For those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night.

Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, ¹  to acknowledge those who labor among you and preside over you in the Lord and admonish you,

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that ¹  God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. ² 

Now we do not want you to be uninformed, ¹  brothers and sisters, ²  about those who are asleep, ³  so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope.

For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, ¹  that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.

And we urge you, brothers and sisters, ¹  admonish the undisciplined, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient toward all.

As a result you became an example ¹  to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

In this way you will live ¹  a decent life before outsiders and not be in need. ² 

For people everywhere ¹  report how you welcomed us ²  and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God

For you became imitators, brothers and sisters, ¹  of God’s churches in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, because you too suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they in fact did from the Jews,

so that your hearts are strengthened in holiness to be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. ¹ 

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, ¹  and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

And so ¹  we too constantly thank God that when you received God’s message that you heard from us, ²  you accepted it not as a human message, ³  but as it truly is, God’s message, which is at work among you who believe.