But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. (14) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. (15) For this we say to you, by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. (16)For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. (18) Therefore comfort one another with these words.

The first letter to the Thessalonians was written by the apostle Paul. In our verses today Paul is addressing a problem of some of the faithful in that early church, which was that they were were expecting the immanent return of Christ and were grieving that the dead in Christ would miss out on the second coming. Paul sets down a great principle here that the man/woman who has died in Christ is still in Christ and will rise in Him – a relationship that nothing can break. The promise of Christ’s second coming is certain because of the resurrection of Christ and we have His direct word on it.

Sleep is a euphemism for death in this passage but sleep here does not mean “soul sleep” (which is not biblical). Sleep implies death is only temporary and after physical death the souls of the faithful will be with the Lord instantly until He returns, at which time He will raise our resurrected bodies. To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. The spirits of the departed are with the Lord now – Paul here does not discuss the Old Testament saints but speaks to new believers, his point being both deceased and living saints will receive new eternally resurrected bodies when Christ Jesus returns. The practical value of Christ’s certain second coming is hope and comfort in this present world. Death being a better place is only wishful thinking outside of Christ.

I leave these verses with a quote from c.s. Lewis: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”