Common - I Thessalonians - 4

4:1  Finally, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, you do so more and more.

4:2  For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

4:3  For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that is, that you should abstain from sexual immorality;

4:4  that each one of you know how to take his own spouse for himself in holiness and honor,

4:5  not in the passion of lust like the heathen, who do not know God;

4:6  and that no man transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.

4:7  For God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness.

4:8  Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

4:9  Now concerning love of the brethren you have no need to have any one write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;

4:10  and indeed you do love all the brethren throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to do so more and more.

4:11  Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you,

4:12  so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anyone.

4:13  But we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

4:14  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

4:15  For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

4:16  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

4:17  Then we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

4:18  Therefore comfort one another with these words.