1 PAUL and Silvanus and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.
2 We thank God always for you all when we mention you in our prayers,
3 unceasingly remembering your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ before God our Father.
4 We know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you
5 and that our good news came to you not in word only but in power and in the Holy Spirit and in great assurance, just as you know we acted among you for your benefit.
6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the message in great affliction with joy which the Holy Spirit gave,
7 so that you became a pattern for all believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.
8 For the message of the Lord sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith toward God has gone abroad, so that there is no need for us to speak a word.
9 For the people themselves are telling about us, what a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God
10 and to wait for his Son from heaven \'97 his Son Jesus whom he raised from the dead and who is saving us from the coming wrath.
1 YOU yourselves know, brethren, what a reception we had from you, that it was not without result,
2 but after we had suffered and been roughly treated, as you know, in Philippi, we made bold in our God to speak to you the good news of God with great wrestling.
3 For our appeal springs not from deception, nor from impure motives, nor from cunning,
4 but as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the good news, so we speak, not as if we were pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts.
5 Nor did we ever fall into flattering talk, as you know, nor use any pretext for self-enrichment \'97 God is witness \'97
6 nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or others, although we could have claimed the dignity of Christ's apostles.
7 But we became gentle in the midst of you like a nursing mother cherishing her own children.
8 Yearning over you so, we would gladly have imparted to you not only God's good news but our own lives as well, because you had become dear to us.
9 For you remember, brethren, our toil and labor as we worked night and day so as not to burden any one of you while we proclaimed to you the good news of God.
10 You are witnesses \'97 and God is witness \'97 how purely and justly and blamelessly we acted toward you who believe.
11 You know that just like a father toward his own children we encouraged each one of you, and warned and conjured you
12 to live lives worthy of the God who is calling you into his own kingdom and glory.
13 For this reason we unceasingly give thanks to God that when you received from us the report of the message of God you accepted it not as the message of men, but, as it truly is, the message of God, which also is doing its work in you who believe.
14 For you became imitators, brethren, of the churches of God that are in Judaea in Christ Jesus, because you too suffered the same things from your fellow countrymen that they did from the Jews,
15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out and do not please God and are enemies to all men,
16 trying to prevent us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. All this goes always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's fiercest wrath has overtaken them.
17 But we, brethren, when bereft of you for a little while, out of sight not out of mind, endeavored more earnestly to see your faces, with great longing.
18 For that reason we determined to come to you, yes, I, Paul, more than once: but Satan hindered us.
19 For what is our hope or joy or crown to boast of before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?
20 You are our glory and joy.
1 SO when we could no longer endure the anxiety, we chose to be left at Athens alone
2 and sent Timothy, our brother and God's servant in the good news of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith,
3 that no one might be disturbed in these trials. For you yourselves know that we are destined to this.
4 For when we were with you we told you in advance, "We shall soon have trouble." And so it came to pass, as you know.
5 Therefore, when I could no longer endure the anxiety, I sent to know about your faith for fear that the tempter had tempted you and our labor had gone for nothing.
6 But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us good news of your faith and love, and that you always keep us well in mind and long to see us, just as we long to see you,
7 we have been cheered, brethren, in regard to you, in all our straits and distresses by your faith.
8 Now we are living, since you are standing firm in the Lord.
9 For how can we be grateful enough to God for you in view of all the joy we have because of you,
10 while we pray beyond measure night and day that we may see your faces and make good whatever lacks there may be in your faith?
11 May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus Christ open the way for us to come to you.
12 The Lord make you to abound and overflow in love toward one another and toward all men, just as we do toward you,
13 that your hearts may be made firm and you may be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.
1 TO conclude, brethren, we beg of you and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live to please God, and are living, you will excel still more.
2 For you know what directions we have given you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God: to have you become holy and have you shun unchastity;
4 to have each of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor,
5 not in the passion of lust, as the Gentiles do who know not God;
6 to have no one trespass or take advantage of his brother in this matter; for the Lord is the punisher of all such, as we have already told you and solemnly warned you.
7 God has not called us to live in impurity, but in holiness.
8 Therefore he who disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
9 Regarding brotherly love you have no need for me to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another,
10 and you do the same to all the brethren in the whole of Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still further
11 and to be ambitious to lead a quiet life and to mind each his own business and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.
12 Thus you will live becomingly in the sight of outsiders and will have need of nothing.
13 We do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, regarding those who are sleeping, that you may not sorrow as the rest of men who have no hope.
14 For since, as we believe, Jesus died and rose, so too God will through Jesus bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
15 This we tell you by the word of the Lord: We, the living, who have been left until the coming of the Lord, will not have the start of those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with God's trumpet-call, and first the dead in Christ will rise.
17 Then we, the living, who are left, will be caught up along with them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall forever be with the Lord.
18 So encourage one another with these words.
1 BUT regarding times and dates, brethren, you do not need to have me write to you.
2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
3 When they are saying, "Peace and safety," then sudden destruction is upon them, like the pangs upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.
4 But you, brethren, are not in darkness so that the day can take you like a thief.
5 You are all sons of light and sons of day. We do not belong to night or to darkness.
6 Then let us not be sleeping like the rest of men, but let us watch and be sober.
7 For those who sleep sleep in the night and those who drink drink in the night.
8 But let us who are of the day be sober. Let us put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation.
9 For God has not destined us to wrath, but to the winning of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
10 who died for us that whether we are waking or sleeping we may live in company with him.
11 Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, as indeed you are doing.
12 We beg you, brethren, to regard those who are laboring among you and who preside over you in the Lord and give you counsel,
13 and to esteem them very highly in love on account of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.
14 We urge you, brethren, to warn the disorderly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all.
15 Take care that no one repays evil with evil, but always seek eagerly what is good in dealing with one another and with every one.
16 Always be joyful.
17 Pray without ceasing.
18 In everything give thanks, for this is God's will in Christ for you.
19 Do not quench the Spirit.
20 Do not despise prophecies.
21 Test all things; hold fast the good.
22 Avoid every kind of evil.
23 May the God of peace himself make you completely holy, and may your spirits and souls and bodies be kept faultless and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He is faithful who calls you and he will do it.
25 Brethren, pray for us.
26 Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss.
27 I solemnly charge you in the Lord's name to have this letter read to all the brethren.
28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.