Living to Please God

1Finally then, brothers, we implore and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that just as you have received from us in what manner it behooves you to walk and to please God, just as even you walk now, so you should abound more. 2For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

3For this is the will of God, your sanctification: You are to abstain from sexual immorality; 4each of you to know how to win mastery over his own vessel in holiness and honor, 5not in the passion of lust, as also the Gentiles, not knowing God; 6not to go beyond and to overreach his brother in the matter, because the Lord is avenging concerning all these things, just as also we told you before and thoroughly warned. 7For God has not called us to impurity, but into holiness. 8So then, the one rejecting this does not disregard man but God, the One also giving His Holy Spirit to you.

9Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for me to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God in order to love one another. 10And indeed you are doing this toward all the brothers, the ones in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brothers, to abound more and more, 11and to strive earnestly to live quietly and to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you, 12so that you may walk properly toward those outside, and may have need of no one.

The Return of the Lord

13But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those having fallen asleep, so that you should not be grieved, just as also the rest, those having no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those having fallen asleep.

15For this we declare to you in the word of the Lord, that we the living, remaining unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those having fallen asleep, 16because the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we, the living remaining, will be caught away together with them in the clouds for the meeting of the Lord in the air; and so we will be always with the Lord.

18Therefore encourage one another with these words.