1 Thessalonians 4

Evangelical Heritage Version

Instruction Concerning Sexual Propriety

4 Therefore, beyond this, brothers, just as you received instruction from us about how you are to walk^[a] so as to please God (as indeed you are doing), we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that you do so even more. ² To be sure, you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. ³ Indeed, this is God’s will: that you be sanctified, namely, that you keep yourselves away from sexual immorality. ⁴ He wants each of you to learn to obtain a wife^[b] for yourself^[c] in a way that is holy and honorable, ⁵ not in lustful passion like the heathen, who do not know God. ⁶ No one is to overstep and take advantage of his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we said previously and solemnly testified to it. ⁷ For God did not call us for uncleanness, but in sanctification. ⁸ Consequently, whoever rejects this is not rejecting a man, but the God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Instruction Concerning Brotherly Love and Labor

⁹ Concerning brotherly love, there is no need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God, with the result that you love one another. ¹⁰ In fact, you are doing so toward all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers, to do this even more, ¹¹ and to make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, just as we instructed you. ¹² Do this so that you are conducting yourselves decently toward outsiders and are not lacking anything.

Instruction Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead at Christ’s Second Coming

¹³ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep,^[d] so that you do not grieve in the same way as the others, who have no hope. ¹⁴ Indeed, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then in the same way we also believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.

¹⁵ In fact, we tell you this by the word of the Lord: We who are alive and left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not go on ahead of those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For 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. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore, encourage one another with these words.