1 Thessalonians 4
1Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus: just as you received from us the tradition of how you must walk—that is, how to conduct your lives—to please God (just as you are indeed walking), we urge you to excel in this even more. 2For you know what instructions we gave you through the authority of the Lord Jesus.
3For this is the will of God: your consecration. Specifically, that you distance yourselves from sexual immorality; 4that each of you knows how to master his own vessel in consecration and honor, 5not in the passion of lust like the nations who do not know God; 6and that no one oversteps boundaries to exploit his brother or sister in this matter. For the Lord is the one who exacts justice concerning all these things, just as we told you before and solemnly warned you. 7For God did not call us to a state of impurity, but to live within consecration. 8Therefore, the one who rejects this is not rejecting a human being, but God—the very one who gives His Holy Spirit into you.
9Now, regarding "brother-love," you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are theodidaktoi—taught by God—to love one another. 10Indeed, you are doing this for all the brothers and sisters throughout the whole of Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to excel in this even more, 11and to make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you, 12so that you may walk with dignity before those on the outside and have need of nothing.
13We do not want you to be in the dark, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are sleeping, so that you do not grieve like the rest of the people who have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. 15For we say this to you by a word of the Lord: that we who are alive, who are left behind until the Parousia of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself, with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left behind, will be snatched away together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air—joining his royal procession—and so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore, encourage one another with these words.