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The First Letter of Peter 1

1 I am Peter, whom Jesus the Messiah sent to represent him. I am writing this letter to you whom God has chosen to belong to himself. I am writing to you who are temporarily living in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, far away from your true home in heaven. 2 God our Father chose you according to what he had already decided. He did this by his Spirit, setting you apart in order that you may obey him and in order that the death of Jesus the Messiah may make you members of a covenant with God. I pray that God will increase his kind acts toward you and make you more peaceful.

3 Praise God, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah! Because he is very merciful to us, he has caused us to experience the new birth by bringing Jesus the Messiah back to life after he had died. God did this in order that we would have hope that will never disappoint us, 4 that is, in order that we might inherit what cannot perish, be defiled, or fade, which is what God has kept for us in heaven. 5 God’s power is guarding you by means of your trust in Jesus. He is guarding you in order to reveal your salvation at the final time when Jesus returns to judge everyone. 6 You rejoice a lot because of what will happen then, even though now for a short time many different hardships must grieve you. 7 These hardships happen in order to prove that you really trust in Jesus. That trust is more valuable to God than gold, which someone can destroy even though someone has tested it by passing it through fire. Because you trust in Jesus, God will praise, glorify, and honor you when Jesus the Messiah returns and reveals himself. 8 You love Jesus, although you have not seen him. Although you do not see him now, you trust him and rejoice with joy that you can hardly express, 9 because you are experiencing the result of trusting him: God is saving you from the guilt of your sins.

10 Long ago prophets investigated very carefully about God saving you. They spoke what God told them about God graciously saving you. 11 They were trying to find out to whom the Spirit of the Messiah that was in them was referring to, and to what time the Spirit was referring to. The Spirit was referring to these things when he told them beforehand that the Messiah would suffer and that glorious things would happen afterwards. 12 God told these prophets that it was not for their own benefit that he was revealing these things to them, but that it was for your benefit. Those people who preached the good news to you now have declared these things to you by the Holy Spirit, whom God sent from heaven, enabling them to do that. Angels would like to know more about what these people declared to you.

13 As a result of all these things, prepare your minds for action. Be alert. Be completely confident that God will graciously save you when Jesus the Messiah returns and reveals himself. 14 Because you obey God like children ought to obey their fathers, do not allow yourself to be controlled by the sinful desires you used to have when you did not know the truth about God. 15 Instead, just like God, the one who chose you to belong to him, is holy, act in a holy manner when you do anything. 16 Be holy, because Moses wrote in the scriptures that God said, “Be holy, because I am holy.”

17 God is the one who judges what each person does, and he judges without bias. Since you call him ‘Father,’ behave in a way that shows you fear him while you are temporarily living far away from your true home in heaven. 18 Behave in that way because you know that God paid to free you from behaving foolishly, as your ancestors taught you to behave. God did not pay to free you with things like silver or gold that will not last forever. 19 Instead, God paid for you to be free by the Messiah’s priceless death on the cross. That death was like the deaths of the entirely perfect lambs that the Jewish priests sacrificed. 20 God chose him to do this before he created the world. But it was now, in this last time period, that God revealed him to you. 21 Because of what the Messiah has done, you are trusting in God. He caused the Messiah to become alive again after he had died and has shown how great he is. As a result, you are trusting God and expecting him to do great things.

22 Because you have made yourselves pure by obeying the true teachings of Jesus in order to genuinely love other believers, love each other sincerely and fervently. 23 Do this because God has caused you to experience the new birth. You did not experience this new birth by means of something that will perish. Rather, you experienced it by means of something that will never perish: the message about Jesus that came from God and truly lasts forever. 24 We know that this is true because, as the prophet Isaiah wrote,

“All people are like grass, and everything that is great about people is like flowers in the grass.

Just as grass dies and flowers whither, so do people die and what is great about them only lasts for a short time,

25 but God’s message lasts forever.”

This message that lasts forever is the good news about the Messiah that we have declared to you.

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