1 Thessalonians 4
1 Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus: just as you received from us instruction on how you should live and please God—and as you are indeed living—keep growing in this more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is God's will: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.
4 Each of you should know how to keep your own body in holiness and honor,
5 not in passionate desire, like the nations who do not know God.
6 No one should overstep the bounds or take advantage of a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we already told you and solemnly warned you.
7 For God did not call us to impurity, but to holiness.
8 Therefore, whoever rejects this is not rejecting a human being, but God, who also gives you his Holy Spirit.
9 As for brotherly love, you do not need anyone to write to you about it, because you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.
10 And indeed, you do this toward all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep growing more and more,
11 and to make it your ambition to live quietly, mind your own affairs, and work with your own hands, as we instructed you,
12 so that you may live respectably before those outside the community and not need anyone's help.
13 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then through Jesus God will also bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
15 For we tell you this by a word from the Lord: we who are alive, who remain until the Lord's coming, will certainly not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, with an archangel's voice, and with God's trumpet; and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will always be with the Lord.
18 Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
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