¹⁵ For it is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish.

¹⁷ For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

⁸ and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.^(A)

¹² Conduct yourselves honorably among the gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.^[a](A)

²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;^(A)

¹⁰ But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and they are destroyed by those things that, like irrational animals, they know by instinct.

¹² These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and as those creatures are destroyed,^[a] they also will be destroyed,