Now may God our Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.

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

exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you live in a way worthy of God who calls you to his own kingdom and his glory.

For you know quite well that the day of the Lord ¹  will come in the same way as a thief in the night. ² 

For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.

Now may the God of peace himself make you completely holy and may your spirit and soul and body be kept entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For the appeal we make ¹  does not come ²  from error or impurity or with deceit,

You are witnesses, and so is God, as to how holy and righteous and blameless our conduct was toward you who believe.

For we wanted to come to you (I, Paul, in fact tried again and again) ¹  but Satan thwarted us.

that each of you know how to possess his own body ¹  in holiness and honor,

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, when you received ¹  the message with joy that comes from the Holy Spirit, despite great affliction.

For in fact when we were with you, we were telling you in advance that we would suffer affliction, and so it has happened, as you well know. ¹ 

in that ¹  our gospel did not come to you merely in words, ²  but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (surely you recall the character we displayed when we came among you to help you). ³ 

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,

because they hinder us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they constantly fill up their measure of sins, ¹  but wrath ²  has come upon them completely. ³ 

So ¹  when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter somehow tempted you and our toil had proven useless.

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.

Finally then, brothers and sisters, ¹  we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how ²  you must live and please God (as you are in fact living) ³  that you do so more and more.