A Life Pleasing to God

1Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how you must live and please God (as you are in fact living) that you do so more and more. 2For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality, 4that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, 5not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God. 6In this matter no one should violate the rights of his brother or take advantage of him, because the Lord is the avenger in all these cases, as we also told you earlier and warned you solemnly. 7For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. 8Consequently the one who rejects this is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

9Now on the topic of brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. 10And indeed you are practicing it toward all the brothers and sisters in all of Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11to aspire to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own business, and to work with your hands, as we commanded you. 12In this way you will live a decent life before outsiders and not be in need.

The Lord Returns for Believers

13Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 15For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.