I Thessalonians 4:13 “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”
To have “no hope” is to have no expectation of anything better than our present extreme misery. Oftentimes, those who have “no hope” eventually lose their mind and fall away into abject gloom. In this context, to our human mind, death is permanent, irreversible, and infinitely beyond our power to recover life. When someone close to us dies, without “hope” we can fall into such extreme despair that we are soon ruined in life. Let us hear the prophetic words of our Lord: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19)! Paul addresses the teaching of non-resurrection this way, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” (I Corinthians 15:19). In the greater view of time, our natural life is but a brief breath in the monstrous storm of life. But, our most blessed and comforting Spiritual Hope is “that there shall be a resurrection of the dead” (Acts 24:15) and “if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). Furthermore, our “hope” declares to us “that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him” (I Thessalonians 5:10); that is, our Lord is with us while we live, and when our natural bodies die, our Heavenly Father returns our “spirit” to Himself (Ecclesiastes 12:7) where our spirits will dwell with our Lord until the great day of the resurrection, then we will eternally dwell with Him in our resurrected bodies (I Thessalonians 4:17). “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (I Thessalonians 4:18); that is, talk about the Lord’s sure promises to those who seem to “have no hope”; for, “the righteous hath hope in his death” (Proverbs 14:32)! And remember this question, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” (Psalms 43:5)!