Death involves every part of our being. When God said to Adam in the garden, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the day that you eat of it you will surely die,” the man ate of it and died. He died in every part of his being. He had a spirit and a soul and a body and he died in each one. He died in spirit, and he showed it by hiding from God. He died in soul because all the corruptions of anger and lust and hate and jealousy and pride—all the sins we know so well—these began to enter the race. Then, finally, he died in body also. When the Lord Jesus Christ transforms us, He saves us in spirit and soul so that we have a new spirit and a new soul, and by means of death are taken into the presence of Himself. And then at our resurrection He saves us in body also. It becomes, not just a spiritual salvation, not just a soul salvation, but a whole salvation. God made us spirit, soul and body, and He intends for us to be spirit, soul and body.
We have a description of that final victory in 1 Thessalonians, where Paul is once again answering the kinds of questions that arose about these things in the Gentile churches to which he had carried the Gospel. The Gentiles did not have much of a background in this area. Their understanding of the afterlife was based upon Platonic philosophy in which only the soul and the spirit were of value. The body was linked to earth; it was that which drags us down. Therefore, salvation, according to Platonism, was to be free of the body. This was their background. So when Paul came preaching from an entirely different perspective, their questions lingered and they asked them again and again.
Now at Thessalonica they were especially concerned with the doctrine of the Lord’s return, and so when Paul writes to answer their questions he speaks about how the return of Jesus Christ affects us. He tells them that they have to understand that those of us who have died are in their soul and spirit with Jesus. When Jesus Christ returns these are not going to be left behind in heaven. Rather, they’re going to be brought with Him. In other words, when Jesus descends to this earth, they are going to descend as well. Then I want you to notice that it is not the only direction we have. There is a downward direction, the descent of the soul and the spirit of those who are with the Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time there is an ascension, a raising of the bodies of those who have died and, therefore, obviously a reuniting of the two in God’s presence.
Look how Paul says it. He says first of all that he does not want them to be ignorant and mourn as those who have no hope because “we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus [that is, who have died believing in Christ] will the Lord bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ [that is, their bodies] shall rise first” (see 1 Thess. 4:13-18).
Then he goes on to explain it in terms of those who are alive at Christ’s coming, saying: “We who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” That’s a great victory; that is a great consummation. And it is this at which Paul looks at the end of this chapter.
