1 Thessalonians 4:18-The Thessalonians Were to Exhort and Encourage One Another with Paul’s Teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

1 Thessalonians 4:13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 1 Thessalonians 4:15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 4:16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. (NET)

The command in 1 Thessalonians 4:18 is an inference from Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17.

It required that each member of the Thessalonian Christian community was to begin to make it their habit of exhorting and encouraging one another by means of his teaching as recorded in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and continue doing so.

Thus, the Thessalonians were to exhort and encourage one another with this teaching.

In other words, the command in verse 18 is inferring something from Paul’s teaching in verses 13-17.

To “infer” something is to derive a conclusion from facts or premises.

Therefore, the command in 1 Thessalonians 4:18 is deriving a conclusion from the facts and premises presented by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17.

Thus, the conclusion that the Thessalonian Christian community must derive from Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 is that they must begin to make it their habit of exhorting and encouraging one another by means of Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and continue doing so.

Now, in 1 Thessalonians 4:18, the verb parakaleō, “encourage” contains two ideas.

The first is “to encourage” since it pertains to causing someone to be encouraged either by verbal or non-verbal means.

The word means to fill someone with courage or strength of purpose and suggests raising of someone’s confidence especially by an external agency such as a teacher.

The second idea is “to exhort” in the sense of authoritatively training the body of Christ through instruction in the sense of communicating the gospel message to them so as to compel obedience in every area of their lives.

Therefore, this verb parakaleō in 1 Thessalonians 4:18 is expressing the idea that each member of the Thessalonian Christian community was to encourage one another by means of Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 in the sense of filling each other with confidence with regards to the future of the dead in Christ in relation to the rapture or resurrection of the church.

Also, this verb is expressing the idea that each member of the Thessalonian Christian community was to exhort one another in the sense that they were authoritatively training each other through instruction with regards to the dead in Christ in relation to the rapture.

The present imperative form of the verb parakaleō is an ingressive-progressive imperative which has the force of begin and continue to do something implying that that this action was not being practiced.

Therefore the present imperative form of this verb indicates that each member of the Thessalonian Christian community was to begin to make it their habit of exhorting and encouraging one another by means of Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and continue to do so.

It implies they were not doing this prior to receiving this epistle.

This is indicated by the fact that 1 Thessalonians 4:13 indicates that the Thessalonians were emotionally upset about the dead in Christ because they erroneously thought that the dead in Christ would not take part in the rapture.

They might have erroneously believed that the Christian will never die.

However, more than likely because they were living as though Christ could come back at any moment, they never considered the fate of those who died as Christians.

This interpretation is indicated by the comparative clause in 1 Thessalonians 4:13.

We noted that it presents an emphatic comparison between the Thessalonian Christian community never experiencing emotional distress with regards to the dead in Christ and the non-Christian who does experience emotional distress with regards to their fellow non-Christian.

We noted that this “confident expectation” was that of receiving a resurrection body.

Again, as we noted, the comparison is between the non-Christian who does not have a confident expectation of receiving a resurrection body and the Christian who does.

Thus, this comparative clause is expressing the idea of the non-Christian not possessing a confident expectation of receiving a resurrection body.

Now, a comparison of this command in 1 Thessalonians 4:18 and the contents of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 indicate that the Thessalonians were to begin to make it their habit of exhorting and encouraging each other for two reasons.

The first reason is that God the Father through the personal agency of His Son Jesus will certainly bring with Jesus those Christians who have died at the rapture.

The second reason is that these dead Christians will receive their resurrection bodies first before those Christians who are left alive on the earth at the time of the rapture.

Thus, Paul is reassuring the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 that the dead in Christ have a confident expectation of receiving a resurrection body like those Christians who are still alive at the time of the rapture.

Therefore, they must not grieve as the non-Christian does when a loved one departs this life.

Richard Mayhue writes “Paul did not write this section to satisfy the prophetic curiosity of the people or to present some spectacular doomsday scenario. Actually, he wrote to the Thessalonians who were uninformed and worried. So he says comfort one another with these words. They would be comforted by: (1) the fact of these events; (2) their certainty; (3) their order, with the dead being resurrected first; (4) the expectation of reunion; (5) the irreversibility of these events; and (6) the eternal prospect of these events. Their hope was comprised of a coming resurrection, known by a revelation from the Lord, at the return of Christ, when the bodies of the dead would be redeemed from the grave and then the living church would be raptured to be reunited with fellow believers and the Lord forever. This must be ‘the blessed hope’ (Titus 2:13) which explains why the Thessalonians were patiently waiting for God’s Son from heaven (1:10).”[1]

[1] Mayhue, R. (1999). 1 & 2 Thessalonians: Triumphs and Trials of a Consecrated Church (p. 129). Fearn: Christian Focus Publications.