This year I've lost a couple of close people. My father died in March and, more recently, a lifelong friend. I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm simply pointing out that all of us will likely experience the loss of loved ones and all of us likely know others who have or will. So what are we to think?
The church at Thessalonica was suffering affliction and, apparently, people were dying. It's part of the reason Paul wrote to them. He said, "Therefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess 4:18). What words? Paul told them that when the Lord returns these dead loved ones will rise first and we will then join them to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess 4:15-17). So, Paul says, you have no need to "grieve as do the rest who have no hope" (1 Thess 4:13).
Some will tell you that grief is normal and healthy and we need to indulge it. Others will tell you, "Don't grieve! They're in a better place." So this text, in terms of those who lose loved ones, is interesting. Paul does not say that, as believers, we ought not grieve at the loss of loved ones. What he says is that we ought not grieve as those who have no hope. You see, we have hope. We have the hope of Jesus's return. We have the hope of the resurrection. We have the hope of being united with them and, together, being united with Christ for eternity. We have hope. So it's not wrong to grieve. It's not foolish to grieve. It's not a lack of faith to grieve. But our grief can be tempered with hope. Perhaps the most disturbing part of that text, then, is that there are those who actually have no hope. Now that is sad.
8 comments:
My hope when you pass is that I will grieve for my loss but glory in your gain.
Your reminder that “...our grief can be tempered with hope” is certainly comforting regarding the passing of those who know the Lord (including ourselves, of course). When we lose loved ones who don’t know the Lord, however--who have no such hope--then our sorrow is very deep, for we know they are not “in a better place” but are instead facing a Christless eternity. And that is very sad, indeed, and makes Isaiah 55:6--“Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near”--all the more imperative.
Not to responding to any comment in particular, but it occurs to me that the question of "What about those who die without Christ?" is a significant one -- those who Paul calls "those who have no hope." That is, is our hope for those who have gone to be with Christ what tempers our grief? To some extent, sure, but it should be, ultimately, our hope (our certainty of a truth we haven't seen yet) that God is good and all that He does is right that tempers our grief. In that, then, we can even find relief when a loved one who didn't know Christ dies. Even in that, God is glorified, and that is always good even when it hurts for a time.
Stan, I concur that the ultimate comfort in the passing of our loved ones (both saved and unsaved)--and, indeed, in all of life’s events--is seeing God’s plan executed perfectly as He wills. Since I accept the twin realities that each of us deserves God’s wrath yet some of us were pre-ordained to be saved--through His gracious election alone--and some to perish, I can know that God’s will is good and just and right--regardless of any personal feelings I hold towards those involved. To God be the glory!
David, it is so nice that you can hold such a gracious sentiment for real. Not like the case for others of us, whose adult children will comfort themselves by spending the inheritance we left them, no doubt! ;)
I've been to a couple of funerals recently of people who were actively anti-Christian. I also spent time with some friends who just returned from the funeral of their atheist brother, again pretty militantly atheist. The most surprising thing about those funerals was the complete and total lack of hope of any kind. They didn't even bother with a rent a pastor to throw out universalist sounding platitudes. They embraced the hopeless nihilism. In the case of my friends, they battled against various family members regarding even the merest mention of Jesus and even raising the hope that there might be an alternative.
Hopelessness is a horrible scourge on our society. It's a big driver of suicide. 57% of teen girls and 29% of teen boys are persistently sad or hopeless.
I can't help but think that the rising prominence of a worldview based on teaching that humans are nothing but one more mammal, that human children are a disposable inconvenience, that the very world is in danger of extinction, and that Truth and morality are individual and subjective, is a bid driver of this hopelessness.
As Christians, we have hope. We have hope in Jesus. We have hope that salvation is more than economic betterment. We should probably get better at communicating that hope to others.
Yes, Craig.
Stan,
My friends were just faced with the question of how do you deal with someone who's died without hope, and it was incredibly difficult. In some ways this is a "Not my will, but Thy will." situation.
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