1 Thessalonians 4

Living that pleases God

¹So then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus to keep living the way you already are and even do better in how you live and please God—just as you learned from us.²You know the instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.³God’s will is that your lives are dedicated to him. This means that you stay away from sexual immorality⁴and learn how to control your own body in a pure and respectable way.⁵Don’t be controlled by your sexual urges like the Gentiles who don’t know God.⁶No one should mistreat or take advantage of their brother or sister in this issue. The Lord punishes people for all these things, as we told you before and sternly warned you.⁷God didn’t call us to be immoral but to be dedicated to him.⁸Therefore, whoever rejects these instructions isn’t rejecting a human authority. They are rejecting God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹You don’t need us to write about loving your brothers and sisters because God has already taught you to love each other.¹⁰In fact, you are doing loving deeds for all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. Now we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do so even more.¹¹Aim to live quietly, mind your own business, and earn your own living, just as I told you.¹²That way you’ll behave appropriately toward outsiders, and you won’t be in need.

Believers who have died

¹³Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about people who have died so that you won’t mourn like others who don’t have any hope.¹⁴Since we believe that Jesus died and rose, so we also believe that God will bring with him those who have died in Jesus.¹⁵What we are saying is a message from the Lord: we who are alive and still around at the Lord’s coming definitely won’t go ahead of those who have died.¹⁶This is because the Lord himself will come down from heaven with the signal of a shout by the head angel and a blast on God’s trumpet. First, those who are dead in Christ will rise.¹⁷Then, we who are living and still around will be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air. That way we will always be with the Lord.¹⁸So encourage each other with these words.