First Thessalonians 4

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¹Finally, brothers, we encourage and exhort you in the Lord Jesus. As you received instructions from us about how you must walk and please God, also in this way walk, so that you do so even more.

²For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

³For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you avoid sexual immorality,

⁴that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in holiness and honor,

⁵not in the passion of lust (as the Gentiles who do not know God).

⁶Let no man transgress and wrong his brother in this matter. For the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we forewarned you and testified.

⁷For God did not call us to uncleanness, but to holiness.

⁸Therefore, he who rejects this rejects not people, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹Regarding brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

¹⁰Indeed, you do this for all the brothers who are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brothers, to do this even more.

¹¹We also exhort you to aspire to live quietly, take care of your own responsibilities, and work with your hands, just as we commanded you,

¹²so that you may walk properly before outsiders and not be in any need.

¹³We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who sleep, so that you do not grieve like the rest who do not have hope.

¹⁴For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

¹⁵For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left at the coming of the Lord, will surely not go before those who have fallen asleep.

¹⁶For the Lord himself will descend from heaven. He will come with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. In this way we will always be with the Lord.

¹⁸Therefore, comfort one another with these words.