Living to Please God

1Finally, then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you, by our Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to walk and please God, you would abound more and more. 2For you know what commandments we gave you by our Lord Jesus. 3For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you keep yourselves from lewdness; 4That each one of you know how to keep his vessel in sanctification and in honor, 5not in passionate desire, as the Gentiles do, who know not God; 6That no one take advantage of or injure his brother in this matter; because the Lord takes vengeance for all such things, as we also told you before, and fully testified: 7for God has not called us for uncleanness, but for holiness. 8Therefore, he that despises, despises not man, but God, who has given us his Holy Spirit.

9But with respect to brotherly love, you have no need that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another; 10and indeed you do this to all the brethren that are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, that you abound in love more and more, 11and that you earnestly endeavor to live quietly, and that you attend to your own business, and work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12in order that you may walk with propriety toward those who are without, and may have need of nothing.

The Return of the Lord

13But concerning those who have fallen asleep, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that you may not grieve, as others who have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also should we believe that God will, through Jesus, bring with him those who sleep. 15For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who remain till the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who are asleep 16for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall arise first; 17then we, the living who remain, shall, together with them, be caught up in clouds into the air to meet the Lord, and so shall we be ever with the Lord. 18So, then, comfort one another with these words.