Walking in a Way That Pleases Our Father
Practical holiness first, with sexual purity, not wronging a brother, minding your own business, and working with your hands so you depend on nobody. Then the answer to their grief: the dead will not be left behind, but our Father brings them home first when the Lord comes.
4 1Finally 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 to please our Father—and just as you are doing—you do so all the more. 2For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3For this is our Father's will: your sanctification—that you keep away from sexual immorality, 4that each of you knows how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, 5not driven by lustful passion like the nations who do not know our Father, 6that no one wrongs or takes advantage of his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we told you before and solemnly warned you. 7For our Father did not call us to impurity, but in holiness. 8Therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man but our Father, who gives you his Holy Spirit. a a v8 Here our Father gives his Holy Spirit — the Father and the Spirit named together, drawing the reader into the love that makes us holy.
9Now concerning brotherly love, you don't need anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by our Father to love one another. 10And indeed you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so all the more, 11and to make it your ambition to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands, just as we instructed you, 12so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
The Father Brings His Children Home
13We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve as the rest do, who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also our Father will bring with him, through Jesus, those who have fallen asleep. 15For this we tell you by a word from the Lord: we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will certainly not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of our Father, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Next, those of us still alive and remaining will be snatched up together with them into the clouds, meeting the Lord in the air; so we'll be with the Lord always. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.
