Call to Holiness
FURTHERMORE then, we ask you, brothers, and beseech you in the Lord Jesus, that just as you have received from us how you ought to walk and please God, that you would abound more and more.
2 For you know what commandments we gave you in the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God: your holiness, that you should abstain from sexual immorality.
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in holiness and honour;
5 Not in the lust of covetousness, even as the Gentiles which know not God:
6 That no man cross the limits and take advantage of his brother in any matter: because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified.
7 For God has not called us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
8 He therefore that rejects this, rejects not man, but God, who has also given to us his holy Spirit.
Brotherly Love
9 ¶ Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
10 And indeed you practice it toward all the brothers which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brothers, that you abound all the more;
11 And that you aspire to a quiet life, and that you carry out your own business, and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you;
12 That you walk honestly toward those that are outsiders, and that you may have lack of nothing.
The Coming of the Lord
13 ¶ Now I would not have you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those which are asleep, that you grieve not, as others which have no hope.
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord: that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven when the command is sounded with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first;
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be taken away, together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.