Good Stewards of God’s Grace

4 Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh,^[a] arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),^{(A) 2} so as to live for the rest of your time in the flesh no longer by human desires but by the will of God.^{(B) 3} You have already spent enough time in doing what the gentiles like to do, living in debauchery, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.^{(C) 4} They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme.^{[b](D) 5} But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.^{(E) 6} For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.