1 Thessalonians 4

1Finally, then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus: you received from us how you must conduct yourselves and please God, as you are in fact doing, so abound in it still more.

2For you know the commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

3For this is what God wills, your sanctification: that you stay away from sexual immorality,

4that each of you know how to gain mastery over his own body with holiness and honor,

5not driven by lustful passion, as are the Gentiles who do not know God,

6and that no one overstep the bounds and take advantage of his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we told you before and strongly warned you.

7For God’s call to us was not to impurity but to holiness.

8So the one who sets this aside is setting aside not a person but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.

9As for love among brothers and sisters, you do not need anyone to write to you, because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

10In fact, you are already doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the whole of Macedonia. Yet we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to excel in it still more,

11and to aim at living quietly, attending to your own business and working with your own hands, as we directed you,

12so that outsiders will see you living decently and you will lack nothing.

13But, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those who have fallen asleep, so that you will not be sorrowful like the rest, who have no hope.

14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, then in the same way God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.

15For we say this to you on the Lord’s word: we who are living and remain until the Lord’s coming will certainly not go before those who have fallen asleep.

16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with an archangel’s voice and God’s trumpet, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

17After that, we who are living and remain will be snatched up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. In this way we will be with the Lord always.

18So use these words to encourage one another.