So encourage one another with these words.)
Paul has just told a grieving church how the Lord will return, raise the dead, and gather every believer to Himself. Now he tells them what to do with that news: say it to each other.
"Therefore" — comfort built on the order of events
The word that opens the verse points backwards. The Thessalonians feared their dead friends would lose out. The answer came as a fresh message that sorted out the sequence.
But how so, since they sleep in death, and He comes from heaven in power and glory? What follows is a most enlightening and fresh message, "in the word of the Lord." It clears up the difficulty by unfolding the order of events, and so the way by which the sleeping saints are to come with Jesus. The Thessalonian believers had imagined the departed would miss the joyful reunion. They thought the dead would at least come behind the living who remain. But it is not so... Here we learn how it can be: He first descends for them, and afterwards brings them with Him.
The comfort Paul gives
Notice what Paul does not say to the grieving. He never tells them they will soon join their friends in heaven.
The Lord's coming was not a strange doctrine to them. Paul could not think of a Christian dying without his going to heaven. Yet the comfort he gives is not that, but their return with Jesus. Death did not deprive them of this; God would have them with Him... Christ's first coming so finished redemption and the putting away of sin that His second coming means glory and being with Him, for dead and living saints alike... If I were to comfort the friends of a departed saint by saying that God would bring him with Jesus when He came again, what would they think of me? That I was mad or wild. Yet such is the comfort Paul gives to the Thessalonians, and no other. Elsewhere he teaches plainly that the soul of the saint goes to be with Christ when he dies.
Comfort at a graveside
The comfort is tied to these words. That rules out some familiar sayings — even one David himself used.
The coming of the Lord is the one bright guiding star on faith's horizon... The one who is dying has no right to say, "You will meet me where I am going," for that may never happen. Instead, we shall meet in the clouds, and the Lord Himself will welcome us together in the air. The one left behind has no right to draw his comfort, as David rightly did in his day, from the thought, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." His comfort should be this instead: "since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."
The phrase that carries the weight
One clause holds the greatest comfort of all. Paul places it last, just before the command.
But there is another privilege marked out here, and in itself it is far more precious. "So we will always be with Him." This is the deepest joy of the state a saint enters at death — to be with Christ... Only that state was intermediate and imperfect, however blessed. For the body was not glorified; nor were all the saints gathered. At His coming all will be complete and perfect for the heavenly family, "and so we will always be with the Lord." What could be missing from such words of infinite and everlasting joy? What could be added?
A ministry open to everyone
The word can also be read as "encourage." This work belongs to every believer, not to teachers only, and it is needed in a world growing darker. The Rapture is the catching up of believers to meet the Lord in the air.
In that chapter the apostle had been expanding on the details of the Rapture. The very thought of that wonderful moment thrills the hearts of all who love the Lord. He ends by saying, "Therefore encourage one another with these words." What a ministry of comfort is open to each of us, as we take up this call. This world is moving faster and faster towards the day of judgment. The spirit of anti-Christ is already at work. Persecution is the lot of "all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus"... but the end for the believer is sure and glorious.
The same letter sets comfort beside other duties believers owe each other.
The Apostle also urges us to build one another up in our most holy faith. So the Christian company according to God consists of believers who love one another, comfort one another, and build one another up (1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9, 18; 5:11).
Summary
- Grief — the Thessalonians feared their dead friends would lose out at the Lord's return. Paul writes to answer that fear.
- Words — the comfort rests on words given "in the word of the Lord," not on guesswork about the unseen world.
- Order — those words settle the sequence: the Lord first descends for His sleeping people, and afterwards brings them with Him.
- Reunion — no one is left behind. The Lord welcomes the living and the dead together in the clouds.
- Ministry — "one another" makes every believer a comforter, called to love, comfort and build up the rest.