1Furthermore then, brethren, we beseech you, and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as ye received from us how ye ought to walk and to please God, even as ye are walking, ye would abound still more;

2for ye know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

3For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication;

4that every one of you should know how to procure for himself his own vessel in purity and honor,

5not in the passion of lust, even as the gentiles who know not God;

6that no one should go beyond and overreach his brother in the matter; because the Lord is the avenger in respect to all these things, as we also told you before and solemnly testified.

7For God did not call us to live in uncleanness, but in purity.

8He therefore that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who also gave to you his Holy Spirit.

9But concerning brotherly love there is no need of writing to you; for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another;

10for indeed ye do it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, to abound in love still more;

11and to study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;

12that ye may walk becomingly toward those without, and may have need of nothing.

13But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are sleeping, that ye may not sorrow, as others do, who have no hope.

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

15For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who are living, we who are left till the coming of the Lord, shall not anticipate those who have fallen asleep.

16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud summons, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first;

17then we who are living, we who are left, shall be caught up together with them in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.

18So then comfort one another with these words.