Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Thessalonians · About this commentary
The Dead in Christ Will Rise First
1 Thessalonians 4:15-16
15 For this we tell you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep. · WEB
The anxiety was that the dead had missed it; the answer is that they go first.
This we tell you by the word of the Lord. Paul flags the source, which he does not do lightly — what follows is not inference but revelation received.
The content answers a fear the letter has not yet stated outright: we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep. The double negative in the Greek is emphatic. The living have no advantage whatever.
That identifies the grief precisely. These people were not doubting the resurrection; they were afraid their dead had been left behind, present at neither the coming nor the kingdom that followed. Paul removes the fear by reversing the order.
Verse 16 describes the descent, and it is noisy. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout — keleusma G2752, a word used nowhere else in Scripture, the cry by which a commander starts a movement — with the voice of the archangel and with God's trumpet. Nothing here is quiet or private.
And then the clause the paragraph exists for: the dead in Christ will rise first. Not first in importance but first in sequence, and the comfort is entirely in the order.
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