 1 Furthermore then, we urge and exhort you family+, by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us as to how you ought to walk and please God, that you should abound more and more in this. 2 For you know what instructions+ we gave you by the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God for your sanctification: That you should abstain from fornication. 4 Everyone of you should know how to possess their own vessels in sanctification and honor, 5 not in the lust of abnormal appetites+ like the Gentiles who do not know God, 6 so that no one goes beyond and defrauds another 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 Therefore, those who despise do not despise people+, but God who has also given His Holy Spirit to us. 9 But concerning brotherly love~, you do not need me to write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. 10 Indeed, you already do this toward all the family+ who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, family+, that you increase more and more. 11 Earnestly endeavor+ to be quiet and to do your own things and to work with your own hands as we have instructed+ you 12 so that you may walk honestly toward those who are outside+ of the faith and so that you may lack nothing. 13 But I do not want you to lack understanding+ family+, concerning those who are asleep, so that you are not grieved+ as others are who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then so also will God bring those who sleep in Jesus with Him. 15 For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord: That we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede+ those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will arise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we will be forever+ with the Lord. 18 Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
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