Section 4:13–5:11

Paul taught about when the Lord Jesus would return

Paul explained that when the Lord Jesus returns, God will cause both the Christians who have died and those who will still be alive to ascend to meet the Lord Jesus in the sky. He also explained how the Thessalonians should behave as they waited for the Lord to return.

Paragraph 4:13–18

While Paul was in Thessalonica, he had probably taught the Thessalonians that Jesus would soon return, and the Thessalonians may have assumed that they would all survive until then. But as time passed, some of them died. Those who remained alive had begun to worry whether those believers who had died would see Jesus return. This is the issue Paul was addressing in this paragraph.

4:13a

Brothers: See the note on 1:4.

we do not want you to be uninformed: It may be more natural in your language to translate this as a strong positive sentence. For example:

We want you to know (New Century Version)
-or-
We want you to be quite certain (New Jerusalem Bible)

about those who sleep in death: Paul was not talking about actual sleep here. He was using a polite way to speak about dying. The Berean Standard Bible has added the words in death to make this clear. In your translation, use the common word for dying or an appropriate polite expression.

4:13b

so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope: Paul was not saying that the relatives of a dead person should not mourn or perform a funeral. Rather, he was saying that they should not grieve in the hopeless way that unbelievers grieve. Because believers know that other believers who die will become alive again, while they may still grieve for them, they do not grieve as people do who are without hope.

like the rest: This phrase refers to unbelievers.

who are without hope: Unbelievers do not believe that they will live again on earth or that they will be with Jesus. See the note in 1:3d on the word hope. In this verse it also means “being certain.” Paul did not doubt at all that Christians would live again one day after Christ returned. It may be necessary in some languages to say what the unbelievers were not certain about. One way to make this clear would be:

who do not confidently expect to live again after they die as you believers expect to do (see SSA)

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.