Chapter 4

Moreover, brethren, as you learnt from our lips the lives which you ought to live, and do live, so as to please God, we beg and exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live them more and more truly.

For you know the commands which we laid upon you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

For this is God's will--your purity of life, that you abstain from fornication;

that each man among you shall know how to procure a wife who shall be his own in purity and honour;

that you be not overmastered by lustful cravings, like the Gentiles who have no knowledge of God;

and that in this matter there be no encroaching on the rights of a brother Christian and no overreaching him. For the Lord is an avenger in all such cases, as we have already taught you and solemnly warned you.

God has not called us to an unclean life, but to one of purity.

Therefore a defiant spirit in such a case provokes not man but God, who puts His Holy Spirit into your hearts.

But on the subject of love for the brotherhood it is unnecessary for me to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;

and indeed you do love all the brethren throughout Macedonia. And we exhort you to do so more and more,

and to vie with one another in eagerness for peace, every one minding his own business and working with his hands, as we ordered you to do:

so as to live worthy lives in relation to outsiders, and not be a burden to any one.

Now, concerning those who from time to time pass away, we would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, lest you should mourn as others do who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus has died and risen again, we also believe that, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who shall have passed away.

For this we declare to you on the Lord's own authority--that we who are alive and continue on earth until the Coming of the Lord, shall certainly not forestall those who shall have previously passed away.

For the Lord Himself will come down from Heaven with a loud word of command, and with an archangel's voice and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Afterwards we who are alive and are still on earth will be caught up in their company amid clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so we shall be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.