Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace and peace to you.

We always thank God for you all when we mention you constantly in our prayers,

as we recall your active faith and labour of love and patient hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father.

O brothers beloved by God, we know he has chosen you;

for our gospel came to you not with mere words but also with power and with the holy Spirit, with ample conviction on our part (you know what we were to you, for your own good),

for the word of the Lord has resounded from you not only through Macedonia and Achaia ??no, your faith in God has reached every place. We never need to speak about it.

People tell us of their own accord about the visit we paid to you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and a real God

At Philippi, as you know, we had been ill-treated and insulted, but we took courage and confidence in our God to tell you the gospel of God in spite of all the strain.

no, God has attested our fitness to be entrusted with the gospel, and so we tell the gospel not to satisfy men but to satisfy the God who tests our hearts.

We never resorted to flattery (you know that), nor to any pretext for self-seeking (God is witness to that);

fain, in our yearning affection for you, to impart not only the gospel of God to you but our very souls as well ??you had so won our love.

You are witnesses, and so is God, to our behaviour among you believers, how pious and upright and blameless it was,

to lead a life worthy of the God who called you to his own realm and glory.

We thank God constantly for this too, that when you received the word of the divine message from us, you took it not as a human word but for what it really is, the word of God. It proves effective in you believers,

for you have started, my brothers, to copy the churches of God in Christ Jesus throughout Judaea; you have suffered from your compatriots just as they have suffered from the Jews,

who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, who harassed ourselves, who offend God and oppose all men

I sent Timotheus our brother, a minister of God in the gospel of Christ, for your strengthening and encouragement in the faith,

But when Timotheus reached me a moment ago, on his return from you, bringing me the good news of your faith and love and of how you always remember me kindly, longing to see me as I long to see you,

How can I render thanks enough to God for you, for all the joy you make me feel in the presence of our God?

May our God and Father and our Lord Jesus direct my way to you!

so as to strengthen your hearts and make them blameless in holiness before our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. [Amen.]

Finally, brothers, we beg and beseech you in the Lord Jesus to follow our instructions about the way you are to live so as to satisfy God; you are leading that life, but you are to excel in it still further.

It is God's will that you should be consecrated, that you abstain from sexual vice,

not to gratify sensual passion like the Gentiles in their ignorance of God ??6 no one is to defraud or overreach his brother in this matter, for the Lord avenges all these sins, as we told you already in our solemn protest against them.

God did not call us to be impure but to be consecrated;

hence, he who disregards this, disregards not man but the God who gave you his holy Spirit.

You need no one to write you upon brotherly love, for you are yourselves taught by God to love one another,

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then it follows that by means of Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud summons, when the archangel calls and the trumpet of God sounds; the dead in Christ will rise first;

but we must be sober, we who belong to the day, clad in faith and love as our coat of mail, with the hope of salvation as our helmet ??9 for God destined us not for Wrath but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

thank God for everything ??such is his will for you in Christ Jesus;

but test them all, retaining what is good

May the God of peace consecrate you through and through! Spirit, soul, and body, may you be kept without break or blame till the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ!