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.

For the appeal we make does not spring from any delusion or from impure motives ??it does not work by cunning;

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.

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.

Brothers, you recollect our hard labour and toil, how we worked at our trade night and day, when we preached the gospel to you, so as not to be a burden to any of you.

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,

Brothers, when we were bereft of you for a little while (out of sight, not out of mind), we were the more eager to see you. We had a keen longing for you.

Night and day I pray specially that I may see your faces and supply what is defective in your faith.

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,

We would like you, brothers, to understand about those who are asleep in death. You must not grieve for them, like the rest of men who have no hope.

As regards the course and periods of time, brothers, you have no need of being written to.

You know perfectly well that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night;

But, brothers, you are not in the darkness for the Day to surprise you like thieves;

you are all sons of the Light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.

Well then, we must not sleep like the rest of men, but be wakeful and sober;

for sleepers sleep by night and drunkards are drunk by night,

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,