The Day of the Lord
1 Thessalonians 5:1–11
After assuring the Thessalonians that the dead will not be at a disadvantage when Jesus returns (4:13–18), Paul goes on to address the question of how the living should prepare themselves for this event, admonishing them to continue in faith, love, and hope. Though he warns that the day of the Lord will come suddenly and without warning, he assures the new converts in Thessalonica that God has destined them for salvation.
The Suddenness of the Day of the Lord (5:1–3)
1Concerning times and seasons, brothers, you have no need for anything to be written to you. 2For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. 3When people are saying, “Peace and security,” then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
NT: Matt 24; Mark 13
Lectionary: 1 Thess 5:1–6, 9–11; Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great
The opening words of this chapter indicate a shift to a new topic: the times and seasons, a phrase that early Christians used to refer to the timing of the final consummation of God’s plan (see Acts 1:7). Paul had apparently already taught them that the day of the Lord will come when they do not expect it, and he denies that they need anything to be written about it. Nevertheless, he goes ahead and discusses the issue anyway in order to deepen and reinforce what they already know (see 1 Thess 4:9). The phrase “day of the Lord” refers to the same event as the “†parousia” of the preceding section. The varying descriptions are indicative of Paul’s varying emphases: there it was comfort, here it is judgment. The expression “day of the Lord” and related expressions such as “that day” occur often in the prophets to describe the time when God will come to punish people for their wickedness and deliver the people of God from their oppressors. As the prophet Obadiah warns, “Near is the day of the LORD / against all the nations! / As you have done, so will it be done to you, / your conduct will come back upon your own head” (v. 15).1 For Paul, the “Lord” is Jesus, and the “day of the Lord” is his return to judge the nations (2 Thess 1:7–8).
Paul compares the sudden coming of the day of the Lord to the nighttime invasion by a burglar and to the sudden onset of childbirth. The former image is intuitive; we are at our most vulnerable when asleep, oblivious to what is going on around us. The only way to prepare for such an event would be to stay awake and watch. Childbirth, however, no longer obviously evokes sudden disaster from which there is no escape. In our age of scheduled inductions and caesarean sections, childbirth frequently occurs right on schedule. But absent these interventions labor can begin at any point over a frustratingly wide span of time, and of course childbirth is painful and the rate of mortality is higher in the absence of modern medicine (see Isa 13:8; Jer 6:24). Paul’s point is that the calamitous day of the Lord cannot be predicted ahead of time. What we know very well about the times and seasons (1 Thess 5:1–2) is that we don’t know much at all! The day of the Lord will come at a time we do not expect.
When the day of the Lord comes, people will be obliviously speaking of peace and security, assuming that life will go on as it always has. This image is similar to Jesus’s parable of the rich fool who plans to build bigger barns to hold his growing wealth, pathetically ignorant of his own imminent demise (Luke 12:13–21). The self-assured and comfortable luxuriate in safety and prosperity, oblivious of imminent destruction and total loss. Readers have long recognized the similarity between this passage and the Old Testament prophets’ condemnations of those who cry, “Peace, peace!” when there is no peace (e.g., Jer 6:13–15; 8:11; Ezek 13:10). More recently, some scholars have argued that “peace and security” was a Roman slogan that Paul cites in order to challenge the empire’s pretensions to bring stability to the world.2 The word “peace” is indeed very common in imperial propaganda. To take one example among many, the Res gestae divi Augusti, the funerary inscription commemorating the deeds of Augustus in AD 13, brags about how Augustus “restored to a state of peace [eirēnē]” the provinces of the Gauls, the Spains, and Germany (26.2–3). Regardless of whether Paul intended to mock the empire, his main point is that the day of the Lord will shatter the foolish self-assurance of those who put their trust in present comfort. Unlike Luke 12:13–21 and the prophets, Paul’s point is not to persuade his audience away from a path of destruction but rather to encourage them with the news that they have already left it (see 1 Thess 5:4).
Figure 8. Octavian. Struck 28 BC in Ephesus. Obverse depicts Octavius with the inscription “IMP-CAESAR-DIVI-F-COS-VI-LIBERTATIS-P-R-VINDEX” (“Emperor Caesar, son of the Divine [Julius], Consul for the sixth time, Defender of the Freedom of the Roman People”). Reverse depicts Pax with the inscription “PAX” (peace). [Lot 208 / Numisbids.com]
Children of the Day (5:4–11)
4But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief. 5For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. 6Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober. 7Those who sleep go to sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we are of the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation. 9For God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live together with him. 11Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.
OT: Isa 59:17
NT: Matt 25:1–12; Eph 6:13–17
In the preceding verses Paul described how the day of the Lord will be experienced by those who trust in the security of this life. Now Paul assures the Thessalonians that they should look forward to the day of the Lord with hope, confident that God has destined them to gain salvation. Though the day of the Lord will indeed arrive like a thief at night, people will experience this event differently depending on their own preparation for it. The Thessalonians are children of the light and children of the day, but all the rest of humanity belongs to the darkness. In this dichotomy, night is associated with sleeping, drunkenness, and the experience of God’s wrath when the unexpected day comes. In contrast, the day is associated with the Lord’s presence, watchfulness, sobriety, and the hope of salvation.
The division between light and darkness is common in ancient Judaism and in other cultures as well, possessing an intuitive appeal. Eugene Boring rightly notes that “humanity for most of its history had lived in a world without the instant availability of artificial light. The sun was the source of life and light; darkness was deep, dangerous, and all-permeating.”3 It is not surprising that many would think of good and evil in terms of this contrast. A well-known recent example is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a book that uses language of night and dark to describe the devastation of the author’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp.4 In ancient Jewish and Christian texts, the day and the light are associated with God’s presence (John 1:1–18; 1 Tim 6:16; Rev 21:23), knowledge of the truth (John 1:9; Eph 1:18), moral behavior (Matt 5:14–16), and the day of judgment when God will bring to light what people have done (1 Cor 3:13; 4:5; Heb 10:25). Night and darkness are linked to the opposites of these things: the absence of God’s presence (Matt 8:12), opposition to God (Luke 22:53), ignorance of the truth (Eph 4:18), and immoral behavior that seeks to avoid detection (John 3:20; Eph 5:11). One of the Dead Sea Scrolls known as the War Scroll uses language similar to 1 Thess 5, speaking of the coming day when there will be a battle between the “children of light” and “children of darkness.”
In designating the Thessalonians “children of the light and children of the day,” Paul means that they should joyfully look forward to “the day of the Lord.” The day of the Lord is, in a sense, their time, the coming of their master and the fulfillment of their hope. This gives the image of the “thief in the night” a different application in this letter from what it has in the Gospels, where it stands as a warning to the Church. According to Paul, Christians will not experience the Lord’s sudden appearance as a horrifying home invasion, because those who know him are always preparing for that day through lives of prayer and hope. In this way they always live “in the day.” St. Cyprian of Carthage expresses this well in his commentary on the Our Father: “To the sons of light, even in the night there is day. For when is he without light who has light in his heart? Or when does he not have sun and day, to whom Christ is Sun and Day?”5
One might accuse Paul of making things simpler than they actually are by dividing humanity into “people of the day” and “people of the night.” Christians are aware of areas of darkness in their own lives, and it is obvious that truth (and therefore “light”) can be found outside the Church. Paul might counter that this objection fails to take seriously God’s call on Christians’ lives: they have received God’s Holy Spirit, a fact that makes it legitimate to speak of a crucial difference between them and others. Moreover, Paul may have had pastoral reasons for using a simple dichotomy between insiders and outsiders. The Thessalonians’ conversion had triggered major disruption in their lives, including opposition from their fellow citizens. It would be comforting to them to see the world framed in simple terms, assuring them that they had found the source of hope.6 It is also important not to press this difference more than Paul does. Paul was not so naïve as to assume that there are two essential kinds of people—good and bad (see below on v. 6). He knew all too well that it was possible for the Thessalonians to fall away (3:5; 4:8).
In verse 6 Paul shifts from reminders and encouragement to exhortation. In order for them to be children of the day, it was necessary for the Thessalonians to live accordingly, remaining alert and sober, rather than sleeping and getting drunk. Though the biblical tradition is very positive about wine (Ps 104:14–15), it routinely condemns drunkenness (e.g., Rom 13:13; Eph 5:18; though see John 2:10). Paul’s point here, however, is not to condemn drinking any more than it is to condemn sleeping. Instead, he is continuing to develop the metaphors of night and day. “Night” is the realm of those who do not know God, and sleeping and drunkenness are characteristic nighttime activities. As Paul puts it in verse 7, Those who sleep go to sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. This refers to a way of life that is immoral and oblivious to the coming of the Lord. Opposed to this is the life of the “day,” which refers both to the coming “day of the Lord” and to the moral life that is expected of those who wait for it.
Christians belong to the day and should therefore be sober, which refers not to abstention from alcohol but to alert readiness for the Lord’s coming. Without discarding the day/night imagery, Paul at this point draws in another cluster of metaphors, linking sobriety to putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation. Roman breastplates and helmets would have been familiar sights to Paul and the Thessalonians, but the main inspiration for this image was Scripture. Isaiah 59:17 says that God “put on justice as a breastplate and put the helmet of salvation on his head” (my translation). Paul places this divine armor on the church, and he adapts it to match the triad with which he began the letter, changing “justice and salvation” to “faith and love and the . . . hope for salvation.” The image of armor suggests that those who have received faith, love, and hope will be well prepared to endure difficulties to come. As St. Cyril of Alexandria puts it, “the soldier of Christ” who “fights not with breastplate of bright iron” but “in the armor of God, faith, hope, and love” will be “vigorous and unbreakable in spirit, with a heart not easily shaken, but, rather, firm and unswerving.”7 Are the Thessalonians already wearing this armor, or does he want them to put it on, as in the better-known exhortation of Ephesians: “Put on the armor of God” (6:11)? In the Greek it is not clear whether the “putting on” has already happened or if they are to be sober by continuing to wear the armor.8 Theologically, however, Paul’s answer would be both. They are already protected by faith, love, and hope (1 Thess 1:3), but they must put them on again and again to continue and grow (3:12; 5:11).
God has destined the Thessalonians not for wrath but for salvation. The “wrath” refers to the sudden appearance of the day of the Lord, the time when evil will be defeated. Paul is confident that this day will not be a day of wrath for Christians, because it is God’s plan to rescue them (see 1:10). In modern English, “salvation” has come to refer largely to the remission of sins, but the Greek word sōtēria referred to any sort of salvation, political, bodily, or otherwise.9 For Paul, salvation refers to much more than forgiveness of sins—an idea that isn’t even mentioned in 1 Thessalonians. In this letter, the hoped-for salvation is that one will be found blameless on the day of the Lord and be joined with him forever.
The Thessalonians’ hope of salvation is based on God’s plan: God did not destine us for wrath. Throughout the letter Paul stresses God’s prior initiative in bringing the Thessalonians to salvation (e.g., 1:4). This “destining” does not mean that their fate is predetermined. The Thessalonians are still free to choose good or evil, which is why Paul bothers to write to them in the first place. But God has appointed them for salvation. It is God’s plan that they should attain it, and this plan is the basis of their hope.
After “God did not destine us for wrath,” one might have expected Paul to finish the sentence with the parallel expression “but God destined us for salvation.” Instead, he writes, “to gain salvation.” This phrase, which could be more woodenly translated as “for the obtaining of salvation,” troubles some commentators because it could be taken to suggest that salvation belongs to Christians as their own possession, perhaps implying that they earned it themselves.10 This worry is unnecessary. For Paul, the salvation of Christians on the day of the Lord is something that God does through Jesus, but this does not exclude human participation. The essence of this salvation is that when the Lord returns he will find Christians “blameless in holiness” (3:13; 5:23). As Theodoret of Cyrus puts it while commenting on this verse, God “called us not to punish us but so that he might deem us worthy of salvation.”11 Through Christ, it is God’s plan to mold the Thessalonians in faith, love, and hope so that they will be found holy on the day of the Lord.
In comparison to Paul’s other letters, 1 Thessalonians does not put much emphasis on Jesus’s death, but here Paul describes Jesus as the one who effects salvation by dying for us. The conviction that Jesus died for other people was widespread in early Christianity (e.g., Mark 10:45; 1 Tim 2:6). Sometimes it was explicitly said that Jesus’s death was for sins, as in 1 Cor 15:3 (“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures”). In 1 Thess 5:10 Paul says that Jesus died “for us” so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live together with him. That is, because of Christ’s death, both the living (those who are awake) and the dead (those who are asleep) will live together with Christ (see 4:14). Then, picking up the call to encourage one another from 4:18, Paul again challenges them to use what he has written to encourage one another, adding that they should build one another up with this message.
Reflection and Application (5:4–11)
Hope, one New Testament scholar recently suggested, is the central idea in 1 Thessalonians.12 The word Paul uses, elpis, like its English translation, can mean many things. A hope can be a mere wish or desire for something, like hoping for good weather. Hopes can turn out to be ill founded, like the hope of the Protestant evangelist Harold Camping, who taught that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011, or the false hope of those who have been tricked into trusting rich people who seek only to take advantage of them (Sir 13:1–7). “Hope” can describe mere optimism, the expectation that things are generally going to go well. More cynically, some have suggested that hope is the indefinite deferral of happiness: we hope in order to console ourselves with lies that make life more bearable. As the English poet Alexander Pope famously puts it, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: / Man never is, but always to be blest.”13
For Paul, hope does not mean expecting life to go well. He tells the Thessalonians to expect just the opposite: they should expect trials (1 Thess 3:3). Hope, for Paul, was not a mere emotion or sunny outlook, nor was it reducible to information about the future. The hope of which Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians is a God-given habit of mind that produces joy in the midst of suffering. It is characterized by endurance or patience (1:3), providing confidence that God has conquered death through Christ (4:13; 5:8). In other words, for Paul, hope looks forward to a glorious future, but also it offers a changed life in the present (see Rom 5:2–5). From this perspective, it is easy to see why later tradition called hope a “theological virtue.” It is “theological” in the sense that it is a gift from God and helps the recipient to know God. It is a “virtue” because it is not simply an idea or emotion but rather a firm disposition that changes one’s entire outlook on life. The medieval Irish hymn “Be Thou My Vision” expresses this perfectly with a line that echoes 1 Thess 5:10: “Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Knowing God reframes how we view reality, giving us “light.” Hope brings a new way of life, one that is lived in light of our final end.14
1. See also Isa 13:6; Joel 1:15; 2:1; Zeph 1:14.
2. See especially Jeffrey A. D. Weima, 1–2 Thessalonians, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 348–51. See also the cautious remarks of Joel R. White, “‘Peace and Security’ (1 Thessalonians 5.3): Is It Really a Roman Slogan?,” NTS 59 (2013): 382–95.
3. M. Eugene Boring, I & II Thessalonians, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 181.
4. Elie Wiesel, Night (London: Penguin, 2008).
5. “The Lord’s Prayer,” in Treatises, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, FC 36 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), 159–60.
6. John M. G. Barclay, “Conflict in Thessalonica,” CBQ 55 (1993): 517–20.
7. Festal Letters 1–12, trans. Philip R. Amidon, FC 118 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 197.
8. The grammatical question hinges on the relationship of the aorist participle “putting on” to the present-tense main verb “let us be sober.” See the discussion in Weima, 1–2 Thessalonians, 362.
9. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989), s.v. “salvation,” 1.a.
10. E.g., Weima, 1–2 Thessalonians, 367.
11. Interpretatio in xiv epistulas sancti Pauli (PG 82:652 [my translation]).
12. Nijay K. Gupta, 1–2 Thessalonians, NCC (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 1.
13. Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. See the discussion of this poem and the overall argument of Terry Eagleton, Hope without Optimism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 42.
14. On all of these points, see Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope).