Live to Please God

1Furthermore then we beseech you, brothers, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more. 2For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. 3For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication: 4That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; 5Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: 6That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. 7For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness. 8He therefore that despises, despises not man, but God, who has also given to us his holy Spirit.

9But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another. 10And indeed you do it toward all the brothers which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brothers, that you increase more and more; 11And that you study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12That you may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that you may have lack of nothing.

The Return of the Lord

13But I would not have you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18Why comfort one another with these words.