1 Thessalonians 4:12Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Do you see how he deals with them? He did not say, "Do not shame yourselves by begging." Yet he made the same thing understood, though he used a condescending form of expression.

He wished both to make them feel how improper it is and not to grieve them too much. Indeed, if our brethren are scandalized by such people, then outsiders are much more scandalized.

They search out a thousand accusations and reproaches when they see a healthy man, able to support himself, asking for alms and needing the help of others. For this they call us sellers of Christ.

By this, he says, "the name of God is blasphemed" (Rom 2:24). But he did not display anything of this kind openly, only what could especially touch them, namely disorderliness.

That is, so that you do not behave improperly by begging alms from unbelievers. The Apostle did well to say this, so as not to grieve them. For, he says, if the faithful are scandalized when they see a healthy man begging alms, for which such people are called Christ-sellers, then unbelievers are scandalized all the more.

These apostolic words most clearly point to the resurrection of the dead, which will take place when the Lord Christ comes for judgment, certainly over the living and the dead.

But people usually ask whether those whom Christ finds living here, whose person the Apostle represents in himself and makes his contemporaries represent, will never die at all.

Or will they, at that very moment when they are caught up together with the risen in the clouds (1 Thess 4:17) into the air to meet Christ, pass through death into immortality with imperceptible speed?

Indeed, one cannot say that it is impossible for them to die and come to life again during that interval of time while they are being lifted upward through the air.

Everything is governed by the goodness of the Master. Whatever happens to us, we must not receive it as a grievance, even if in the present it painfully touches our weakness.

We do not know the laws according to which everything that happens to us is sent by the Master for our good. Yet we must be certain that what has happened to us is undoubtedly beneficial.

It is useful either to us ourselves, because of the reward for patience, or to the soul taken from us. Thus, by lingering further in this life, it would not be infected by the vice that has settled in the world.

When the great Basil among the saints passed from human life to God and became for the churches a common cause of lamentation, our sister and teacher still remained in life.

I went in haste to share with her the grief over our brother. But she, like those skilled in the art of guiding horses, allowed me for a little while to be carried away by the impulse of passion.

Then she began to restrain me with her word, as with a kind of bridle. By her reasoning she calmed my troubled soul, and she uttered this apostolic saying: one must not grieve over those who have fallen asleep, because such grief belongs only to those who have no hope.

Since my heart was still boiling with sorrow, I said, "Is this possible for people to fulfill, when in each one there is some natural aversion to death?

"Those who see the dying bear the sight with difficulty. And those whom death approaches flee from it as much as they can."

Nevertheless we teach you this, that you may progress more and more in increasing it.

If you remind me of that grief, that Valentinian departed this life early, I do not deny that he died at an untimely age. We would have wished to sustain that age by the times of our own life.

Thus he who could not enjoy his own years might have lived to ours. But I ask: is there any sensation after death, or not? If there is, he lives.

Precisely because it exists, he enjoys eternal life. And how can he be without sensation whose soul both lives and flourishes, and will return to the body and make it live?

The Apostle cries out: "We do not want you, brethren, to be ignorant concerning those who have died, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have died in Jesus" (1 Thess 4:13-14).

For life remains for those for whom resurrection remains.

The words, “that you may walk properly toward those outside,” the Apostle himself explained by adding, “and that you may need nothing.” It is shameful, he says, to live in inactivity and not to provide what is necessary by one’s own work, but to love a beggar’s life and wait for the generosity of others.

And when any righteous person among them dies, they rejoice and give thanks to God. They accompany his body as though he were moving from one place to another. And when a child is born to one of them, they glorify God. But when an infant dies, they glorify God even more, because the infant lived in the world without sin. If they see that one of them dies in sins, they weep bitterly and groan over him as one going to condemnation.

In the Gospel reading about the ten virgins, beloved brethren, which we heard, it is said that all the virgins prepared their lamps. Yet the foolish did not also provide themselves with oil, while the wise filled their vessels with oil.

But since the bridegroom delayed his coming, they all became drowsy and slept (Mt 25:5). At midnight a loud cry rang out: "Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him" (Mt 25:6).

Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps (Mt 25:7). The lamps of the foolish went out, and they asked the others, who had oil in their vessels, to give them some oil.

But they answered, "Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you. Rather, go and buy for yourselves" (Mt 25:9). While they went to buy, the bridegroom came.

The distinction between beneficial and harmful sorrow must remain in our heart. Through it the spirit, devoted to eternal things, does not grow weak over the loss of temporal consolation. Rather, it experiences beneficial sorrow over those works in which it thinks it has done something either too little or not as it should. Therefore Paul teaches that both kinds of sorrow differ no less in their effect than in their recompense. Finally, he shows that one contains a beneficial outcome, salvation, while the other contains a fatal outcome, death, saying: “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Cor 7:10).

“That you may need nothing.” Since poverty and need for the most part arise from people’s own negligence and idleness, the Apostle rightly sets before Christians the requirement that they strive to be in need of nothing.

The purpose of the good conduct proposed is a seemly walk toward outsiders. Outsiders are non-Christians, at that time Gentiles and Jews. The Church is the house of God.

Those who are not in it are outside it, or outsiders. The Apostle commands Christians to conduct themselves among them in a seemly way, and in relation to them.

Thus even the visible conduct of Christians should be pure, radiant, and worthy of general approval, so that no one could say anything evil about them.