1 Peter

¹ From: Peter, an emissary of Jesus Christ

To: The chosen who are scattered as immigrants (in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Province, and Bithynia), ² based on the foreknowledge of Father God, being dedicated for a purpose by the Life-breath for listening and sprinkling people with the blood of Jesus Christ.

May good fortune and peace be increased for you!

³ May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be praised, who according to God's vast loving faithfulness birthed us again for a living hope through the reawakening of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ for an inheritance that doesn’t decay, isn’t contaminated, that doesn’t wither away, and that has been watched over for you in the heavens. ⁵ You are guarded by God’s power through faithful trust resulting in liberation ready to be revealed at the final moment. ⁶ If grieving is necessary because of various trials for a little while, you celebrate throughout it, ⁷ proving that your faithfulness—which is more valuable than gold, which gets destroyed despite being tested through fire—could be found resulting in affirmation and praise and honor at the revealing of Jesus Christ. ⁸ You love him without having seen him, already placing your trust in him without seeing him, yet you celebrate with indescribable and renowned joy ⁹ receiving the aim of your faithfulness: liberation of your very beings.

¹⁰ The prophets who prophesied about the generosity that is for you searched and diligently looked for that liberation, ¹¹ searching for what sort of person or moment Christ’s Life-breath among them was indicating when she reported ahead of time the sufferings connected with Christ and these praises that follow. ¹² It was revealed to them that they were carrying out these things not for themselves but for you. They have now announced them to you through those who announced the triumphant message to you with the Sacred Life-breath sent from the heavens, things which messengers long to see up close.

¹³ Therefore, after hiking up your robes around the hips of your mind—staying clear-headed—set your hope completely on the generosity that is brought to you with the revealing of Jesus Christ. ¹⁴ Like children who listen, don’t conform your way of being to the cravings you used to have when you didn’t know, ¹⁵ but instead, align yourselves to the one who is dedicated for sacred purposes who called you, and become dedicated for sacred purposes yourselves, regarding every aspect of your way of life ¹⁶ because it has been written that, “You will be dedicated for sacred purposes because I am dedicated to sacred purposes.” ¹⁷ And if you call the one who assesses based on each person’s actions without discriminating, ‘Father,’ then make your way of life about treating people with respect during the time of your temporary residence. ¹⁸ Do so since you have come to understand that the price of your liberation from slavery, from the futile way of life passed down from previous generations, was paid not with perishable things, with silver or gold, ¹⁹ but instead with the valuable blood of Christ, as if from an unblemished and spotless lamb. ²⁰ It has both been known in advance since before the world was established and also been made clearly visible at the last period of time because of you, ²¹ who because of him put their trust in God who raised him from the dead and gave him praise, so your trust and hope would be in God.

²² Since you have purified your very beings by listening to the truth, resulting in genuine familial caring, love each other eagerly out of clean hearts ²³ since you have been born from above, not from a perishable but an imperishable seed, through the living and continuing Conversation of God ²⁴ because “All human bodies are like grass, and all their grandeur like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, ²⁵ but what the Lord has stated continues throughout the Age.” That’s the statement that has been announced to you.

¹ Therefore, set aside all malice and all cheating people and putting on pretenses and spite and all insults. ² Crave honest, Conversational milk like newborn babies, so you can grow toward liberation with it ³ if “you have tasted that the Lord is kind." ⁴ As you approach the one who is a living stone, who is both rejected by people and also valued and chosen by God, ⁵ you are also—as living stones—being constructed as a House for the Life-breath for the sacred priesthood to offer sacrifices of the Life-breath that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ ⁶ because this is included in scripture:

Look, I placed a stone in Zion

A valuable, choice, corner foundation stone

And whoever who puts their trust in it

Could never be shamed.

⁷ Therefore, the value is for you who give your trust, but for those who don’t give your trust,

A stone which the builders rejected

It became the principal cornerstone

⁸ and

A stone of tripping

And a rock that trips people up.

The ones who refuse to be persuaded trip on the Conversation for which they were designated. ⁹ You are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a community dedicated for sacred purposes, a people for preserving, so that you would spread word of the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness to his dazzling light.

¹⁰⁠Those who once were not a people—

Now they are God’s people;

Those who were not shown loving faithfulness—

Now they have been shown loving faithfulness.

¹¹ Loved ones, I encourage you as immigrants and people living in a foreign country to hold back from whichever bodily desires wage war against your very being, ¹² having your way of living be respectable among other people groups so that by the very thing about which they insult you as people who act indecently because of those respectable actions, as they observe you, they would praise God on the day when they watch carefully.

¹³ Cooperate with every human power structure by relying on the Lord, whether with a monarch while they hold power over you ¹⁴ or with governors when they have been sent by them for revenge against those who cause harm but approval for those who cause benefit. ¹⁵ That’s because God wants living beneficially to others to silence the ignorance of the unwise people ¹⁶ as you carry yourselves as free people—and not using freedom as a cover for doing harm but as people enslaved to God. ¹⁷ Treat everyone as having value. Love the Family. Defer to God. Treat the monarch as having value.

¹⁸ That includes people who are enslaved cooperating warily with the enslavers—not only with the ones who are benevolent and reasonable but also with those who are corrupt. ¹⁹ You see, this is generosity: if someone who is suffering endures unjustly inflicted griefs by being conscious of God. ²⁰ What kind of reputation is gained if, when deviating, you endure being beaten for it? However, if when acting for the benefit of others, you endure through suffering, this is generosity in God’s view. ²¹ That’s what you were called to since Christ also suffered for your sake, leaving a template behind for you so that you would follow in his footsteps. ²² “He made no deviation, nor was a deception found in his mouth.” ²³ He is the one who when being verbally abused did not return the abuse, when suffering did not make threats, but gave it over to the one who assesses justly. ²⁴ He is the one who took on our deviations himself with his body on the wood, “by whose wounds you were healed,” so that we could be alive with justness and deviations gone away. ²⁵ You used to be like “sheep wandering off,” but now you have returned to the shepherd who watches over your very beings.

¹ Similarly, it includes women cooperating with their own men, so that even if some of the men refuse to be persuaded by the Conversation, they will be won over by the women’s way of life, separate from the Conversation, ² after watching their pure and respectful way of life. ³ Don’t have it be done externally, such as by braiding hair and wearing gold jewelry and putting on clothing of the world system, ⁴ but rather have it be the hidden person of the heart with what is imperishable, the gentle and peaceful Life-breath, which is highly valuable in God’s view. ⁵ That’s also how the women dedicated for sacred purposes who put their hope in God used to arrange themselves, cooperating with their own men. ⁶ For example, Sarah listened to Abraham, calling him ‘Lord.’ You become her children when you treat people well and don’t fear anyone who is frightening.

⁷ Similarly, it includes men living alongside them in a way that is based on understanding that they hold less social influence and status based on having a feminine body, giving them their share of honor since the men are also co-heirs with them of the generosity of life, so as not to hinder your prayers.

⁸ Finally, all of you—being united in purpose, empathetic, caring as family members, deeply compassionate, and humble— ⁹ don’t give out hostility against hostility or insult against insult, but do just the opposite, speaking well over people because that’s what you were called to do so that you would inherit the well-being that has been spoken, ¹⁰ that “The one who wants to nurture life and see favorable days, restrain their tongue from hostility and their lips from speaking deception. ¹¹ Turn away from hostility and do kind things, look for peace and pursue it ¹² because the eyes of the Lord are on the just and the Lord's ears are toward their plea for help, but the Lord’s face is against those who do harm.” ¹³ Who exactly will there be to harm you if you were devoted to being helpful? ¹⁴ However, even if you suffer because of being just, you are gratified. “Don’t fear the scary among them nor be stirred up,” ¹⁵ but designate the Lord Christ for sacred purposes in your hearts, always ready with a response for anyone who asks you for a conversation about the hope among you. ¹⁶ However, do so with gentleness and respect, maintaining attention on kindness, so that way those who insult and accuse you would feel ashamed because of your kind way of life with Christ. ¹⁷ You see, suffering while doing kind things is more useful—if it’s possible that God wants it that way—than while doing harm.

¹⁸⁠“Because Christ suffered definitively because of deviations,

The just one for the sake of the unjust ones

So that he could bring you to God

First, when being put to death physically

And, second, when being made alive spiritually

¹⁹ which is how he traveled and made his announcement to the life-breaths in prison, ²⁰ to those who long ago refused to be persuaded when God was patiently waiting to welcome them during the days of Noah while an ark was being constructed in which a few, specifically eight living beings, were brought safely through the water. ²¹ Now, a corresponding submersion also restores you, not a washing of a dirty body, but instead an inquiring with God about a benevolent attentiveness, through the Reawakening of Jesus Christ, ²² who is at the right hand of God after proceeding to the heavens with him with messengers, authorities, and powers being coordinated under him.

¹ Therefore, considering Christ’s bodily suffering, also arm yourselves with that same way of thinking because whoever suffers bodily has found relief from deviation, ² living what time remains with a body no longer for human appetites but instead for what God wants. ³ The time that has gone by has been plenty for working toward the goal of other people groups who have walked with lack of restraint, appetites, drinking to the point of incoherence, unrestrained indulgence at celebrations, binge drinking, and prohibited idolatries. ⁴ So, they think it’s strange when you do not go along with the same excess of destructive behavior, and they speak disrespectfully against you. ⁵ They will give an account to the one who stands ready to assess the living and the dead. ⁶ That’s why the triumphant message was brought to those who are dead so that not only would they be assessed by the body based on human standards but also so that they would come to life by the Life-breath based on God’s standards.

⁷ The fulfillment of everything has gotten close. So, maintain a healthy mind and be level-headed for the purpose of prayer ⁸ while—above all—holding onto the love extended among you because “love covers an immeasurable number of deviations.” ⁹ Be people who welcome strangers for each other without complaining. ¹⁰ Whatever gift each person has received, serve each other with it as generous stewards of the multicolored generosity of God. ¹¹ If anyone speaks, do so as if with God’s words. If anyone serves, do so as if supplied from God’s strength so that God will be shown to be praiseworthy in everything through Jesus Christ. Praiseworthiness and strength are with God from age to age. Amen

¹² Loved ones, don’t think it strange that the test of authenticity with fire between you is happening among you just as it is for the stranger living alongside you. ¹³ Rather, celebrate based on your participation in Christ’s sufferings so that you can also celebrate exuberantly at the revealing of his praiseworthiness. ¹⁴ If you are publicly criticized as Christ’s representatives, you are gratified because the praiseworthy Life-breath—God’s Life-breath—rests on you. ¹⁵ Don’t have anyone among you suffer for being a murderer or thief or someone who harms people or asserts control over others. ¹⁶ However, if it happens for being a Christian, don’t be ashamed, but show God to be praiseworthy as you carry that name ¹⁷ because it is the time for assessment to begin, first with the House of God. Now, if it’s first with us, then what is the end for those who refuse to be persuaded by God’s triumphant message? ¹⁸ “If the just person is barely liberated, will the contemptuous person and deviator be brought into the light?” ¹⁹ Therefore, certainly, those who suffer based on doing what God wants set aside their very beings for a faithful Creator by living for the well-being of others.

¹ Therefore, I—a fellow elder and person who reports the sufferings of Christ and a participant in the praiseworthiness that’s going to be revealed—urge the elders among you: ² Take care of the portion of God’s flock that’s with you, supervising people not by force but instead having it be voluntary based on the way God does, not shamefully eager for profit but, instead, wholeheartedly, ³ not lording over those who are entrusted to you but instead becoming examples for the flock. ⁴ After the lead Shepherd is made visible, you will receive the laurel wreath, which never withers, for praiseworthiness.

⁵ Similarly, younger people, cooperate with the elders, but everyone bind yourselves with humility toward each other since “God resists those who place themselves over others but provides generosity to the humble.” ⁶ Therefore, be humbled by God’s strong hand so that God will lift you up when the time is right, ⁷ unloading all your anxiety on God because God cares about you.

⁸ Be level-headed. Be vigilant. Your adversary, the False Accuser, roams like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. ⁹ Stand against him, stable with faithful trust, having seen the same kinds of suffering being brought to an end by your Family throughout the world. ¹⁰ The God of every generosity, who called you through Christ for God's agelong praiseworthiness, will restore, stabilize, strengthen, and establish you after a short time of suffering. ¹¹ Power to God for the Age. Amen.

¹² I have written to you about a few things, through Silvanus whom I consider a faithful brother, encouraging and telling you that this is the true generosity of God. Stand up for it. ¹³ The co-chosen in Babylon greets you warmly, as well as my son Mark. ¹⁴ Greet each other warmly with a loving kiss. May peace be among you, between all who are with Jesus.