Beginning

1 From: Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

To: The church at Thessalonica—to you who belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: May blessing and peace of heart be your rich gifts from God our Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord.

² We always thank God for you and pray for you constantly. ³ We never forget your loving deeds as we talk to our God and Father about you, and your strong faith and steady looking forward to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁴ We know that God has chosen you, dear brothers, much beloved of God. ⁵ For when we brought you the Good News, it was not just meaningless chatter to you; no, you listened with great interest. What we told you produced a powerful effect upon you, for the Holy Spirit gave you great and full assurance that what we said was true. And you know how our very lives were further proof to you of the truth of our message. ⁶ So you became our followers and the Lord’s; for you received our message with joy from the Holy Spirit in spite of the trials and sorrows it brought you.

⁷ Then you yourselves became an example to all the other Christians in Greece. ⁸ And now the Word of the Lord has spread out from you to others everywhere, far beyond your boundaries, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your remarkable faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it, ⁹ for they keep telling us about the wonderful welcome you gave us, and how you turned away from your idols to God so that now the living and true God only is your Master. ¹⁰ And they speak of how you are looking forward to the return of God’s Son from heaven—Jesus, whom God brought back to life—and he is our only Savior from God’s terrible anger against sin.

2 You yourselves know, dear brothers, how worthwhile that visit was. ² You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet God gave us the courage to boldly repeat the same message to you, even though we were surrounded by enemies. ³ So you can see that we were not preaching with any false motives or evil purposes in mind; we were perfectly straightforward and sincere.

⁴ For we speak as messengers from God, trusted by him to tell the truth; we change his message not one bit to suit the taste of those who hear it; for we serve God alone, who examines our hearts’ deepest thoughts. ⁵ Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you very well know, and God knows we were not just pretending to be your friends so that you would give us money! ⁶ As for praise, we have never asked for it from you or anyone else, although as apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to some honor from you. ⁷ But we were as gentle among you as a mother feeding and caring for her own children. ⁸ We loved you dearly—so dearly that we gave you not only God’s message, but our own lives too.

⁹ Don’t you remember, dear brothers, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled and sweated to earn enough to live on so that our expenses would not be a burden to anyone there, as we preached God’s Good News among you. ¹⁰ You yourselves are our witnesses—as is God—that we have been pure and honest and faultless toward every one of you. ¹¹ We talked to you as a father to his own children—don’t you remember?—pleading with you, encouraging you and even demanding ¹² that your daily lives should not embarrass God but bring joy to him who invited you into his Kingdom to share his glory.

¹³ And we will never stop thanking God for this: that when we preached to you, you didn’t think of the words we spoke as being just our own, but you accepted what we said as the very Word of God—which, of course, it was—and it changed your lives when you believed it.

¹⁴ And then, dear brothers, you suffered what the churches in Judea did, persecution from your own countrymen, just as they suffered from their own people, the Jews. ¹⁵ After they had killed their own prophets, they even executed the Lord Jesus; and now they have brutally persecuted us and driven us out. They are against both God and man, ¹⁶ trying to keep us from preaching to the Gentiles for fear some might be saved; and so their sins continue to grow. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

¹⁷ Dear brothers, after we left you and had been away from you but a very little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried hard to come back to see you once more. ¹⁸ We wanted very much to come, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan stopped us. ¹⁹ For what is it we live for, that gives us hope and joy and is our proud reward and crown? It is you! Yes, you will bring us much joy as we stand together before our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back again. ²⁰ For you are our trophy and joy.

3 Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I decided to stay alone in Athens ^2-3 and send Timothy, our brother and fellow worker, God’s minister, to visit you to strengthen your faith and encourage you and to keep you from becoming fainthearted in all the troubles you were going through. (But of course you know that such troubles are a part of God’s plan for us Christians. ⁴ Even while we were still with you we warned you ahead of time that suffering would soon come—and it did.)

⁵ As I was saying, when I could bear the suspense no longer, I sent Timothy to find out whether your faith was still strong. I was afraid that perhaps Satan had gotten the best of you and that all our work had been useless. ⁶ And now Timothy has just returned and brings the welcome news that your faith and love are as strong as ever and that you remember our visit with joy and want to see us just as much as we want to see you. ⁷ So we are greatly comforted, dear brothers, in all of our own crushing troubles and suffering here, now that we know you are standing true to the Lord. ⁸ We can bear anything as long as we know that you remain strong in him.

⁹ How can we thank God enough for you and for the joy and delight you have given us in our praying for you? ¹⁰ For night and day we pray on and on for you, asking God to let us see you again, to fill up any little cracks there may yet be in your faith.

¹¹ May God our Father himself and our Lord Jesus send us back to you again. ¹² And may the Lord make your love to grow and overflow to each other and to everyone else, just as our love does toward you. ¹³ This will result in your hearts being made strong, sinless, and holy by God our Father so that you may stand before him guiltless on that day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns with all those who belong to him.^[a]

4 ^1-2 Let me add this, dear brothers: You already know how to please God in your daily living, for you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself. Now we beg you—yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus—that you live more and more closely to that ideal. ^3-4 For God wants you to be holy and pure and to keep clear of all sexual sin so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor— ⁵ not in lustful passion as the heathen do, in their ignorance of God and his ways.

⁶ And this also is God’s will: that you never cheat in this matter by taking another man’s wife because the Lord will punish you terribly for this, as we have solemnly told you before. ⁷ For God has not called us to be dirty-minded and full of lust but to be holy and clean. ⁸ If anyone refuses to live by these rules, he is not disobeying the rules of men but of God who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

⁹ But concerning the pure brotherly love that there should be among God’s people, I don’t need to say very much, I’m sure! For God himself is teaching you to love one another. ¹⁰ Indeed, your love is already strong toward all the Christian brothers throughout your whole nation. Even so, dear friends, we beg you to love them more and more. ¹¹ This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and doing your own work, just as we told you before. ¹² As a result, people who are not Christians will trust and respect you, and you will not need to depend on others for enough money to pay your bills.

¹³ And now, dear brothers, I want you to know what happens to a Christian when he dies so that when it happens, you will not be full of sorrow, as those are who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again, we can also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him all the Christians who have died.

¹⁵ I can tell you this directly from the Lord: that we who are still living when the Lord returns will not rise to meet him ahead of those who are in their graves. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a mighty shout and with the soul-stirring cry of the archangel and the great trumpet-call of God. And the believers who are dead will be the first to rise to meet the Lord. ¹⁷ Then we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with him forever. ¹⁸ So comfort and encourage each other with this news.

5 When is all this going to happen? I really don’t need to say anything about that, dear brothers, ² for you know perfectly well that no one knows. That day of the Lord will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. ³ When people are saying, “All is well; everything is quiet and peaceful”—then, all of a sudden, disaster will fall upon them as suddenly as a woman’s birth pains begin when her child is born. And these people will not be able to get away anywhere—there will be no place to hide.

⁴ But, dear brothers, you are not in the dark about these things, and you won’t be surprised as by a thief when that day of the Lord comes. ⁵ For you are all children of the light and of the day, and do not belong to darkness and night. ⁶ So be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Watch for his return and stay sober. ⁷ Night is the time for sleep and the time when people get drunk. ⁸ But let us who live in the light keep sober, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the happy hope of salvation.

⁹ For God has not chosen to pour out his anger upon us but to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ; ¹⁰ he died for us so that we can live with him forever, whether we are dead or alive at the time of his return. ¹¹ So encourage each other to build each other up, just as you are already doing.

¹² Dear brothers, honor the officers of your church who work hard among you and warn you against all that is wrong. ¹³ Think highly of them and give them your wholehearted love because they are straining to help you. And remember, no quarreling among yourselves.

¹⁴ Dear brothers, warn those who are lazy, comfort those who are frightened, take tender care of those who are weak, and be patient with everyone. ¹⁵ See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to everyone else. ¹⁶ Always be joyful. ¹⁷ Always keep on praying. ¹⁸ No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

¹⁹ Do not smother the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Do not scoff at those who prophesy, ²¹ but test everything that is said to be sure it is true, and if it is, then accept it. ²² Keep away from every kind of evil. ²³ May the God of peace himself make you entirely pure and devoted to God; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept strong and blameless until that day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back again. ²⁴ God, who called you to become his child, will do all this for you, just as he promised. ²⁵ Dear brothers, pray for us. ²⁶ Shake hands for me with all the brothers there. ²⁷ I command you in the name of the Lord to read this letter to all the Christians. ²⁸ And may rich blessings from our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, every one.

Sincerely, Paul