1 Thessalonians 4:14

1 Thessalonians 4:14

The Intermediate State.

I. Where are the saints? and what are they doing? And the Spirit answers, they "sleep in Jesus." Now you must not for a moment understand this expression as though it meant that the spirits of the sainted dead are passing the interval, till the resurrection, in a state of unconsciousness or inactivity. The idea is utterly abhorrent alike to feeling, to reason, and to Scripture. For we can conceive no idea of soul but in the motion of thought and feeling. A soul without consciousness is a contradiction in terms. Even here thought never ceases; nor is it possible that God would have been at such amazing pains to make and remake a being for His glory and then consign that being for thousands, it may be, of years, to a condition in which he cannot glorify Him. And St. Paul himself speaks conclusively, at the beginning of his Epistle to the Philippians, when he compares and balances those two things to remain for the Church's sake, or to die and be with Christ. Now it would be no question of balance at all if he did not expect assuredly to be consciously happy with Christ; for then to remain and serve the Church, would it not be unquestionably better than to be passing that same period in a useless and joyless suspension of all life and power?

II. Let us follow, if we may catch a glimpse of, the untrammelled spirit. The word of God is distinct that it is passed into Paradise "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise" by which we are to understand, not heaven Elijah only of all the saints is said to have gone to heaven, and that, it may be, because his spirit was never separated from his body but we are to understand some happy place (the word means garden, and associates itself therefore in the mind with the first Eden) where the separate spirits of the just are with Jesus, awaiting His second coming and their bodies, after which they are to enter into that final and perfect glory, which we call heaven. For neither they without us, nor we without them, shall be made perfect; but all the people of God, of every age, will go into heaven together. Till then, we are instructed to believe that the souls of the faithful "sleep in Jesus" the word may mean with Jesus, or more strictly, through Jesus in Paradise.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 55.

References: 1 Thessalonians 4:14. Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 472; Ibid.,vol. xxii., p. 308; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 213; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 181. 1 Thessalonians 4:16. J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons,vol. vi., p. 106.