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Living to Please God
1 Finally, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, just as you learned from us how you ought to walk and to please God, you do so more and more.
2 For you know the commands we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
3 It is God's will that you be sanctified, that you abstain from fornication,
4 and that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor,
5 not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.
6 In this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of his brother, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you before and solemnly warned you.
7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live in holiness.
8 Therefore whoever rejects this command does not reject man but God, who has given his Holy Spirit to you.
9 Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.
10 And indeed you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
11 We urge you to aspire to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own affairs, and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you,
12 so that you may walk properly toward outsiders and not be in need of anything.
The Coming of the Lord
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not be grieved like others who do not have hope.
14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
15 According to the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive, who are left behind until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive, who are left behind, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.