First Epistle to the Thessalonians - The New Testament

¹ Finally, brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus; we instructed you how to live in the way that pleases God, and you are so living; but make more progress still.

² You are well aware of the instructions we gave you on the authority of the Lord Jesus.

³ God wills you all to be holy. He wants you to keep away from sexual immorality,

⁴ and each one of you to know how to control his body in a way that is holy and honourable,

⁵ not giving way to selfish lust like the nations who do not acknowledge God.

⁶ He wants nobody at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in these matters; the Lord always pays back sins of that sort, as we told you before emphatically.

⁷ God called us to be holy, not to be immoral;

⁸ in other words, anyone who rejects this is rejecting not human authority, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

⁹ As for brotherly love, there is no need to write to you about that, since you have yourselves learnt from God to love one another,

¹⁰ and in fact this is how you treat all the brothers throughout the whole of Macedonia. However, we do urge you, brothers, to go on making even greater progress

¹¹ and to make a point of living quietly, attending to your own business and earning your living, just as we told you to,

¹² so that you may earn the respect of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.

¹³ We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, to make sure that you do not grieve for them, as others do who have no hope.

¹⁴ We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that in the same way God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

¹⁵ We can tell you this from the Lord's own teaching, that we who are still alive for the Lord's coming will not have any advantage over those who have fallen asleep.

¹⁶ At the signal given by the voice of the Archangel and the trumpet of God, the Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise,

¹⁷ and only after that shall we who remain alive be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. This is the way we shall be with the Lord for ever.

¹⁸ With such thoughts as these, then, you should encourage one another.