1 1 I, Paul, am writing this letter. Silas and Timothy are with me. We are sending this letter to you. You are the congregation of God’s people in Thessalonica city. You belong to God our Father, and you belong to Jesus Christ our Lord. 2 We pray that God our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord, will continue to act kindly toward you and will continue to cause you to have inner peace.
3 Our fellow believers, we thank God very frequently [HYP] for you because we believers ought to thank God for each other, and specifically it is appropriate/right that we should thank God for you. We thank him that you are trusting in the Lord Jesus more and more, and that each one of you is loving each of the others more and more. 4 As a result, we keep proudly telling about you to other congregations who worship God. Specifically, we tell them that you are being steadfast and that you continue believing in the Lord Jesus, even though you are frequently suffering [DOU] as a result of people causing you trouble.
5 Your being steadfast ◄shows/indicates to► us clearly that God will judge all people justly. Specifically, he will publicly declare that you are worthy as his people to be in that place where he will rule forever, because you also are suffering as a result of telling others about letting God rule your lives. 6 God will certainly cause trouble for those people who are troubling you, because he considers that it is just that he should punish such people for doing that to you. 7 He also considers that it is the right thing to do to reward you who are being troubled, by ◄giving you relief/causing your suffering to end►. He will do that for both you and us when our Lord Jesus will descend from heaven, together with his powerful angels and with blazing fire. 8 Then he will punish those people who do not want to know him and those who refuse to heed the message about our Lord Jesus. 9 Our Lord Jesus will forbid them from ever coming near to him and near to the glory which he has because he is so powerful (OR, the glory that is manifested by his power). He will cause those people to suffer forever. 10 The Lord Jesus will do this when he comes back from heaven at the time that God has decided. As a result, all we who are his people will praise him because of what he has done for his own people, and all we believers will marvel at our Lord because of what he has done. And you will be there, too, because you believed what we testified to you.
11 In order that you might praise Jesus like this, we are also praying very frequently [HYP] for you. We pray that you will be able to show our God that you are worthy to receive that which he chose you to receive. We pray also that he would powerfully enable you to do good in every way that you desire, and that he would also enable you to do powerfully every good thing that you do because you believe in Jesus Christ. 12 We pray this because we want you to praise our Lord Jesus, and we want him to honor you. This will happen because God, whom we worship/serve, and our Lord Jesus Christ will keep acting kindly toward you in ways that you do not deserve.
2 1 Now I want to write to you about the time when our Lord Jesus Christ will return and when God will gather us together to where Jesus is. My fellow believers, I urge you 2 that you think calmly about any message that claims/says that the Lord has already come again. Do not be shaken or alarmed/worried by any such message. It does not matter if it is a message that someone claims God’s Spirit revealed to him, or if it is some other message that someone has spoken, or whether it is a message that someone claims that I wrote in a letter. 3 Do not allow anyone to deceive you in any way with the result that you believe any such message.
The Lord will not come [MTY] immediately. First, many people [PRS] will rebel against God. The result of their rebelling will be that they will accept and obey the man who will sin very greatly against God. 4 He will be the supreme enemy of God. He will proudly exalt himself above everything that people consider to be some god and above everything that people worship. As a result of wanting people to worship him, he will even enter God’s Temple and sit down there to rule. He will publicly proclaim that he himself is God! But God will certainly punish that man forever! 5 ◄I am sure that you remember that I kept telling you these things while I was still with you there in Thessalonica./Do you not remember that I continued telling you these things while I was still with you there in Thessalonica?► [RHQ]
6 You also know that there is something (OR, someone) that is preventing this man from being revealed {from revealing himself}. This man is being ◄held back/restrained► now for him to be revealed {that he reveal himself} at the time that God has planned [MTY]. 7 Although Satan is already secretly causing people to reject God’s laws, ◄the one/God► who is preventing this man from revealing himself now will continue to prevent him from doing that until he/God removes him. 8 It is then that God will allow this man, who rejects God’s laws completely, to be revealed {to reveal himself}. Then the Lord Jesus will destroy him, by simply commanding it [MTY]. Jesus, by his own glorious arrival, will cause him to become completely powerless.
9 But before Jesus destroys him, Satan will make him very powerful. As a result, he will do all kinds of supernatural miracles and amazing things [DOU] that will seem as though God has enabled him to do them. 10 And by doing wicked things, he will completely deceive those who will certainly ◄perish/go to hell►. He will deceive them because they will have refused to love the true message. So they will not be saved {God will not save them}. 11 So, God, by his power, will enable this man to easily deceive people, so that they will believe what this man falsely claims/says that he is. 12 The result will be that everyone will be rightly condemned {that God will justly condemn everyone} to be punished who did not believe the true message, but who instead gladly chose to be doing what is wicked.
13 Our fellow believers, whom our Lord Jesus loves, we thank God very frequently for you. It is appropriate/right for us to do that, because God chose you ◄from the beginning [MTY] of creation/before the world existed► in order that he might save you as a result of your believing the true message and as a result of God’s Spirit setting you apart for God. 14 We thank God that he chose you as a result of our proclaiming the message about Christ to you, in order that you might ◄share in/have► some of the glory that our Lord Jesus Christ has.
15 So, our fellow believers, continue to be firm concerning what you believe; that is, continue believing the true teaching that we gave to you by our speaking to you and by our writing a letter to you.
16 Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God, our Father, loves us and encourages us and causes us to confidently expect to receive the eternal things that he has promised to give to us as a result of Christ acting kindly toward us in a way we did not deserve. 17 We strongly pray that God and Jesus together will encourage you! And we pray that they will cause you to continue doing and saying things that God considers to be good.
3 1 As for the other matters, our fellow believers, pray for us that more and more people will hear [PRS] our message about our Lord Jesus. Pray that they will believe this message, as you have done. 2 Pray also for us that we will be rescued {that God will rescue us} from those very perverse/evil people here who cause us to suffer. Pray like that because they and many others refuse to believe [LIT] this message.
3 Remember that our Lord Jesus is trustworthy! So we are sure that he will cause you to continue to be steadfast. We are also sure that he will protect you from Satan, the evil one (OR, from evil). 4 Because of your close relationship with our Lord Jesus, we are confident that you are obeying what we have commanded you, and we are confident that you will obey what we are commanding you in this letter. 5 We pray that our Lord Jesus would enable you to continue knowing that God loves you. We pray also that Christ will cause you to continue being steadfast (OR, being steadfast as he was steadfast).
6 Our fellow believers, we command you, with the authority [MTY] that our Lord Jesus Christ has given to us, that you stop associating with every fellow believer who is lazy and refuses to work. That is, you must stay away from those who are not conducting their lives in the manner that we taught you. 7 We tell you this because you yourselves know that you should behave like we behaved. We ◄did not just sit around without working/were never lazy► while we were living among you. 8 Specifically, we did not eat anyone’s food if we did not pay that person for it. Instead, we worked very hard ◄to support ourselves/to earn the money to buy what we needed►. We worked hard [DOU] during the day and during the night, in order that we would not have to depend on any of you to supply what we needed. 9 We have always had the right to depend on you for money, but instead we worked hard in order to make ourselves examples for you, in order that you should behave like we behave. 10 Remember that when we were there with you, we kept commanding you that if any fellow believer refuses to work, you should not give him food to eat. 11 We are commanding the same thing again now, because someone has told us that some of you are lazy and not working at all, just interfering with what other people are doing!
12 We command those fellow believers who are not working, and urge them by the authority [MTY] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they settle down and ◄support themselves by working/work to earn money to buy what they need►.
13 Fellow believers! Do not ever get tired of doing what is right!
14 If any fellow believer refuses to work and does not obey what I have written in this letter, ◄publicly identify that person/tell the congregation what that person is doing►. Then do not associate with him, in order that he may become ashamed. 15 Do not think of him as though he was your enemy; instead, warn him as you would warn your other fellow believers.
16 I pray that our Lord Jesus himself, who gives inner peace to his people, will give inner peace to you always ◄and in every situation/whatever happens►.
I pray that our Lord Jesus will continue to help you all. 17 Now, having taken the pen from my scribe, I, Paul, am sending this greeting to you as I write this myself [SYN]. I do this in all my letters in order that you may know that it is truly I who have sent this letter. This is how I always end my letters. 18 I pray that our Lord Jesus Christ will continue to act kindly to you all.