1 Peter 1

I, Peter, whom Jesus Christ made an apostle, am writing this letter to you who believe in him, you whom God has chosen to belong to himself. I am writing to you who live in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, far away from your true home in heaven.

God our Father chose you as he himself decided previously, and his Spirit has set you apart so that you may obey Jesus Christ and his blood may make you acceptable to God. May God act very kindly to you, and may he make you live more and more peacefully.

We must give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! We praise him because he is kind to us and has shown us great mercy. He gave us the new birth and a living hope because God raised up Jesus Christ from the dead.

He has enabled us to expect to receive things that he has kept for us in heaven, things that will last forever.

God, by his mighty power, is guarding you as you trust in Jesus. He is guarding you so that he may, at the end of the time in which we now live, completely rescue you from Satan's power.

You rejoice because of what will happen then, but now you are grieving for a short time while you suffer many different hardships. God is allowing you to be tested, as precious metals are tested to see if they are pure. These trials that you are experiencing are necessary.

These hardships happen in order to prove that you really do trust in Jesus. This means more to God than all the gold in the world, which fire can destroy. Because you trust in Jesus, God will honor you very highly when Jesus Christ comes again.

Though you have not seen Jesus, you love him. And though you do not see him now, you trust in him and you rejoice very much with the joy that no words can express—a joy that is full of glory.

And now you are receiving the goal of your trust in God, which is the salvation of your souls.

Long ago prophets spoke messages that God had shown to them about how he would one day save you. They investigated these things very carefully.

The prophets wanted to know to what person and time Christ's Spirit within them was referring. They also wanted to know about how the Christ would suffer and die and about the glorious things that would come after his suffering and death.

God told the prophets long ago that it was not for their own sakes that he was revealing these things to them, but that he was also revealing these things to you who lived must later than the prophets. The prophets were telling you ahead of time about the gospel, the same gospel that has been preached to you by the Holy Spirit whom God sent from heaven. Even angels desired to know about this message that the prophets, and now the apostles, have proclaimed to you.

Therefore, prepare your minds to obey God. What I mean is that you should discipline your minds. Be confident that you will receive the good things that God will kindly do for you when Jesus Christ returns from heaven.

And because you should obey your heavenly Father just as children ought to obey their fathers here on earth, do not do the evil deeds that you did before you trusted in God, at that time when you did not know the truth about God.

Instead, just like God—the one who chose you to belong to him—is holy, you also must be holy in everything that you do.

Be holy because it is written in the scriptures that God said, "You must be holy because I am holy."

God is the one who judges what each one does, and he does this very fairly. Since you call him "Father," behave in a right way while you are living here on earth. You are like people whom others have driven from their homes because you are living away from heaven, your true home.

For your know that God did not purchase you from the empty way of life that you learned from your ancestors. God did not purchase you with precious metals like silver or gold that are valuable today but will lose all their value in the end.

Instead, God purchased you with the precious blood of Christ that flowed from his body when he died. Christ was like a perfect lamb that had no blemish or spot.

God chose Christ even before he created the world. But it was not until now, in these last days, that God revealed him to you.

Because of what Christ has done, you are trusting in God. It is God who caused him to become alive again after he had died, and then God greatly honored him for what he did on the cross. As a result, God is the one in whom you are trusting, and he gives you hope that he will keep all his promises.

Because you have obeyed the truth about God and have allowed him to make you pure and to love our fellow believers, continue to love each other earnestly and sincerely.

I ask you to do this because you now are living a new life. It was not by means of something that will perish that you received this new life. Instead, it was by means of something that will last forever—the promises of God, which you have believed.

We know that this is true because, as the prophet Isaiah wrote, "All people will perish like grass perishes. And all the greatness that people have will not last forever, like the flowers in the grass do not last long. The grass withers and the flowers die,

but God's message endures forever." This message that endures is the message about Christ that we proclaimed to you.