For this finds God’s favor, if because of conscience toward God someone endures hardships in suffering unjustly.

Live as free people, not using your freedom as a pretext for evil, but as God’s slaves.

Give a shepherd’s care to God’s flock among you, exercising oversight not merely as a duty but willingly under God’s direction, not for shameful profit but eagerly.

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

Honor all people, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king.

who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

So as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and priceless in God’s sight,

Whoever speaks, let it be with God’s words. Whoever serves, do so with the strength that God supplies, so that in everything God will be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy.

And God will exalt you in due time, if you humble yourselves under his mighty hand

but the inner person of the heart, the lasting beauty of a gentle and tranquil spirit, which is precious in God’s sight.

For it is time for judgment to begin, starting with the house of God. And if it starts with us, what will be the fate of those who are disobedient to the gospel of God?

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

For God wants you to silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.

You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if God wills it, than for doing evil.

Now it was for this very purpose that the gospel was preached to those who are now dead, so that though they were judged in the flesh by human standards they may live spiritually by God’s standards.

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

For in the same way the holy women who hoped in God long ago adorned themselves by being subject to their husbands,

in that he spends the rest of his time on earth concerned about the will of God and not human desires.