1: Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort [you] by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received from us how ye ought to walk and to please God, [so] ye would abound more and more. 2: For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. 3: For this is the will of God, [even] your sanctification, that ye should abstain from lewdness. 4: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; 5: Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles who know not God: 6: That no [man] go beyond and defraud his brother in [any] matter: because the Lord [is] the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. 7: For God hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness. 8: He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given to us his holy Spirit. 9: But concerning brotherly love ye need not that I write to you: for ye yourselves are taught by God to love one another. 10: And indeed ye do it towards all the brethren who are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; 11: And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12: That ye may walk honestly towards them that are without, and [that] ye may have need of nothing. 13: But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. 14: For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15: For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive [and] remain to the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep. 16: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17: Then we who are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18: Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.
