When we lose loved ones, it’s easy to lose hope. It’s easy to imagine that life no longer has any purpose or meaning. And it’s easy to medicate our despair by seeking pleasure in whatever form we can find it.

But Paul encourages us to turn away from the sort of passionate lust that is so common among people “who do not know God” (4:5), the pursuit of pleasure that is only interested in the gratification of the self. And why? Not only because we should fear the Lord’s vengeance on such wickedness (4:6), but because the popular notion that we are unable to restrain such lusts is a denial of the life-renewing, transforming power of the Holy Spirit (4:8). Freud was wrong – Spirit-filled Christians are more than rutting animals. We have the power of God within us, a God Who calls us out of impurity into holiness (4:7).

But we should also turn away from all forms of sexual immorality because it so often leads to the destruction of other people’s relationships – and that sort of selfishness is the opposite of true love for one another. Paul praises the Thessalonians for demonstrating such love (4:9), but he adds a caveat that might seem strange to us: the need for hard work. What’s the connection? Because true love is always focused on meeting the needs of the beloved regardless of the cost to the self, true love never seeks to be an unnecessary burden on anyone else’s charity. In other words, working hard at our own jobs and avoiding dependence on others is a good way to show our love for them (4:11-12).

But the fuel for true love, the reason we can be more concerned with protecting our neighbors’ marriages and wallets than we are with gaining our own pleasure and ease, is our hope. For Christ has promised us so much more than the money and sex that so many people spend their lives pursuing. After all, none of those worldly pleasures can last longer than this life, and life in this world is all too brief – as so many of our recent experiences have made all too clear.

Instead, those who are sure that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day can have real hope – hope that He will keep His promise to return some day, hope that He will bring with Him the spirits of believers who have died, hope that our bodies will be raise from the dead and that we will accompany Jesus to earth, where He will live forever with all those who love Him and trust Him (4:16-17).

It’s only that sort of true hope that can possibly inspire true love. So, even in the midst of our deepest grief, let’s fix our hope on Christ alone. And let’s pray that He would come quickly, putting an end to both sin and death.

I Thessalonians 4:1-18 (ESV)

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;
4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,
5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another,
10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more,
11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you,
12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.