¹Wherefore, being no longer able to refrain ourselves, we thought good to be left alone in Athens, ²and sent Timotheus, our brother and fellow-workman under God in the glad tidings of Christ, to confirm you and encourage you concerning your faith, ³that no one might be moved by these afflictions. (For yourselves know that we are set for this; ⁴for also, when we were with you, we told you beforehand we are about to be in tribulation, even as also it came to pass, and ye know.) ⁵For this reason I also, no longer able to refrain myself, sent to know your faith, lest perhaps the tempter had tempted you and our labour should be come to nothing.

⁶But Timotheus having just come to us from you, and brought to us the glad tidings of your faith and love, and that ye have always good remembrance of us, desiring much to see us, even as we also you; ⁷for this reason we have been comforted in you, brethren, in all our distress and tribulation, through your faith, ⁸because now we live if ye stand firm in the Lord. ⁹For what thanksgiving can we render to God for you, for all the joy wherewith we rejoice on account of you before our God, ¹⁰night and day beseeching exceedingly to the end that we may see your face, and perfect what is lacking in your faith?

¹¹But our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you. ¹²But you, may the Lord make to exceed and abound in love toward one another, and toward all, even as we also towards you, ¹³in order to the confirming of your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Chapter 4

¹For the rest, then, brethren, we beg you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, even as ye have received from us how ye ought to walk and please God, even as ye also do walk, that ye would abound still more. ²For ye know what charges we gave you through the Lord Jesus. ³For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication; ⁴that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, ⁵(not in passionate desire, even as the nations who know not God,) ⁶not overstepping the rights of and wronging his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all these things, even as we also told you before, and have fully testified. ⁷For God has not called us to uncleanness, but in sanctification. ⁸He therefore that in this disregards his brother, disregards, not man, but God, who has given also his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹Now concerning brotherly love ye have no need that we should write to you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. ¹⁰For also ye do this towards all the brethren in the whole of Macedonia; but we exhort you, brethren, to abound still more, ¹¹and to seek earnestly to be quiet and mind your own affairs, and work with your own hands, even as we charged you, ¹²that ye may walk reputably towards those without, and may have need of no one.

¹³But we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are fallen asleep, to the end that ye be not grieved even as also the rest who have no hope. ¹⁴For if we believe that Jesus has died and has risen again, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. ¹⁵(For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who remain to the coming of the Lord, are in no way to anticipate those who have fallen asleep; ¹⁶for the Lord himself, with an assembling shout, with archangel’s voice and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; ¹⁷then we, the living who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall be always with the Lord. ¹⁸So encourage one another with these words.)

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