Study Desk

You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.

You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers.

urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews,

who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone

and we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith,

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?

Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.

And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication;

not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;

For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.

Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.

Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.