1 Thessalonians 4

Excelling in Living and Pleasing God

1 Finally, brothers and sisters, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that just as you received instruction from us concerning how you ought to conduct your lives and please God—as indeed you are doing—you should progress in this even more abundantly.

2 For you understand what directives we communicated to you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

3 For what God desires is your sanctification: that you keep yourselves away from sexual immorality,

4 that each of you understand how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,

5 not in the passion of lustful desire like the Gentile nations who have no knowledge of God,

6 that no one overstep boundaries and take advantage of his brother in any matter, because the Lord executes vengeance concerning all these things, just as we told you before and testified solemnly.

7 For God has not called us to a life characterized by moral uncleanness but to a life set apart in holiness.

8 Consequently, the one who disregards this directive is not rejecting human authority but is rejecting God, who also supplies His Holy Spirit to you.

Brotherly Love

9 Now concerning love for fellow believers, you have no requirement for me to write to you, for you yourselves have been instructed by God to love one another.

10 And in fact you are practicing this toward all the brothers and sisters throughout the whole region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to increase in this more and more,

11 and to consider it a point of honor to lead a tranquil life, to attend to your own responsibilities, and to labor with your own hands, exactly as we commanded you,

12 so that you may conduct yourselves with dignity toward those who are outside the faith and not be financially dependent on anyone.

The Coming of the Lord

13 But we do not want you to remain ignorant, brothers and sisters, concerning those who have died, so that you will not sorrow as do the rest of humanity who possess no hope.

14 For if we are convinced that Jesus died and rose to life again, even so God will bring with Jesus those who have died in union with Him.

15 For this we declare to you based on a word from the Lord Himself: that we who are living and surviving until the coming of the Lord will by no means go ahead of those who have already died.

16 Because the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of a leading angel, and with God’s trumpet blast, and the dead who are in Christ will rise first of all.

17 After that, we who are still living and remaining will be caught up together with them in the clouds for a meeting with the Lord in the air, and in this way we will be with the Lord forever.

18 So then, give encouragement to one another through these truths.

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