Purposes of Christ's Death: 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 and Romans 14:9

Back in my first years of blogging, on my old blog, I did a series of posts on the purposes of Christ’s death. Each post examined one or more of the purpose statement that scripture gives us regarding the death of Christ. A couple of years ago, I began reposting them here. I reposted eight old posts, and then, for some reason—or maybe no reason—stopped. I’d still like to have them all here, so I’m resuming the reposting and updating. (You can find the other posts from this series by clicking on the purposes of Christ’s death label at the end of this post.)

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, [10] who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 ESV)

There are some who  think that the terms awake and asleep in this text don’t refer to physical life and death, but rather to whether someone will be watching alertly or caught off-guard when the day of wrath comes, and they point to the verses right before this as evidence. I think it’s more likely that Paul is bringing us round again to the subject of the last part of the chapter before this one, that those who have already died and those who remain alive until Christ’s return will be joined together to be with the Lord. If you look at 4:17 and 18, and compare these verses to 5:9-11, you can see the parallels. Given these close parallels, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that awake and asleep in verse ten refer to physical life and physical death.

The purpose statement found in these verses is “so that whether we wake or sleep, we will live together with Him.”

Moving on to the next text:

For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Romans 14:9 ESV)

The words “to this end” alert us to a purpose statement here. One of the goals of Christ’s death and resurrection was “that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living”. 

In both of these texts, our being united with Christ means that something remains the same for us even if we should die. In the first text, we see that our physical death does not change our expectation of living forever with the Lord. We need not fear the wrath on the day of the Lord — even though we die physically — because those who are united with Christ in His death are assured that there is no wrath in store for them, but rather, a wonderful life in the presence of the Lord. 

In the second text we are told that because Christ died and lived again, He is Lord of all those who belong to Him, those who are living and those who have already died. Because Christ himself once died and now lives, those who are “in Him” will remain “in Him” in either state, dead or living. For those to whom He is Lord in this life, He will remain Lord after death. 

Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, those who are united with Him can be assured that death will not change these two things: They can still count on living eternally with Christ, and Christ will remain their Lord. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians that we should use these truths to comfort and edify each other. We have nothing to fear, because no matter what happens to us, we are permanently and eternally included with Christ, since He died and rose for us. 

Christ died and rose on our behalf so that we can be certain that we will live forever with Him, whether live until his return or die prior to it; and so that he will always be our Lord, both while we are living and after we die.

Comments

[Luma]

In other words, we transition smoothly, we never lose our fellowship and we are never outside of his grip, his union or his Lordship, as we go from life to death, or as we are transformed if he returns. Just beautiful!

[rebecca]

Ha! You said it better than I did. :)