5 Now as to the periods and times, brothers and sisters, you have no need of anything to be written to you. ² For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord is coming just like a thief in the night. ³ While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction will come upon them like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. ⁴ But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, so that the day would overtake you like a thief; ⁵ for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; ⁶ so then, let’s not sleep as others do, but let’s be alert and diligent. ⁷ For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk, get drunk at night. ⁸ But since we are of the day, let’s be diligent, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. (1Thes5:1-8).

Following on from Paul’s teaching on the “rapture”, to his observations concerning the Day of the Lord itself. Here is an example of a passage that if taken in isolation might suggest that virtually everyone is doomed to oblivion. For it is proportionally very few who are the elect of God (as Augustine observed – note#1 ). And in terms of those living at the time it is only the elect who can be sure to escape the ravages the Day of the Lord, which is elsewhere described as God’s “Day of Wrath” (Rom2:5)  or the “Dreadful Day of the Lord” (Mal4:5).

In terms of this passage, the key is to whom the “they” refers in verse 3. If it be all non-Christians, then the above cosmic horror story applies. For as I have been verifying, especially (but not exclusively) from Paul’s writings, it is quite impossible for anyone to have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ unless divinely enabled to do so. From any reasoned human perspective, God would be a Monster if He punished those made in His own image for not doing what they were innately incapable of doing. “Ah, let God be God”, said the Protestant Reformers, but I say and know that God is love personified and Scripture affirms it (1Jn4:8). The context makes it clear that “ἀγάπη” (compassionate love, benevolence) is the quality as humans understand it for they are to imitate it.

The “free will / predestination / divine justice conundrum

Relatedly and contrary to the teaching of Augustine and the Protestant Reformers, effectual “free will” is a reality – but it does not extend to the ability to come to Christ as Saviour. Free will relates to the choice whether or not to respond positively to the light of Christ in the conscience and do that which is pleasing and acceptable to God, such as the Mt25 sheep who exercised compassion to those in need (aka “Christ” – v40), noting that religion or religious faith is not so much mentioned in Jesus’ definitive parable on final judgement, and remembering also that “the elect” had already been raptured (Mt24)

Verses 4 and 5 of our passage contrasts Christians as children of the light and with those who are in darkness – the children of the night. But again, this is not necessarily a binary matter, as Jesus indicates in Mt6:22-23. At least that is the case when it is rightly translated, such as the NASB, not so the KJV and many others who try to obscure any natural law (innate spiritual faculty) implications. A translation that is both lexical and logical would be as follows:

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eye is malicious, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light that is in you is darkness, how great THE darkness! (not “THAT darkness” e.g. KJV – Mt6:22-23)

Not for the first time, this is indicative of three categories:

1. The eye is sound, the body has light, and (through the spiritual resources resulting from a saving knowledge of Christ), the person has the Light of Life and lives in accordance with God’s ideals;
2. The eye is sound, the body has light, being the light of Christ in the conscience, but in Jesus’ words “even the light that is in you is darkness” –  or in Paul’s words “Whilst I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts” (Rom7:22-23). This is man by nature – he sees the value, benefit and attractiveness of what is good and seeks to live by it for his own peace of mind, but often falls short of his ideals due to the weakness of the flesh;
3. The eye is malicious/evil; the light of conscience (the witness to God’s law Rom2:15) has been extinguished (1Tim4:2); the whole body is in darkness, body and spirit are united in evil. These are the children of the night.

The need for salting/purging

Category 2 (man by nature) is very broad, and I am not saying that some or even many within it will not at least be rebuked or receive a measure of punishment/correction/purging/”salting” (Mk9:49), either post-mortem or at Christ’s coming if alive at the time. However, category 3s (the soul-less ones) would appear to be beyond redemption – there is nothing left to salt (Mk9:50 cf. Mt16:26). Note in this punishment/hellfire context that Jesus affirms that “salt/salting is good”. In terms of the temporal nature of such punishments, one should observe the gradations specified in Mt5:22 and apply some common sense]

As stated in the introduction, this passage taken in isolation might appear to support the dire providential outcomes that are the inevitable consequence of the binary (saved/damned) soteriology that many, especially Evangelicals, take to be biblical truth. That subversion of the Good News (gospel) is certainly the case when combined with the biblically indisputable doctrine of predestination/election that many within that grouping (aka Arminian & watered down Calvinists) try respectively to repudiate or disregard. [Few have the stomach for unadulterated “Reformed theology” – I was one who did because I was primarily concerned about being faithful to Scripture – and that is still the case].

The anticipated resolution

Now a solution has been found (or I believe imparted) but a single post such as this will hardly prove the case. What is needed is a systematic, above all coherent reworking of the whole bible, a process that itself needs to have been foreshadowed in holy writ – be it the canonical bible and/or that written specifically to be a blessing to  “the elect and the righteous who will be living in the day of tribulation when all the wicked and godless are to be removed”. I believe such has been provided and it is made freely available at the link below.

NOTE / CITATION

#1 “Many more are left under punishment than are delivered from it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all” (Augustine – De Civitates Dei XXI chap. 12).

LINKS

*The LITTLE BOOK OF PROVIDENCE: a seven-part synopsis of the bible: – available as a paperback from Amazon or FREELY as a PDF file HERE.

Author’s Facebook page HERE

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