In 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4, Paul gave the people more instructions about how to live a life of holiness in anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ. He urged the people to be more holy in order to please God through abstaining from sex and focusing on sanctifying themselves.
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Walking in Holiness
In the first part of 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4, Paul urged the people to always strive to please God. He said to refrain from allowing their sexual desires to control their thoughts and their actions because it was the will of God for everyone to possess their own vessels in honor to Him. He also told them to not be like the Gentiles who did not know God and had lustful passions.
Paul told the Thessalonians that God did not want them to sin by taking advantage of their brothers, because He, the Lord, has His ways of punishing those actions. He told them that God was calling them to be holy and not immoral. Anyone who rejected this, according to Paul, was not rejecting the authority of man, but the authority of God who gave them the Holy Spirit.
Instructions for a Godly Walk
Paul encouraged the people in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 to walk in love for each other. He urged them to make more progress on this for their love was manifested towards all the brothers in Macedonia.
He reminded them to work with their hands in efforts to make a living as he had taught them. He said this would help them earn the respect of outsiders.
Finally, Paul urged them to have hope. He did not want to see them ignorant concerning those who had already passed away. As a result, he told them that just as Jesus had risen from the dead, so would those who have died in Christ. At the appointed time, Paul said, all believers would be taken up to be with the Lord forever.
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1 Thessalonians 4 (King James Version)
1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:
6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.
7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.
8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.
9 But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.
10 And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;
11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.
13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.