| International Standard Version | New Living Translation |
| 1Now then, brothers, you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, as in fact you are doing. We ask and encourage you in the Lord to do so even more. | 1Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you. You live this way already, and we encourage you to do so even more. |
| 2You know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. | 2For you remember what we taught you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. |
| 3For it is God's will that you be sanctified: You must abstain from sexual immorality. | 3God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. |
| 4Each of you must know how to control his own body in a holy and honorable manner, | 4Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor— |
| 5not with passion and lust like the gentiles who do not know God. | 5not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways. |
| 6Furthermore, you must never take advantage of or exploit a brother in this regard, because the Lord avenges all these things, just as we already told you and warned you. | 6Never harm or cheat a fellow believer in this matter by violating his wife, for the Lord avenges all such sins, as we have solemnly warned you before. |
| 7For God did not call us to be impure, but to be holy. | 7God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives. |
| 8Therefore, whoever rejects this instruction is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit. | 8Therefore, anyone who refuses to live by these rules is not disobeying human teaching but is rejecting God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. |
| 9Now you do not need anyone to write to you about brotherly love, since you have been taught by God to love each other. | 9But we don’t need to write to you about the importance of loving each other, for God himself has taught you to love one another. |
| 10In fact, you are showing love to all the brothers throughout Macedonia, but we urge you, brothers, to keep on doing this even more. | 10Indeed, you already show your love for all the believers throughout Macedonia. Even so, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you to love them even more. |
| 11Also, make it your goal to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you, | 11Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. |
| 12so that you may win the respect of outsiders, and have need of nothing. | 12Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others. The Hope of the Resurrection |
| 13But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve like other people who have no hope. | 13And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. |
| 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring those who have died with him. | 14For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died. |
| 15For we declare to you what the Lord has told us to say: We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have died. | 15We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died. |
| 16With a shout of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of God's trumpet, the Lord himself will come down from heaven, and the dead who belong to the Messiah will rise first. | 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. |
| 17Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. | 17Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. |
| 18So then, encourage one another with these words. | 18So encourage each other with these words. |
The Holy Bible: International Standard Version® Release 2.1 Copyright © 1996-2012 The ISV Foundation
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. | Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. |
|
