Scrutatio

Venerdi, 29 marzo 2024 - Santi Simplicio e Costantino ( Letture di oggi)

1 Thessalonians 4


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1Final y, brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus; we instructed you how to live in theway that pleases God, and you are so living; but make more progress stil .2You are well aware of the instructions we gave you on the authority of the Lord Jesus.3God wil s you al to be holy. He wants you to keep away from sexual immorality,4and each one of you to know how to control his body in a way that is holy and honourable,5not giving way to selfish lust like the nations who do not acknowledge God.6He wants nobody at al ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in these matters; the Lord alwayspays back sins of that sort, as we told you before emphatical y.7God cal ed us to be holy, not to be immoral;8in other words, anyone who rejects this is rejecting not human authority, but God, who gives you hisHoly Spirit.9As for brotherly love, there is no need to write to you about that, since you have yourselves learnt fromGod to love one another,10and in fact this is how you treat al the brothers throughout the whole of Macedonia. However, we dourge you, brothers, to go on making even greater progress11and to make a point of living quietly, attending to your own business and earning your living, just as wetold you to,12so that you may earn the respect of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.13We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, to make sure that youdo not grieve for them, as others do who have no hope.14We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that in the same way God wil bring with him thosewho have fallen asleep in Jesus.15We can tell you this from the Lord's own teaching, that we who are stil alive for the Lord's coming willnot have any advantage over those who have fallen asleep.16At the signal given by the voice of the Archangel and the trumpet of God, the Lord himself wil comedown from heaven; those who have died in Christ wil be the first to rise,17and only after that shall we who remain alive be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meetthe Lord in the air. This is the way we shall be with the Lord for ever.18With such thoughts as these, then, you should encourage one another.