1 Thessalonians 4Book 52 of 66 · 18 verses · MBT primary, NKJV fallback where MBT pending
Finally, then, brothers, we ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus — that as you have received from us instruction concerning how you ought to walk and please God (just as you are doing) — that you excel still more.
For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
For this is the will of God: your sanctification — that you abstain from sexual immorality;
that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor;
not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God;
and that no one transgress and defraud his brother in this matter — because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and warned solemnly.
For God did not call us for impurity, but for sanctification.
Therefore he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but God — who gives His Holy Spirit to you.
But concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you — for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
For indeed you do practice it toward all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to excel still more,
and to make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands — just as we commanded you,
so that you may walk properly toward outsiders, and have need of nothing.
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep — so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord: that we who are alive — who remain until the coming of the Lord — will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep.
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 will rise first.
Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord.