A Call to Holiness

¹Additionally then, siblings, we ask and urge y’all in the Lord Jesus, that as y’all received instruction from us on how you* should live to please God—as y’all are doing—do it all the more.

²For y’all know what commands we gave you* by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

³This is God’s will for your* sanctification: that y’all keep away from sexual immorality,

⁴that each of y’all know how to control your own body in holiness and honor,[#4:4 lit. possess his own vessel]

⁵not in lustful desires like the ethnic groups that don’t know God.

⁶This means that no one should violate and take advantage of a sibling, because the Lord is an avenger in all such things, as we told y’all earlier and solemnly warned y’all.

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

⁸Consequently the one who rejects this doesn’t reject human authority, but God, who gives ʜɪꜱ Holy Spirit to y’all.

⁹Now about brotherly love, y’all don’t need anyone to write to you*. For y’all have been God-taught to love one another.

¹⁰In fact, y’all are practicing this toward all the siblings throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge y’all, siblings, to do this all the more,

¹¹to seek to lead a quiet life, to manage your own affairs, and to work with your* own hands, just as we instructed y’all,

¹²so that y’all may behave properly around outsiders, and not be dependent on anyone.

Hope Even in Death

¹³Now, siblings, we don’t want y’all to be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep, so that y’all do not grieve like those who have no hope.

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

¹⁵We tell y’all this according to the word of the Lord: those who remain alive until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

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

¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

¹⁸Therefore y’all comfort one another with these words.