God

remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father;

knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election,

For they themselves report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God,

but having suffered before and been shamefully treated, as ye know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God in much conflict.

but even as we have been approved of God to be intrusted with the gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God who proveth our hearts.

For neither at any time were we found using words of flattery, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness;

even so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were well pleased to impart unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were become very dear to us.

For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and righteously and unblamably we behaved ourselves toward you that believe:

to the end that ye should walk worthily of God, who calleth you into his own kingdom and glory.

And for this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe.

For ye, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus: for ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen, even as they did of the Jews;

who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove out us, and please not God, and are contrary to all men;

and sent Timothy, our brother and God’s minister in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith;

For what thanksgiving can we render again unto God for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God;

Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you:

to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Finally then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as ye received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, even as ye do walk,—that ye abound more and more.

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

not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who know not God;

For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.

Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you.

But concerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another;

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

For 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;