Montgomery - I Thessalonians - 4

4:1  Finally then, my brothers, I continue to beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you learned of me how to walk so as to please God - and you are actually doing so - that you abound in it yet more and more.

4:2  For you know what charges I laid upon you through the Lord Jesus.

4:3  For this is God’s will, even your sanctification; that you should abstain from sexual vice.

4:4  That each one should learn how to take a wife in purity and honor.

4:5  Not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who know not God.

4:6  That no man overreach or take advantage of his brother in such matters, because "the Lord takes vengeance" in all these things, as also I repeatedly forewarned you and testified to you.

4:7  For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness.

4:8  So that he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gave you his Holy Spirit.

4:9  It is not needed that I should write to you about brotherly love; for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.

4:10  As indeed you do love all the brothers in Macedonia. But I exhort you, brothers, to abound in this yet more.

4:11  Also, that you endeavor to live quietly and to mind your own business, and to work with your hands (as I charged you).

4:12  So that your conduct may be seemly toward those that are without, and that you may not need help from any man.

4:13  But I would not have you ignorant, brothers, about those who are falling asleep. You must not sorrow like other men, who have no hope.

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

4:15  For this I tell you by the word of the Lord, that we who are living, who survive unto the coming of the Lord, will in no wise precede those who have fallen asleep.

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

4:17  And afterwards we who are alive, who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

4:18  So comfort one another with these words.