Study Desk

Live in freedom, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.

Treat everyone with high regard: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

For if anyone endures the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God, this is to be commended.

How is it to your credit if you are beaten for doing wrong and you endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.

For this is how the holy women of the past adorned themselves. They put their hope in God and were subject to their husbands,

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit,

who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water.

And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also-not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear 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.

Consequently, he does not live out his remaining time on earth for human passions, but for the will of God.

That is why the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged as men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another.

If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God. If anyone serves, he should serve with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

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

But if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God that you bear that name.

For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?

Young men, in the same way, submit yourselves to your elders. And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore you, secure you, strengthen you, and establish you.

Through Silvanus, whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: