Living to please God
4
📚Finally then we urge you, brethren, and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have learned from us how you ought to behave and please God 📖, so you would excel in this more and more. 2 📚For you know what instructions we gave you by the Lord Jesus 📖.Holy living
3 📚For this is the will of God, your sanctification 📖, that you should abstain from sexual immorality 📖, 4 📚that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel 📖 in holiness and honour 📖, 5 📚not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God 📖, 6 📚that no man transgress and take advantage of his brother in this matter; because the Lord is the avenger 📖 of all such, as we also warned you before and solemnly affirmed.
4:6 Adultery is a wrong done not only to those who engage in it but to their spouses.⚜
7 📚For God has not called us to uncleanness 📖, but to holiness. 8 📚So he who rejects this teaching is rejecting not man but God 📖, who has given to us his Holy Spirit 📖.
Brotherly love
9 📚But concerning brotherly love you have no need of my writing to you, for you yourselves are taught by God 📖 to love one another.
4:9 “Brotherly love” is the love believers have for one another. They are all spiritual brothers (and sisters) belonging to one heavenly Father, and should behave in accordance with this truth – John 13:34.⚜
10 📚And indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all of Macedonia 📖. But we urge you, brethren, to excel in this more and more 📖,
Living in a way that attracts others
11 📚and to aim 📖 to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands 📖, as we instructed you, 12 📚so that you may behave honorably toward outsiders, and that you will lack nothing 📖.
The second coming of Christ, the Rapture
13 📚But I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep 📖, so that you do not grieve 📖 like others who have no hope 📖.
14 📚For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again 📖, just so 📖 God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus 📖. 15 📚For this we tell 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 have fallen 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 rise 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 📖. And so we will be forever with the Lord 📖. 18 📚Therefore comfort 📖 one another with these words.
4:13-18 Other prophecies of Christ’s second coming are at Matt 24:27-31, 36; John 14:3; Acts 1:11; 1 Cor 15:23, 51-54; 2 Thess 1:7; 2:1, 8; Heb 9:28; 1 John 2:28; Rev 1:7; 19:11-16; 22:12.⚜