1 Peter 3:13-4:6

New Testament for Everyone

¹³ Who is there, then, to harm you if you are eager to do what is right? ¹⁴ But if you do suffer because of your righteous behavior, God’s blessing is upon you! “Don’t fear what they fear; don’t be disturbed.” ¹⁵ Sanctify the Messiah as Lord in your hearts, and always be ready to make a reply to anyone who asks you to explain the hope that is in you. ¹⁶ Do it, though, with gentleness and respect. Hold on to a good conscience, so that when people revile your good behavior in the Messiah they may be ashamed.

Suffering for doing right

¹⁷ It’s better to suffer for good conduct (if God so wills it) than for bad. ¹⁸ For the Messiah, too, suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit. ¹⁹ In the spirit, too, he went and made the proclamation to the spirits in prison ²⁰ who had earlier on been disobedient during the days of Noah, when God waited in patience. Noah built the ark, in which a few people, eight in fact, were rescued through water. ²¹ That functions as a signpost for you, pointing to baptism, which now rescues you—not by washing away fleshly pollution, but by the appeal to God of a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. ²² He has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand, with angels, authorities and powers subject to him.

Transformed living

4 So, then, just as the Messiah suffered in the flesh, you too must equip yourselves with the same mental armor. Someone who suffers in the flesh has ceased from sin, ² so as to live the rest of their mortal life no longer according to human desires but according to God’s will. ³ Pagan ways of life have had quite enough of your time already, and you should put all that behind you for good—all that uncleanness, passion, drunkenness, excessive feasting, drinking-parties and lawless idolatry. ⁴ People are shocked that you don’t now join in with the same wild and reckless behavior, and so they call down curses on you. ⁵ But they will have to account for it before the one who is ready to judge the living and the dead. ⁶ That is why, you see, the gospel was preached even to the dead, so that, being judged in human fashion, in the flesh, they might live in God’s fashion, in the spirit.