1Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus: you learned from us how you should live to please God, and you are already doing it, so do it even more.
2For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3For this is what God wants: for you to be holy, to stay away from sexual immorality.
4Each of you should know how to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable,
5not in passionate lust like people who don’t know God.
6No one should take advantage of or cheat a fellow believer in this matter, because the Lord will punish all who do these things, just as we warned you and testified before.
7For God called us not to live in impurity, but in holiness.
8Therefore, anyone who rejects this teaching is not rejecting a human being, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
9Now concerning brotherly love, you don’t need anyone to write to you, because God himself has taught you to love one another.
10In fact, you are already showing love to all the brothers and sisters throughout all of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do it even more.
11and that you should aim to live a calm life, mind your own business, and work with your own hands, just as we told you to.
12Then you will earn the respect of outsiders and won’t have to depend on anyone.
13Brothers and sisters, we don’t want you to be unaware about those who have died, so that you won’t grieve like everyone else who has no hope.
14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have died believing in him.
15We tell you this directly from the Lord’s own teaching: We who are still alive and remain until the Lord’s coming will not go before those who have already died.
16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
18So encourage each other with these words.