God's Will Is Your Sanctification

1Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, 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 own vessel in sanctification and honor;

5Not in the lust of passion, even as the Gentiles who know not God:

6That no man transgress and wrong his brother in any matter: because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.

7For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.

8He therefore that despises, despises not man, but God, who has also given unto us his Holy Spirit.

9But concerning brotherly love you need not that I write unto you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another.

10And indeed you do it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more;

11And that you study to be quiet, and to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;

12That you may walk honestly toward them that are outside, and that you may have lack of nothing.

Comfort from Knowledge of Christ's Return

13But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them who are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others who have no hope.

14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who 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 who 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.

18Therefore comfort one another with these words.