1 Thessalonians 4

Therefore, finally, brothers, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, just as you received from us how it is necessary for you to walk and to please God (just as also you are walking), that you might abound even more.

For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. \*

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you keep yourselves from sexual immorality;

that each of you knows to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,

not in the passion of lust (just as also the Gentiles, the ones not knowing God);

not to transgress and take advantage of his brother in this matter, for the Lord {is} an avenger concerning all these things, just as we also said before to you and testified. \*

For God did not call us for uncleanness, but in sanctification.

Therefore, the one rejecting, rejects not man, but God, the one giving his Holy Spirit to you. \*

But concerning brotherly love, you have no need {for us} to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

For also you do it to all the brothers who {are} in all Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers, to abound even more

and to strive to be quiet and to perform your own things and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you,

so that you may walk properly before the ones outside and have need of nothing. \*

Now we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning the ones sleeping, so that you may not grieve just as also the rest, the ones not having hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, thus also God will bring the ones having slept through Jesus with him.

For this we say to you in a word of the Lord, that we, the ones living, the ones surviving to the coming of the Lord, will certainly not go before the ones having slept. \*

For the Lord himself, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we, the ones living, the ones surviving, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and in this way we will always be with the Lord.

Therefore, encourage one another with these words. \*