Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
1 Thessalonians 4
God’s Will: Your Holiness
Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and please God—as you are in fact walking—you continue to do so even more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is God’s will: your holiness—that you stay away from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not in passionate desire like the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no one cross a boundary and exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we told you before and solemnly warned you. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Therefore the one who rejects this does not reject a human being but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Love One Another and Live Quietly
Now concerning love for brothers and sisters, you have no need for us to write to you, because you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. Indeed, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so even more, and to make it your ambition to live quietly, mind your own affairs, and work with your hands, just as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly toward outsiders and have need of no one.
The Dead in Christ and the Lord’s Coming
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you do not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we trust that Jesus died and rose, in the same way God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep through him. For this we tell you by the Lord’s word: we who are alive and remain until the Lord’s coming will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. Because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding shout, with an archangel’s voice, and with God’s trumpet, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.