1 Furthermore then we beg you, brothers, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more.
2 For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor;
5 Not in afflictions of the mind of desire for forbidden things, just as the Gentiles who don't know God:
6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.
7 For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness.
8 He therefore that despises, despises not man, but God, who has also given into us His holy Spirit.
9 But as touching brotherly love you need not that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another.
10 And indeed you do it toward all the brothers which are in all Macedonia: but we beg you, brothers, that you increase more and more;
11 And that you study to be quiet, and to do your own business and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
12 That you may walk honestly toward those who are without, and that you may have lack of nothing.
13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no divinely inspired expectation.
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.
15 For this we say to you by the utterance of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the abiding presence of the Lord shall not go before those who are asleep. *
16 For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord into the air: and so shall we perpetually] be with the Lord. *
18 Therefore comfort one another with these utterances.