Instructions for Holy Living

1. Finally therefore, brethren, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that just as you received from us how you must walk and to please God, just as indeed you are walking, you may abound still more.

2. For you know what instructions we gave to you through the Lord Jesus.

3. For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality;

4. that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in holiness and honour,

5. not in lustful passion, just as also the nations who do not know God;

6. that no one transgress and exploit his brother in the matter, because the Lord is an avenger concerning all these things, just as also we told you before and solemnly warned.

7. For God did not call us for impurity but in holiness.

8. Therefore the one who rejects this is not rejecting a man but God, who also gives His Holy Spirit to you.

9. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for us to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

10. For indeed you do this toward all the brethren in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren and sisters, to abound still more,

11. and to aspire to be quiet, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, just as we instructed you,

12. so that you may walk properly toward those outside and have need of nothing.

The Coming of the Lord

13. But we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, so that you may not grieve as the rest who have no hope.

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

15. For this we say to you by a word of the Lord, that we who are living, remaining until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

16. Because the Lord Himself, with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

17. Then we who are living, remaining, will be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

18. Therefore encourage one another with these words.