4
Plea for Purity
1Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus ⚓that you should abound more and more, ⚓just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God;
2for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3For this is ⚓the will of God, ⚓your sanctification: ⚓that you should abstain from sexual immorality;
4⚓that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,
5⚓not in passion of lust, ⚓like the Gentiles ⚓who do not know God;
6that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord ⚓is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified.
7For God did not call us to uncleanness, ⚓but in holiness.
8⚓Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, ⚓who has also given us His Holy Spirit.
A Brotherly and Orderly Life
9But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for ⚓you yourselves are taught by God ⚓to love one another;
10and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, ⚓that you increase more and more;
11that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, ⚓to mind your own business, and ⚓to work with your own hands, as we commanded you,
12⚓that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.
The Comfort of Christ’s Coming
13But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow ⚓as others ⚓who have no hope.
14For ⚓if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him ⚓those who sleep in Jesus.
15For this we say to you ⚓by the word of the Lord, that ⚓we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.
16For ⚓the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with ⚓the trumpet of God. ⚓And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17⚓Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them ⚓in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus ⚓we shall always be with the Lord.
18⚓Therefore comfort one another with these words.