1Now then, brothers and sisters, we ask you and urge you by the Lord Jesus. You received from us how you ought to live and to please God. So we ask that you do this more and more.
2For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
3For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you keep away from fornication.
4Each one of you should know how to keep his own vessel in sanctification and honour,
5not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.
6No one should go too far and cheat his brother in any matter. For the Lord punishes all who do such things, as we told you before and warned you.
7For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness.
8So the one who despises this does not despise man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit.
9About brotherly love I do not need to write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
10And indeed you do this toward all the brothers and sisters in all Macedonia. But we ask you, brothers and sisters, to do it more and more.
11Make it your aim to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.
12Then you will live honestly toward those outside, and you will lack nothing.
13Brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant about those who are asleep. Then you will not grieve like others who have no hope.
14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.
15For this we tell you by the word of the Lord: we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not go before those who are asleep.
16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven 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 and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
18So comfort one another with these words.