THE TWO LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS are often called Paul’s eschatological letters—the ones that instruct us in what will happen at the end of time. We want to know, for example, when Christ will come again, who will be raised, where we will go, and how all this will happen. Apparently the Thessalonians were curious about these questions because each chapter of the first letter ends with a reference to the Second Coming. Chapter 4 focuses on these questions.
Paul’s answers to such questions, however, seem frustratingly elusive. He reassures but does not inform. Christ will come again (4:15), but we don’t know when (5:1–3) We will go to be with the Lord (4:17), but we don’t know exactly where. There is security in being believers, but we cannot know for sure the difference between believers and unbelievers. Paul communicates hope but does not satisfy our curiosity. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that in order to communicate hope—true hope—Paul must avoid satisfying our curiosity. Is it possible that too specific answers about questions to which we can only know partial answers actually discourages hope and instead contributes to a spiral of despair when we learn about our limitations?
We live in an age where marvelous scientific and technological achievements condition us to expect more and more precise answers to all sorts of questions about the lives we lead—including questions normally reserved for philosophers and religionists. What’s wrong with my life? How should I live? Where is all of this going to end up? At some levels science and technology have provided interesting answers to these questions. So our response is to rely more and more on human wisdom.
We also live in an era that is fast approaching the end of a millennium. In such times people traditionally look heavenward for patterns of meaning. Expectations of cataclysmic changes increase. The ambiguities of everyday living seem to grow in importance and blacken the light of the sun. The tricksters of day-to-day existence trip us again and again, and we often retreat to incredible stories, poems, and spiritualities that seem to make meaninglessness the norm rather than the exception. In short, we live in an age where technical precision clashes with a spiritual hunger that only mystery can satisfy.
As Michael Holmes so skillfully reveals in this masterful commentary, our present-day tasks parallel in a remarkable way those facing the apostle Paul as he wrote these two letters. The people of Thessalonica were persecuted Christians, in danger of losing hope in their relatively newfound faith. Paul had left the city abruptly and felt a need to reassure this new believing community. He wanted to give them hope. Indeed, one of the most important lessons we can take away from reading this book is to understand the dos and don’ts of giving hope.
Hope is a common human desire. In order to have meaning in life, we must have confidence that a brighter future lies ahead. We need to know that there is a way out of our human difficulties. Yet it is also apparent that we are severely limited in what we can know about the future (cf. Rom. 8:24). And it is in the interaction between these two truths—our desire for future meaning and the limitations of what we can know—that hope resides. To provide hope we must respect both. If we disregard our desire for future meaning, despair inevitably results. If we disregard our limitations, we begin to predict the future and make mistakes in doing so. The temptation to either of these errors is all the greater because our culture provides a ready market for both. We have a whole industry built around the provision of therapy for despairing people. And we have another whole industry built around predicting the future—prophecy, channeling, and the occult. In either case, true hope is lost.
Paul resists dealing only with the danger of despair, and he resists providing answers that we cannot really know. Instead, he points to Jesus Christ, whose life embodied both human despair and limitation, showing us how faith in God’s sovereignty is our only source of hope.
Terry C. Muck