1 Furthermore, we encourage you, brothers, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us how you ought to walk, and to please God, so you would abound more and more. 2 You know the commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 This is the will of God, for your sanctification (holiness) (purification), that you should abstain from fornication. 4 Every one of you should know how to possess his own vessel in holiness and honor, 5 not in the lust of sexual desire like the nations who do not know God. 6 Let no man defraud his brother in any matter. Jehovah is the avenger of this. We also have warned you and testified. 7 For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness. 8 He therefore that rejects this, rejects not man, but God, who has also given his Holy Spirit to us.
9 I do not need to write you about brotherly love. For God taught you to love one another. 10 Indeed, you do it toward all the brothers in all Macedonia: but we encourage you to increase more and more. 11 Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and mind your own business, and work with your hands, as we command you. 12 That way you may walk honestly in the eyes of those on the outside and lack nothing.
13 I do not want you to be ignorant brothers, concerning those who are asleep (in death). You do not need to sorrow like others who have no hope. 14 If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus. 15 We tell you this by God's Word, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 We that are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so will we ever be with the Lord. 18 Comfort one another with these words.