Book of Common Prayer

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.

The cup he had to drink

¹⁷ Jesus was on his way up to Jerusalem. He took the twelve disciples aside in private, while they were on the road, and said to them, ¹⁸ “Look here. We’re going up to Jerusalem. The son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they’re going to condemn him to death. ¹⁹ They will hand him over to the pagans, and they’re going to mock him, flog him and crucify him. And on the third day he will be raised.”

²⁰ Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came up, with her sons, to Jesus. She bowed low in front of him and indicated that she had a special request to make.

²¹ “What d’you want?” he asked her.

“It’s about these two sons of mine,” she said to him. “Please say that, when you’re king, they may sit, one at your right hand and one at your left.”

²² “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” said Jesus. “Can you two drink the cup I’m going to drink?”

“Yes, we can,” they replied.

²³ “Well,” said Jesus, “so you will drink my cup, then! But sitting at my right and left is not something I can grant. That’s up to my father to give to whoever he has in mind.”

²⁴ When the other ten heard this they were annoyed with the two brothers. ²⁵ But Jesus called them together.

“You know how it is with pagan rulers,” he said. “They lord it over their subjects. They get all high and mighty and let everybody know it. ²⁶ But that’s not how it’s to be with you. If any of you wants to be great, he must be your servant. ²⁷ If any of you wants to be first, he must be the slave of all. ²⁸ That’s how it is with the son of man: he didn’t come to have servants obey him, but to be a servant—and to give his life as ‘a ransom for many.’ ”