1 Thessalonians 5.6-11.
In the original text of 1 Thessalonians it was all one continuous stream. No punctuation, no sentences, no paragraphs. We had to figure these things out by their context. The sentences are easy enough to figure out, but naturally Christians are gonna disagree on the rest. Hence different Greek New Testaments disagree on where the paragraph breaks should go… and since I’ve been writing about this book a paragraph at a time, y’might notice I’m not precisely following any one
- Textus Receptus and United Bible Societies’ edition: One big paragraph from 1-11.
- Nestle-Aland: One big paragraph, but they capitalize the first word in the sentences which they think might be the start of a new subject, and therefore are debatably new paragraphs.
- Tyndale House: Four paragraphs. 1-3, 4-5, 6-10, and 11 by itself.
- The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Emphatic Diaglott has 1-4, and 5 all the way to the end of the chapter. But I don’t think its focus was on proper paragraph breaks. (Or on accuracy of translation either, but that’s another discussion.)
Anywho, today’s passage continues along the
1 Thessalonians 5.6-11 KWL 6 So then we shouldn’t be asleep like the others,- Instead we should be awake,
- and we should be sober:
7 Sleepers sleep at night,- and drinkers get drunk at night.
8 We, being in the day, should be sober,- wearing a chestplate of faith and love,
- and a helmet of salvation hope,
9 so God doesn’t assign us to wrath,- but get us saved through our Master, Christ Jesus,
10 who died for us so that whether we’re awake or sleeping,- we might live together with him.
11 So help one another- and build one another into the one body
- —just like you’re doing.
Because supposedly, we’re living
And whether we actively live godly lives, or suck as hard as
Hey look! It’s the armor of God!
I’ve found a lot of Christians read this passage, and immediately wanna talk about some other passage. Namely the
Ephesians 6.10-18 NRSVue 10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power;11 put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,12 for our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on the evil day and, having prevailed against everything, to stand firm.14 Stand, therefore, and belt your waist with truth and put on the breastplate of righteousness15 and lace up your sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace.16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
It’s very Pavlovian. Mention armor and they wanna get all fighty.
Isaiah 59.17 NRSVue - He put on righteousness like a breastplate
- and a helmet of salvation on his head;
- he put on garments of vengeance for clothing
- and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle.
Anyway I may as well deal with verse 8, then get on to the rest of the passage.
Y’might notice the armor the apostles mention here, doesn’t line up with the other verses. In Isaiah and Ephesians the chestplate is of righteousness, not faith in God and love for him and others. Yeah, those things might lead us to righteousness, but not always. It’s not a match.
Okay yes, the helmet of salvation hope in 1 Thessalonians resembles God’s helmet of salvation in Isaiah, and ours in Ephesians. But there’s a big difference between God’s helmet and ours. His represents rescue. Ours represents being rescued. God dresses offensively; we dress defensively. The L
In any event the gear the apostles write about here, describes what Roman sentries commonly wore. They wore chestplates and helmets, lest a rock or arrow take ’em by surprise and kill them before they could alert others. Shields and swords were quickly available, but they didn’t necessarily have those tools on them at all times. They only had to be alert, watchful, and not drunk on duty.
But in this part of 1 Thessalonians, Jesus is the invader. So we’re not being watchful lest we have to defend ourselves against him; we’re joining him. And again, he’s gonna do all the fighting. We’re only meant to be sentries. We’re wearing temporary, short-term defense while we await our general.
It’s not a passage about predestination.
The apostles used a lot of conditional verbs in this passage. We shouldn’t be asleep, but awake and sober.
Well they’re not. Yet Christians don’t like conditional passages when it comes to the End. We like definite passages. We like guarantees. We wanna be saved, and want our bible to tell us we’re saved. So some translations render these verbs as “God will” or “Let us do,” rather than “God may” and “We should.” Some Greek grammarians even claim it’s okay to do this under certain circumstances.
But in the context of this letter, it doesn’t fit. These are directions to the Thessalonians about life under persecution. They aren’t
Luke 12.45-46 NRSVue 45 “But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk,46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful.”
This text is conditional because the sad fact is, not everyone who calls Jesus our Master is going into his kingdom. God wants to save us, and everybody. But once he’s forgiven us our sins, we need to take advantage of his forgiveness and live like we’ve been freed of those sins. We need to demonstrate our trust in him through our much improved behavior.
God help us if we’re behaving in such a way.
But if you’re good, as the apostles acknowledged the Thessalonians were good, then good job! Keep it up.
