NOTES for Th1 5:1-11

The inevitable end of the world has always been a frightening and gloomy prospect for humanity. Apart from being the day when we will all stand before the Almighty with our petty affairs, the very fact that this day will come someday deprives all our earthly arrangements of their solidity. Yet in today's passage from the letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul speaks about it in surprisingly luminous words. He stresses that Christians are children of light and children of the day—not just any day, a day when the sun shines. We are, the apostle says, children of that very Last Day, because God has destined us not for destruction but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ. The task he sets us, therefore, is to stand in truth and spiritual sobriety as we await that day, clothed in the armor of faith and love. In the same way, advance troops dig in, put on armor, and hold captured ground until the main forces arrive. Judging by the apostle's words, the human person is the very territory on which light and darkness contend. There you can obey the darkness in drunken madness or stand soberly awaiting the day. You, brothers, are not in darkness, the apostle says. Therefore the coming of the Lord's day will not be a frightening surprise, but a day of common victory in Christ.