1 Thessalonians 4
1Finally, then, brothers, we implore you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that just as you received from us how it is necessary for you to walk and to please God, just as you also are walking, you may abound more.
2For you know what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;
4that each one of you know how to control his own vessel in holiness and honor,
5not in passion of desire, as also the Gentiles who do not know God;
6not to go beyond and defraud his brother in the matter, because the Lord is an avenger concerning all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.
7For God did not call us for impurity, but in holiness.
8So then, the one who rejects this rejects not a human being but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.
9Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for me to write to you; for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another,
10And indeed you are doing this toward all the brothers in all of Macedonia. But we exhort you, brothers, to abound more and more,
11and to make it your ambition to live quietly and to attend to your own affairs and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you,
12so that you may walk properly toward those outside and have need of no one.
13But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who are sleeping, that you may not grieve as the rest also, who have no hope.
14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.
15For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are living, who are remaining until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep;
16because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of 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 remain, 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.
18Therefore encourage one another with these words.