Bible Time

¹FROM this time forth, my brothers, we beg you and ask you earnestly by our Lord Jesus that as you have been taught by us how you ought to live and to please God, so you will increase more and more. ²For you know what commandments we gave you by our Lord Jesus. ³For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication, ⁴That each one of you should know how to keep his possessions in sanctification and honor; ⁵And not through the passion of lust, even as the rest of the Gentiles who do not know God; ⁶And that no man overreach to transgress and defraud his brother in this matter, because our Lord is the avenger of all such, as we have also forewarned you and testified. ⁷For God has not called you to uncleanness but to holiness. ⁸Therefore, he who does an injustice does not wrong man but God who has also given to you his Holy Spirit.

⁹Now concerning brotherly love, you do not need me to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. ¹⁰And indeed you show it toward all the brothers who are in Macedonia; but I beg you, my brothers, that you increase your love more and more; ¹¹And that you endeavor to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, ¹²That you may lead a life of good example toward outsiders, so that you depend on no man.

¹³Now I want you to know, my brothers, that you should not grieve over those who are dead, as those do who have no hope. ¹⁴For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so those who have died in Jesus, God will bring with him.

¹⁵For this we say to you by the very word of our Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of our Lord will not overtake those who are dead. ¹⁶For our Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God; and those who died in Messiah will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet our Lord in the air; and so will we ever be with our Lord. ¹⁸Therefore, comfort one another, with these words.