Living to Please God

1Finally, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, just as you learned from us how you ought to walk and to please ¹³God, you do so more and more.

2For you know the commands we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

3It is God's will that you be sanctified, that you abstain from fornication,

4and that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor,

5not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.

6In this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of his brother, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you before and solemnly warned you.

7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live in holiness.

8Therefore whoever rejects this command does not reject man but God, who ¹⁴has given his Holy Spirit to ¹⁵you.

9Now 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.

10And indeed you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.

11We urge you to aspire to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own affairs, and to work with your ¹⁶own hands, just as we commanded you,

12so that you may walk properly toward outsiders and not be in need of anything.

The Coming of the Lord

13But ¹⁷we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who ¹⁸have fallen asleep, so that you may not be grieved like others who do not have hope.

14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

15According to the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive, who are left behind until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

17Then we who are alive, who are left behind, 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.

18Therefore encourage one another with these words.