1 Thess. 4 1 Thess. 4:1–8 Paul exhorteth the Thessalonians to proceed in their endeavours to please God by a holy and just conversation. 1 Thess. 4:9–10 He commendeth their love to one another, entreating them to abound in it, 1 Thess. 4:11–12 and quietly to follow their respective callings.

He descends to some particular duties about their walking, which he ushers in by a general exhortation in this first verse; wherein we may observe his style: he calls them brethren, and speaks to them with much condescension and earnestness, and in the name of Christ, &c.

This explains what he said before; what they had received of him about their walking he here calls commandments, not so much his own as the Lord’s, as the word itself imports here used, and is expressed in the text.

What in the former verse he called commandments from Christ, he here calls the will of God; or he had some further duties to lay before them, which he had not yet given commandments about, which were the will of God.

This is added as a means to prevent that sin. By vessel some understand the married wife, who is called the weaker vessel, 1 Pet. 3:7; and her husband is to possess her in sanctification, in chastity, as the Greek word may signify here. And honour; for as marriage is honourable to all men, Heb.

Any violence of affection we call passion, whether of love, or anger, or desire, because the soul is passive, or suffers thereby. The Stoics said passions were not incident to a wise man; and: They that are Christ’s, saith the apostle, have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts, Gal.

This some understand to be another part of sanctification, mentioned before, 1 Thess. 4:3, taking the word sanctification in a more general sense. And as before he spake of chastity, so here of commutative justice in commerce and traffic; and the rather because Thessalonica was a city of great…

These two verses are added, as further arguments to persuade to that chastity he had spoken of, called sanctification, 1 Thess. 4:3–4. The first is taken from their Christian calling, which is not to uncleanness, but to chastity, called holiness.

But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: the apostle proceeds from chastity and justice to speak of brotherly love, which is love upon a spiritual ground; to love the saints as such, with respect to God as a common Father, and so all his children are brethren, 1 Thess.

As an evidence of the truth of their love for which he commended them, and that they were taught it of God, he gives a practical instance of it in this verse; else the apostle might have been thought to flatter, or to command a love that was without fruit; and therefore he saith not, ye profess it,…

And that ye study to be quiet: he exhorts to quietness, and yet to be diligent; and probably he might see this needful, either by what he himself had observed amongst them, or by what he had heard of them, as appears by what he writes in his Second Epistle, 2 Thess. 3:10–11.

He enforceth his commands by a twofold reason, the former is ab honesto, the other is ab utili. First: That ye may walk honestly, or decently, as the word is rendered, 1 Cor. 14:40. Toward them that are without; that is, Gentiles, infidels, so they are described, 1 Cor. 5:12, Col.

The apostle now proceeds to a new discourse, about moderating of their sorrow for the dead, not for all, but the dead in Christ. He had either observed their sorrow in this kind excessive, while with them; or else by Timothy, or some other way, he had heard of it.

As in the former verse the apostle made use of the hope of the resurrection, as an argument against immoderate sorrow, so here he proves the resurrection by Christ’s rising again, &c.

The apostle here sets down particularly the manner of the Lord’s coming, the method and order how all the saints shall then meet with him and with one another, which we find not so distinctly in any other scripture; and whereby he further prosecutes the argument he is upon.

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout; the means which effect this. The word shout in the Greek signifies a command, or word of command; alluding to mariners or soldiers summoned to be ready with their assistance when called upon; and may refer to the angels whom Christ now…

Christ will have a church to the end of the world, and some will be found alive at his coming, and will be caught up, or snatched up, to denote its suddenness, it may be in the arms of angels, or by some immediate attractive power of Christ; and it will be together with them that are now raised…

The apostle makes application of all this discourse to the end he designed, which was to comfort them under their sorrows for departed Christian friends; and he saith not, be ye comforted, but comfort one another, to put them upon the great duty of Christian sympathy; though this is a duty we owe…