One of the most glorious truths is the real hope that God offers his people. It's a real, substantial hope of a future on a renewed earth, with renewed bodies, free of suffering, with God himself living among us.
Where might we look in the Bible to see this renewed-earth future promised?
Last week, I kicked us off with a look at 1 Corinthians 15. Today, I want to look at 1 Thessalonians 4.
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For 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. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 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. After that, we who are still alive and are left 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 for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
The Crisis: Christians who have died
Reading between the lines, there is a problem. Some of the Christians in Thessalonica have died.
This is a disaster; the Christians in Thessalonica were living with real hope. They looked forward to the day when Jesus would return, and bring about the future they were looking forward to. It was this hope that energised their faith, their love and their endurance (1 Thess 1:3). Their Christianity was characterised as waiting "for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, who rescued us from the coming wrath." (1 Thess 1:10).
But now, some of the Christians there had died, which meant they would miss out when this wonderful future came to pass.
Jesus will come back … and so will they
Firstly, Paul assures them that God's plan is still on track. Jesus will come back.
But, more to the point, so will those Christians who have died trusting Christ.
For 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.
Those who have died will be first to be with Jesus
In fact, far from losing out, those who have died in the faith of Christ will actually be the first ones to make it when the future arrives.
According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
Notice carefully, though, how they will be first. Paul does not say that they will be first because they are already with Christ (true though that is). Rather, he says that they will come back to life and so will be with Christ on this climactic day before those of us who are still alive when it happens.
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. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
We will all be together again
The conclusion of all this is that we will all be together again. That's to say: We will be with Jesus; they will be with Jesus; we will be with them.
After that, we who are still alive and are left 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 for ever.
Paul does not say that we will stay in the air. Rather the air is the place where we will meet Jesus.
We would have to look elsewhere in the New Testament for explicit warrant to say that we'll then be with Jesus, and with our Christian brothers and sisters who had died, on a renewed earth. But that thought is quite clear even here - implicitly.
"The Lord himself will come down from heaven." Jesus is returning from heaven, coming down back to earth. The book of Acts also foretold that event: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11).
The apostles who watched the ascension saw him leave earth to go to heaven. His route was to go up, from the earth, through the sky, until they could see him no more. Two angels appeared to tell them that Jesus would one day reverse this journey - he would return from heaven to earth, presumably via the sky. So, no wonder, when Paul sees us meeting Jesus on his way down from heaven, he says we'll see him in the sky. We'd be foolish to infer that we would then remain in the sky.
Hope when they come back
Yet again, in 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul comforts Christians who have lost loved ones to death.
His comfort is not to tell them how good a time their loved ones are having, even now, with Jesus.
His comfort is also not to tell them that one day they, too, will die, and when they do they will be reunited with those they love.
Both would have been true. Paul, instead, holds out a greater comfort. He knows that the best promise of all is that those who have died will return to this earth, with Jesus, and so it is that we will be with them again, with Jesus, on earth.
What a future God has indeed promised!
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