3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3–5 (ESV)
The following commentary is an excerpt by Alexander MacLaren from his commentary on I Thessalonians. Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910) was an English Baptist minister, preacher, and biblical scholar.
“This letter to the Thessalonians is the oldest book of the New Testament. It was probably written within something like twenty years of the Crucifixion; long, therefore, before any of the Gospels were in existence. It is, therefore, exceedingly interesting and instructive to notice how this whole context is saturated with allusions to our Lord’s teaching, as it is preserved in these Gospels; and how it takes for granted that the Thessalonian Christians were familiar with the very words.”
“For instance: ‘Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night’ (ver. 2). How did these people in Thessalonica know that? They had been Christians for a year or so only; they had been taught by Paul for a few weeks only, or a month or two at the most. How did they know it? Because they had Been told what the Master had said: ‘If the goodman of the house had known at what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.”
“There are other allusions in the context almost as obvious’ ‘The children of file light.’ Who said that? Christ, in His words: ‘The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.’ ‘They that sleep, sleep in the night, and if they be drunken, are drunken in the night.’ Where does that metaphor come from? ‘Take heed lest at any time ye be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.’ ‘Watch, lest coming suddenly He find you sleeping!”
“So, you see all the context reposes upon, and presupposes the very words, which you find in our present existing Gospels, as the words of the Lord Jesus. And this is contemporaneous, and quite independent, evidence of the existence in the Church, from the beginning, of a traditional teaching which is now preserved for us in that fourfold record of His life.”
“Let us who are of the day’ — or as the Revised Version has it a little more emphatically and correctly, ‘Let us, since we are of the day, be sober.’ ‘The day’; what day? The temptation is to answer the question by saying — ‘of course the specific day which was spoken about in the beginning of the section, “the day of the Lord,” that coming judgment by the coming Christ.”
“I think that although, perhaps, there may be some allusion here to that specific day, still, if you will look at the verses which immediately precede my text, you will see that in them the Apostle has passed from the thought of ‘the day of the Lord’ to that of day in general. That is obvious, I think, from the contrast he draws between the ‘day’ and the ‘night,’ the darkness and the light. If so, then, when he says the children of the day’ he does not so much mean — though that is quite true — that we are, as it were, akin to that day of judgment, and may therefore look forward to it without fear, and in quiet confidence, lifting up our heads because our redemption draws nigh;”
“But rather he means that Christians are the children of that which expresses knowledge, and joy, and activity. Of these things the day is the emblem, in every language and in every poetry. The day is the time when men see and hear, the symbol of gladness and cheer all the world over.”
“And so, says Paul, you Christian men and women belong to a joyous realm, a realm of light and knowledge, a realm of purity and righteousness. You are children of the light; a glad condition which involves many glad and noble issues. Children of the light should be brave, children of the light should not be afraid of the light, children of the light should be cheerful, children of the light should be buoyant, children of the light should be transparent, children of the light should be hopeful, children of the light should be pure, and children of the light should walk in this darkened world, bearing their radiance with them; and making things, else unseen, visible to many a dim eye.”
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here. Have a blessed day in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
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