1Finally then, brothers, we implore you and we exhort you in the Lord Jesus, so that, even as you have received from us in what manner it behooves you to walk and to please God, even as also you walk now, so you may abound more;
2for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;
4that each of you know how to control his own vessel in holiness and honor,
5not in the passion of lust, as also the nations not knowing God;
6that no one go beyond and overreach his brother in the matter; because the Lord is avenging concerning all these things, even as also we told you before and thoroughly warned.
7For God has not called us to impurity but into holiness.
8So then, the one who rejects this disregards not man but God, the One also giving his Holy Spirit to you.
9Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for me to write to you; for you yourselves are taught by God in order to love one another;
10and indeed you are doing this toward all the brothers, the ones in all Macedonia. However, we exhort you, brothers, to abound more and more,
11and to strive earnestly to live quietly and to attend to your own and to work with your own hands, even as we commanded you;
12so that you may walk properly toward those outside and may have need of no one.
13But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those falling asleep, so that you may not be grieved, even as also the rest, those not having hope.
14For if we trust that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with Him those having fallen asleep through Jesus.
15For this we declare to you in the word of the Lord, that we ourselves, the living who are remaining until the coming of the Lord, certainly will not precede those having fallen asleep;
16because the Lord Himself, with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in the Anointed One will rise first,
17then we ourselves, the living, those remaining, together with them will be caught away in the clouds for the meeting of the Lord in the air; and so we will be always with the Lord.
18Therefore encourage one another with these words.