for from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith toward God has gone out, so that we have no need to say anything.

but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, thus we speak, not as pleasing people but God, who examines our hearts.

{Although we could have insisted on our own importance} as apostles of Christ, yet we became infants in your midst, like a nursing mother cherishes her own children.

because of this, brothers, we have been comforted because of you in all our distress and affliction through your faith,

Finally therefore, brothers, we ask you and appeal to [you] in the Lord Jesus that, just as you have received from us how it is necessary for you to live and to please God, just as indeed you are living, that you progress even more.

But concerning brotherly love, I do not have need to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another,

so that you may live decently toward those outside, and may have need of nothing.

Now we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you will not grieve as also the rest, who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose [again], thus also God will bring those who have fallen asleep through Jesus together with him.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain until the Lord's coming, will not possibly precede those who have fallen asleep.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need [of anything] to be written to you,

I adjure you by the Lord, have this letter read aloud to all the brothers.