Living to Please God

1Finally, then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as ye received from us how ye ought to walk, and to please God?even as ye also are walking?that ye abound more and more; 2for ye know what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3For this is the will of God?even your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; 4that each one of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor; 5not in passion of desire, even as the gentiles, who know not God; 6that he go not beyond and gain an advantage over his brother in the matter; because the Lord is an avenger of all these things, as we also told you before, and solemnly testified. 7For God did not call us unto uncleanness, but in sanctification. 8Therefore, indeed, he that rejects, rejects not man, but God, Who giveth His Holy Spirit to you.

9But concerning brotherly love, ye have no need that one write to you; for ye yourselves are taught by God to love one another; 10and, in fact, ye do it to all the brethren who are in all Macedonia; but we exhort you, brethren, to abound yet more; 11and to make it your aim to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we charged you; 12that ye walk becomingly towards those without, and that ye may have need of nothing.

The Return of the Lord

13But we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those falling asleep, that ye sorrow not even as the rest who have no hope; 14for, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those who fell asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. 15For this we say to You, in a word of the Lord, that we, the living who remain over to the coming of the Lord, shall in nowise precede those who fell asleep; 16because the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven, with a shout, with a voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17after that we, the living who are left over, will be caught up together with them in clouds, into the air, to meet the Lord; and so shall we always be with the Lord. 18So then, comfort one another with these words.