Book of Common Prayer
Living in a pagan world
11 My beloved ones, I beg you—strangers and resident aliens as you are—to hold back from the fleshly desires that wage war against your true lives. 12 Keep up good conduct among the pagans, so that when they speak against you as evildoers they will observe your good deeds and praise God on the day of his royal arrival.
13 Be subject to every human institution, for the sake of the Lord: whether to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish evildoers and praise those who do good. 15 This, you see, is God’s will. He wants you to behave well and so to silence foolish and ignorant people. 16 Live as free people (though don’t use your freedom as a veil to hide evil!), but as slaves of God. 17 Do honor to all people; love the family; reverence God; honor the emperor.
Suffering as the Messiah did
18 Let slaves obey their masters with all respect, not only the good and kind ones but also the unkind ones. 19 It is to your credit, you see, if because of a godly conscience you put up with unjust and painful suffering. 20 After all, what credit is it if you do something wrong, are beaten for it, and take it patiently? But if you do what is right, suffer for it, and bear it patiently, this is to your credit before God.
21 This, after all, is what came with the terms of your call, because
the Messiah, too, suffered on your behalf,
leaving behind a pattern for you
so that you should follow the way he walked.
22 He committed no sin,
nor was there any deceit in his mouth.
23 When he was insulted, he didn’t insult in return,
when he suffered, he didn’t threaten,
but he gave himself up to the one who judges justly.
24 He himself bore our sins
in his body on the cross,
so that we might be free from sins
and live for righteousness.
It is by his wound that you are healed.
25 For you were going astray like sheep,
but now you have returned to the shepherd
and guardian of your true lives.
12 “This is my command: love one another, in the same way that I loved you. 13 No one has a love greater than this, to lay down your life for your friends. 14 You are my friends, if you do what I tell you. 15 I’m not calling you ‘servants’ any longer; servants don’t know what their master is doing. But I’ve called you ‘friends,’ because I’ve let you know everything I heard from my father.
16 “You didn’t choose me. I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. Then the father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17 This is my command to you: love one another.”
If the world hates you
18 “If the world hates you,” Jesus went on, “know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you’re not from the world. No: I chose you out of the world.
20 “Remember the word that I said to you: servants are not greater than their masters. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too. If they kept my word, they will keep yours too. 21 But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they don’t know the one who sent me.
22 “If I hadn’t come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 (Anyone who hates me, hates my father as well!) 24 If I hadn’t done, there in the middle of them, the works which nobody else did, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin. But now they have seen me, and my father—and they’ve hated us both! 25 All this has happened, however, so that the word written in their law might be fulfilled: ‘They hated me for no reason.’
26 “When the helper comes—the one I shall send you from the father, the spirit of truth who comes from the father—he will give evidence about me. 27 And you will give evidence as well, because you have been with me from the start.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.