4Finally, our brothers and sisters, you learnt from us how you should live in order to please God. This is, of course, how you have been living. And now we beg and urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to do even more. ²For you know the instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. ³God wants you to be holy and completely free from sexual immorality. ⁴Each of you men should know how to live with his wife^c in a holy and honourable way, ⁵not with a lustful desire, like the heathen who do not know God. ⁶In this matter, then, no man should do wrong to his fellow-Christian or take advantage of him. We have told you this before, and we strongly warned you that the Lord will punish those who do that. ⁷God did not call us to live in immorality, but in holiness. ⁸So then, whoever rejects this teaching is not rejecting a human being, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

⁹There is no need to write to you about love for your fellow-believers. You yourselves have been taught by God how you should love one another. ¹⁰And you have, in fact, behaved like this towards all the brothers and sisters in all Macedonia. So we beg you, our brothers and sisters, to do even more. ¹¹Make it your aim to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to earn your own living, just as we told you before. ¹²In this way you will win the respect of those who are not believers, and you will not have to depend on anyone for what you need.

The Lord’s Coming

¹³Our brothers and sisters, we want you to know the truth about those who have died, so that you will not be sad, as are those who have no hope. ¹⁴We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will take back with Jesus those who have died believing in him.

¹⁵^*What we are teaching you now is the Lord’s teaching: we who are alive on the day the Lord comes will not go ahead of those who have died. ¹⁶^*There will be the shout of command, the archangel’s voice, the sound of God’s trumpet, and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; ¹⁷^*then we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸So then, encourage one another with these words.

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Footnotes

clive with his wife; or control his body.

Cross references

*4.15–17: 1 Co 15:51, 52
*4.15–17: 1 Co 15:51, 52
*4.15–17: 1 Co 15:51, 52