1 Thessalonians 4

Paul turns to how they ought “to walk and to please God.” God’s will is their sanctification: they must abstain from sexual immorality, control their bodies “in holiness and honor,” and not wrong one another, for “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.” He commends their brotherly love and urges it to increase, along with quiet, honest, hardworking lives. Then he comforts them about “those who are asleep,” that they may not grieve “as others do who have no hope”: “since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” At the Lord’s coming, “the dead in Christ will rise first,” then the living will be caught up together with them “to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”