Living to Please God

1Finally, my brethren, we intreat and conjure you by the Lord Jesus Christ, to observe the instructions we gave you about your religious conduct, and to make continual progress therein. 2for you know the precepts we gave you in the name of the Lord Jesus. 3and such is the will of God, that you should be holy, and avoid licentiousness; 4that every one of you should take care to preserve the dignity of his 5person unsullied by the vices of the Gentiles, who know not God: 6that no man should be exorbitant, and behave contumeliously to his brother: because the Lord is the avenger of all such crimes, as we have formerly remonstrated to you. 7for God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness: 8he therefore that violates these precepts, does not despise man, but God, who has endued me with his holy spirit.

9As to brotherly love, I have no occasion to write about it, God himself having instructed you to love one another. 10this indeed you practise towards all our brethren in Macedonia; and we only exhort you to advance more and more therein: 11to study your own quiet, to mind your own affairs, and follow some handicraft trade, as we recommended it to you: 12so that your way of life may stand fair to the world, and prevent your being dependent upon any man.

The Return of the Lord

13Now I would not have you, my brethren, be mistaken about the state of the dead, lest you should be as greatly afflicted as those, who have no hope. 14for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we must believe that God by Jesus will raise the dead, and assemble them with him. 15for one thing I have in charge to tell you from the Lord, that we, who shall be found still alive at the coming of the Lord, shall not get the advance of those that are dead: 16for the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and by the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, resound the summons: they who died christians shall rise first: 17then we, who shall be still alive, shall be convey'd together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord. 18therefore comfort one another with this information.