I Thessalonians 5:4-8 – “Living It”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁴But you, brothers, are not in darkness that the day should take you as a thief, ⁵for you all are sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night neither of darkness. ⁶Accordingly, therefore, we should not be sleeping as the rest but we should be being awake and be being level-headed, ⁷for the ones sleeping are sleeping of night and the ones getting drunk are being drunk of night, ⁸but we, being of day, let us be being level-headed putting on a breastplate of faith and love and a helmet, hope of salvation, …

Verses 4 & 5 should be very encouraging to us all. The Lord, in this chapter, is drawing a very sharp distinction between believers and the rest of the world. Notice above, in my translation, I underlined the opening word “you.” As I have explained before, I do this because the substantive pronouns are not normally expressed in Greek. They are just naturally included in the verb. When a Greek speaking person actually says the “you,” they are doing so for emphasis. “But you …” “But you … in contrast to them.” And see what is the contrast we are being told about – “… you, brothers, are not in darkness that the day should take you as a thief, ⁵for you all are sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night neither of darkness.” You are not in darkness. You are sons of light. You are sons of day. We are not of night. We are not of darkness.

Isn’t it interesting to know this is how the Lord sees you? You are not “as others.” You are a child of light. That is what He says. Notice that He doesn’t just see you as a sort of “improved” sinner. That is honestly about all I feel. I know He has saved me. I know He has changed me. But I don’t necessarily feel like I’m all that different. I’m still rotten inside and much too easily drawn to think, and want, and act just as badly as I ever did. I don’t feel that different. But in the Lord’s eyes, there are people who are “of darkness” and there are people who are “children of light.” As a believer, I’m one of those children of light. That is how the Lord sees me. Not just an improved version of them, but something completely different! … and something completely good! As they say, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while!”

Then, of course, “to whom much is given, much is also required.” Knowing that the Lord has made us “different” imparts to us the moral responsibility to actually be different. He tells us we are “children of light,” then the Greek literally says, “accordingly therefore …” And what is the therefore? “We should not be sleeping, as the rest.” The Lord goes on here to basically describe “the rest” as sleeping and drunk. Note that is how He sees them. That is not how He sees us. In His eyes, unbelievers are living their entire lives as if they are sound asleep and slobbering drunk. Note that, in either case, whether asleep or drunk, a person is out of touch with reality. They are quite literally “of darkness.” No wonder unbelieving people say and do such completely idiotic things. We live in this day where you want to open people’s heads and see, “Is there anything inside??” That is horrifically frustrating on the political front, but let us be reminded what is really going on. You’re talking about people who are walking “sound asleep and slobbering drunk.” We see through their idiocy. We see through their facades. But why? Because we are children of light. We aren’t asleep (or shouldn’t be). We aren’t drunk (or shouldn’t be). For us, living in this world, it is just as if we’re in the same room with someone sleeping, or someone drunk. We see clearly what is going on. They, on the other hand, are out of touch with reality. What they say and do is senseless, just like a sleeping drunk.

The problem is, even though the Lord says we are different, we can still act just like them. What I should be asking is, “What can I do to make sure I’m different?” What can I do to make sure I’m “sober,” that I’m “alert,” that I’m “level-headed?” In answer, we could propose all sorts of do’s and don’ts, but what does the Lord say in the passage itself? He says in v.8: ^“But we, being of day, let us be being level-headed putting on a breastplate of faith and love and a helmet, hope of salvation.” Interesting. Putting on faith, hope, and love. How do we stay “alert” in this world? By very deliberately being people of faith, hope, and love.

Does anyone else reading this sense that is not the answer we would expect today? If you sense that as well, pause and consider it all with me. I’ve actually hovered over this passage longer than I usually do. I got my grammar study and exegesis finished, then thought I’d better just linger over the passage for a while. I was afraid I would let it all be nice-sounding Christian jargon and miss the truth of it all. One of the things that perplexed me was reading Jesus’ words that seem to be expressing the same sentiments, as when He says in Mark 13:35-37, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know when the master of the house will return -- whether in the evening, at midnight, when the rooster crows, or in the morning. Otherwise, he may arrive without notice and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” I asked myself, “Do I really know what He means by ‘watch’?” My mind filled with all sorts of ideas but I knew in my heart they were all just my “ideas.” I wanted to be sure I knew what the Lord meant, so I prayed and looked up other passages, and just kept coming back to the passage.

Then I noticed in verse 8 the fact that the Lord actually answers the question Himself. I missed that before, even though I worked through the whole passage. Again, what does He want us to do when He says, “Watch!” and “Be sober, be awake, be level-headed?” He wants us to put on a breastplate of faith and love and a helmet of hope.

Faith, hope and love.

Can I just pause and lament how we make everything so difficult? The Lord tells us to “watch” and “be sober, be awake” and our minds conjure up all sorts of do and don’t lists and who knows what all else – while all He wanted us to do was to very deliberately live a life of faith, hope, and love! Once again, as Jesus told us, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Loving God and serving Him and being faithful isn’t about all that other junk we conjure up. It’s about the very real issues of faith, hope, and love.

Faith speaks of the very truth-system we build our lives on. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Faith is building our lives on the truth of who God is and nursing on His promises. That has certainly been a huge part of my life here in the last couple of years – learning to really embrace God’s faithfulness and His goodness and to put away my worrying and constant emotional frenzy.

Hope is the flame that keeps our hearts alive. In this passage it is specifically the “hope of salvation.” We could probably ponder what all that really means to us, but I would offer that, in the big scheme of things, the very fact of our salvation in Christ and the absolute certainty of Heaven with Him means for us that no matter what I face here, no matter how hopeless this world looks, I always still have that hope at least. And because I have that hope, I’m reminded I serve a wonderful Savior who has promised to only do me good here … which means I have hope even here in those things that seem hopeless. David said, “I would have fainted except I believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Based on that truth, his advice to us was “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Hope gives us strength to keep going on.

And of course there is love. I am constantly amazed how many times the Lord says this and how for the better part of my Christian life I missed it. Love. Love God, love people. The first and great commandment. It is perhaps one of the greatest freedoms I have ever known to realize that what the Lord really wants of me, what really, really matters in life at any given second is simply to answer the question, “Am I loving?” If the answer before God is yes, I’m good. If the answer is no, then no matter what I’m doing, no matter how “spiritual” I may think I look, no matter how much others may approve – “though I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am nothing.” Of course I need God’s wisdom to even know what love is. It is quite possible to think I’m loving (as in the case of an indulgent parent) and yet be wrong – but then, in a sense that is what the entire Bible is about from cover to cover – how to love wisely.

I’m sure I don’t embrace enough what God has done for me through Jesus, how He really has set me apart and made me one of the “children of light,” but I’m glad that, the more I understand that, instead of making me a religious sour-puss who hates everybody and everything, instead it makes me more and more a person of faith, hope, and love.

He began good work. And it certainly is a good work. May He help us all to willingly cooperate in that work today. May we live each moment as people of faith, hope, and love whether we find ourselves butchers or bakers or candlestick makers – or standing in the line at the grocery store.