Study Desk

Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.

As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God—

you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.

Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

For it brings favor if, because of a consciousness of God, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly.

For what credit is there if when you do wrong and are beaten, you endure it? But when you do what is good and suffer, if you endure it, this brings favor with God.

For in the past, the holy women who put their hope in God also adorned themselves in this way, submitting to their own husbands,

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit,

who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. In it a few—that is, eight people—were saved through water.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of the varied grace of God.

If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God’s words; if anyone serves, let it be from the strength God provides, so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.