”
So, Paul corrects their error to comfort them
with the truth of sound doctrine. He wants them to learn appropriate Christian
grief, instead of the wild and hopeless mourning that typifies the desperation
of pagan funerals. The pagans are right to despair, there can be no Christian
comfort without Christian faith. Get back to the truth about Christ’s
resurrection and glorious return and you won’t have to sink into the funk of
depression or the errors of speculation.
Paul draws a contrast, not with natural and
excessive sorrow, but between Christian hope and pagan hopelessness. Hardly
could a lesson be more needed in our gnostic, neo-pagan world today. The
finality of death fills the heathen with a feeling of blank despair. It is a
sorrow which is unrelieved by any hope of a future reunion with their loved
ones, because there is no future for the dead.
What Paul needs to do for this bunch of
downtrodden believers is to re-describe the moment when God makes His new
world. The only possible language is that of pictures, snapshots, and glimpses
because critical parts of it are unique, yet-to-happen events. He says, in the
best way he can, “It is kind of like this,” and then flashes a few slides about
“those who have fallen asleep.”
To start with, he reiterates the foundation of
Christian facts-of-faith. Mindful that the pagans’ understanding of death as a
finality (a terminal point where the spirit that animated the person is
extinguished and the worthless, cursed shell of the material body is burned),
Paul says, “NO!” Death is not the end of humanity in God’s new world. The pagan
thinks so, and that is why they cremate their bodies. And why not? Dead means
dead, right? The person is now extinct, so burn the packaging (materialists say
the same thing today).
The Thessalonian Christians started looking
around and saying, “Hey, where is the coming of Christ and God’s new world
because we have loved ones in their last days, and some have already died?
What’s going to happen to them?”
Paul breaks in and says: “I do not want you to
be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep.” Paul’s starting point
echoes one of the earliest Christian creeds, which sums up what the Church
believes: “Jesus died and rose again.”
But this creedal line, that, “Jesus died and
rose again,” is not just info about the past. It reveals what will happen to
those who belong to God’s Messiah. Each of them and their dearly departed were
united to Jesus through Baptism. The spirits of the baptized were resurrected
at the point of justification. They were once dead in trespasses and sins, but
now God made their spirits alive in Christ. As for their bodies, they too have
been washed by the Word of God in Baptism. What is more, their bodies were
regularly united to Christ’s resurrected body and blood in Communion. If they
die united to the risen Christ, they will also rise again. When Christ comes on
the last day, He will bring them with Him.
So, the Christian understanding of “sleep” is
not like the pagan one. For the pagan and today’s materialists, “sleep” is a
mere euphemism for an obliterating death. But Paul isn’t just trying to make
something bad seem a little bit better by referring to it in rosy terms. No, he
is describing what death is really like for one who is dead in Christ. It is
like a sleep in which a person’s body is completely unaware of anything around
it, but from which his body awakens to use all its abilities and senses again. We
aren’t afraid to put our heads down on our pillows at night and go to sleep. We
know we’ll wake up again to a new day. That’s how death is. We need not fear
putting our heads down on the pillow of death and falling asleep. Jesus will
wake us up to a glorious eternal day.
This sleep applies only the body of the dead
believer and not to their spirit, which is ushered at the time of death into
the presence of God to be comforted by His angels and Christ Himself (Acts 7:59;
2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 6:9) until the day of resurrection.
Paul is not saying that Christians don’t
grieve. He simply says they do not “grieve as others do.” Of course, there is
sorrow at a death—one cannot part even for a short time from a loved one
without some sad feelings. But because Paul does not want the Thessalonians to
grieve without hope like most people, he presents them with facts about the deaths of Christians
and the Lord’s coming. At each funeral they can comfort one another with these
truths.
Paul begins with the most basic fact: Jesus died
but then rose again, showing His complete power over death. Paul says if you
believe this, then a second point to believe goes hand in hand with it. Jesus
promises that His resurrection means we also will rise from death. Therefore,
we are confident that when Jesus comes, He will wake us from the sleep of death
and bring us body and soul to heaven.
The resurrection of the departed saints was
secured by the rising of Jesus. God will
bring them and us with Jesus upon His momentous permanent return. So, stop
acting like the hopeless pagans when we should be basking in a confident
assurance. Plant their bodies in the ground and let them rest in peace. Jesus
endured the full horror implied in the death He suffered as the wages of sin,
only to transform death for those united to Him into a good night’s sleep in a
casket. At an hour we do not know their transformed bodies will be united with
glorified spirits.
To describe that Day, Paul joins several
pictures from the Old Testament and says that the Lord will come down from
Heaven, accompanied by various dramatic signs. “The dead in Christ will rise
first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
We need not think of this happening in terms of
hours or even minutes. Just as the resurrection of all the dead will taken
place “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye,” so in a moment, all believers,
living and resurrected, will be reunited with one another. What a joyful scene
that will be for all who’ve been parted by death!
Nor will the joy simply be in the reunion of
all believers. More important, we will be “caught up” by the power of God “in
the clouds to meet the Lord”! And we will not have to be afraid or ashamed to
stand before Him. For He is our brother. He will give us new bodies. These
bodies will be the same bodies, but they will be without a sinful nature,
imperfections, and weaknesses. Ours will be “imperishable” and “spiritual”
bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42-44), like that of our risen Savior Himself. What’s
more, “we will always be with the Lord.” Never again will we be parted by
death. Eternal joy and peace will be our lot.
Paul closes by urging the Thessalonians to talk
about these facts so they might encourage one another in times of bereavement. That’s
good advice for you and me, too! Do you wonder what we should say to a bereaved
fellow believer at the funeral home, or at church before the funeral service,
or when leaving the graveside after the committal, or a week or a month or a
year after the funeral? Don’t just say, “I’m sorry!” Unbelievers can also say
this in their hopeless grief. How much more comforting it is to hear again and
again from the lips of fellow believers the simple facts about the dead in
Christ and the coming of our Lord: Christ rose and promises us, we will rise also;
death is but a sleep from which Christ Himself will wake us; at His coming all
believers will be reunited to meet with Christ and live with Him forever.
For now, it is given you to grieve. But now is
not forever. Christ has died, Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Therefore,
encourage one another with these words, for you are forgiven for all your sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture
quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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