An Ultimate Destiny
How
are we to understand 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17? We know this to be one of the
earliest writings on what Christians look forward to. But what does it mean?
First
we need to exclude any discussion of life immediately following death. Paul
mentions that later in 2 Corinthians 5 but not here.
This
Thessalonian scripture refers to the ultimate, final destiny of Christians,
what N.T. Wright has called “life after life after death.” It’s what 1
Corinthians 15 speaks of in more detail.
Early
Christians in the first century began to worry about what would happen to some
of their friends who died before Jesus came back. They may have thought Jesus
would return before that ever happened. They believed in resurrection not only
because some had experienced the resurrected Christ, but also because they
believed in the general resurrection as Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus,
did (John 11:24) and as earlier Jews did (2 Maccabees 7:9, 11, 14, 23, 29). Now
that some Christians had died, they didn’t know what to think.
Notice
a couple of key words for a better grasp on what this Thessalonian passage is
all about: the “coming” [parousia] of the Lord (verse 15) and to “meet”
[apantesis] the Lord in the air (verse 17). Biblical scholar F.F. Bruce
commented on verse 17, saying “When a dignitary paid an official visit (parousia)
to a city in Hellenistic times, the action of the leading citizens in going out
to meet him and escort him back on the final stage of his journey was called
the apantesis.”[1]
After giving examples from Cicero, Bruce said, “These analogies (especially in
association with the term parousia) suggest the possibility that the Lord is
pictured here as escorted on the remainder or his journey to earth by his
people – both those newly raised from the dead and those who have remained
alive.”[2]
Theologian
Ben Witherington sees more reasons for thinking this way. “It is probable that
Paul is drawing on the secular parousia imagery,” he said, “for when a king
went to visit a city his herald would go before him to the city walls to
announce with trumpet blast and audible words the coming of the king. It might
even include the ‘cry of command’ to open up the city gates so as to let the
monarch in…” Witherington sees such a view as highly viable when he describes
the meaning of “meet” (apantesin). “The word refers to the action of the
greeting committee that goes out to meet the king or dignitary at his parousia
who is paying an official visit to the town, and escort him back into town on
the final part of his journey.”[3]
British
theologian N.T. Wright also sees the implications of this view. The meeting, he
says, “refers, not to a meeting after which all the participants stay in the
meeting-place, but to a meeting outside the city, after which the civic leaders
escort the dignitary back into the city itself. This passage belongs very
closely with 3:13, and with Philippians 3:20-21, pointing towards the larger
picture of 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and Romans 8:12-30, indicating not that
believers will be taken away from the earth,
leaving it to its fate, but that –in the language of apocalyptic
imagery, not in literal spatial reality – they will ‘meet’ the lord as he comes
from heaven (1:10) and surround him as he comes to inaugurate God’s final
transformative, judging-and-saving reign on earth as in heaven.”[4]
[1] F.F.
Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Waco,
Texas: Word Books, 1982), 102.
[2] F.F.
Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Waco,
Texas: Word Books, 1982), 103.
[3]
Ben Witherington III, Jesus, Paul, and
the End of the World (Downers Grove, Illinois, 1992), 157-158.
[4]
N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son
of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 217-218.
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