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Summary

1 Thessalonians 4:1–8 – Please God through Holiness

What happens: Paul urges them to walk and please God more and more. God’s will is their sanctification, especially sexual purity. Rejecting this instruction is rejecting God, who gives His Holy Spirit.

What it means: God is holy and calls His people to be holy in body and heart. The Spirit empowers purity and self-control. Obedience honors God’s character and covenant.

1 Thessalonians 4:9–12 – Brotherly Love and Quiet Work

What happens: They are God-taught to love one another and should increase in it. They must aspire to live quietly, mind their own affairs, and work with their hands to walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

What it means: Love is active and practical. Ordinary faithfulness is a witness to the world. God values diligence, peace, and responsibility.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 – Hope for Those Who Sleep

What happens: Paul does not want them uninformed about believers who have died. The Lord will descend with a cry, the dead in Christ will rise first, and then living believers will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord. They are to encourage one another with these words.

What it means: Resurrection hope rests on Jesus’ death and rising. God is just and merciful, reuniting His people with Christ forever. Comfort flows from sure promises.

Application

  • Pursue sexual purity as worship to God.
  • Practice quiet diligence and generous love.
  • Encourage grieving believers with the promise of resurrection.
  • Aim to please God more and more in daily choices.

Bible

1Furthermore 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.

2For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.

3For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:

4That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;

5Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:

6That 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.

7For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.

8He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.

9But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.

10And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;

11And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;

12That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.

13But 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.

14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15For 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.

16For 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:

17Then 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.

18Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

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