1 Finally, then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as ye received from us how ye ought to walk, and to please God??ven as ye also are walking??hat ye abound more and more;
2 for ye know what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God??ven your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication;
4 that each one of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor;
5 not in passion of desire, even as the gentiles, who know not God;
6 that he go not beyond and gain an advantage over his brother in the matter; because the Lord is an avenger of all these things, as we also told you before, and solemnly testified.
7 For God did not call us unto uncleanness, but in sanctification.
8 Therefore, indeed, he that rejects, rejects not man, but God, Who giveth His Holy Spirit to you.
9 But concerning brotherly love, ye have no need that one write to you; for ye yourselves are taught by God to love one another;
10 and, in fact, ye do it to all the brethren who are in all Macedonia; but we exhort you, brethren, to abound yet more;
11 and to make it your aim to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we charged you;
12 that ye walk becomingly towards those without, and that ye may have need of nothing.
13 But we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those falling asleep, that ye sorrow not even as the rest who have no hope;
14 for, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those who fell asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.
15 For this we say to You, in a word of the Lord, that we, the living who remain over to the coming of the Lord, shall in nowise precede those who fell asleep;
16 because the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven, with a shout, with a voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;
17 after that we, the living who are left over, will be caught up together with them in clouds, into the air, to meet the Lord; and so shall we always be with the Lord.
18 So then, comfort one another with these words.