⁷ for this reason, brethren, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith; ⁸ for now we live, if you stand fast in the Lord. ⁹ For what thanksgiving can we render to God for you, for all the joy which we feel for your sake before our God, ¹⁰ praying earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?

¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you; ¹² and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all men, as we do to you, ¹³ so that he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

⁴² Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ⁴³ But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴ Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

The Faithful or the Unfaithful Slave

⁴⁵ “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? ⁴⁶ Blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing. ⁴⁷ Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. ⁴⁸ But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ ⁴⁹ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunken, ⁵⁰ the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, ⁵¹ and will punish^[a] him, and put him with the hypocrites; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.