The sleeping kind of death versus the sickness unto death – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 1

Have a listen to the Johnny Cash song, “Ain’t No Grave.” What is it about?

Is Cash’s song about zombies?

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4. 

Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.”

When Paul writes “brothers and sisters,” he is addressing Christians in the church.  He suggests that we Christians have a different perspective on death from the common perspective of the rest of the world around us.  Paul hints at this different perspective when he uses the word “sleep.”  He is saying that there is a kind of death that is like sleeping.  And he says that the sleeping kind of death is available to us, to the point where we do not have to grieve like those who have no hope.  What is he talking about?  It sounds vague and mysterious.

First of all, Paul is not saying that all grief is bad.  When Paul says, “You do not grieve like the rest,” he is not saying that it is wrong for Christians to grieve when loved ones die.  Grief is normal.  Grief is good, actually.  We should grieve because we are sad, and we hurt, and we miss the people who have passed. 

God is a relational God, and he created us to be relational.  So we will naturally feel loss when someone is no longer a regular part of our lives.  Therefore, we Christians need not avoid grief, or fake that we are okay.  Expressing the emotion of grief and crying and hurting is normal. 

My grandmother passed in 2007, and I sometimes still feel a tinge of grief when I think about her, as we were close.  That memory and grief honors the relationship, as it recognizes the loss.

Too often, though, we can attempt to hold grief in, or we act as though grief is not affecting us.  People ask how we’re doing, and we quickly say, “I’m good, I’m okay.”  Yet deep inside, we’re hurting. When we hide our grief, when we try to bury it, we can feel very lonely.

Far better to express our grief openly together with others.  Paul would later write in Romans 12, “Mourn with those who mourn”.  It is a powerful thing to mourn in loving care of trusted friends and family, because just as you will be there for them, they can be there for you.  Grief activates a very important togetherness. 

But notice what Paul says here in 1^st Thessalonians 4, verse 13.  There are different kinds of grief: hopeful grief and hopeless grief.  When Christians die, yes we should grieve, but our grief has hope.  That hope affects our grief.  Hope can take the edge off the grief.  Hope can give us a different perspective on our grief.

Grief is still grief, and thus even when Christians die, it is right to feel deeply sad. But remember hope, Paul says.  When Christians die, hope is not lost.  When Christians die, we hold on to hope.  Why?  Because when Christians die, they die the sleeping kind of death. 

When you are asleep, inevitably, what will eventually happen?  You wake up!  When Christians die, we die the sleeping kind of death, and we have hope that we will wake up to new life.  Thus, when Christians die, we have hope.

Paul contrasts this hopeful grief with the kind of grief experienced by “the rest of mankind.”  The rest of mankind are those who do not view this life from a Christian perspective, and thus their grieving is very different.  They grieve as well, but without hope.  A word for that kind of hopeless grief is despair. Despair is very difficult to deal with.  The Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard calls despair, “the sickness unto death.”  In that title, you can feel the despair.

But Christians, however, have hope in the face of death.  Why do we Christians have that astounding hope? We find out in the next post.

Photo by Ann Danilina on Unsplash