1 Peter 1

_1-2I, Peter, am an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing this letter to you who are strangers living in different places in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. God the Father chose you to be his people. He decided this long ago. The Holy_Spirit consecrated you to be his people and to listen to Jesus Christ. Long ago God decided that Jesus Christ should die to take away your sins. We pray that God will be gracious to you and that He will give you more and more of his peace.

₃We praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is very good to us. Jesus Christ died but God made Him live again and God has also made us live again. Now we have a new life and that is why we are sure of the things that we hope for. ₄We are sure that God will give us everything that He has promised. No one can take away the things that God gives us. His promises will never change. They are not like a flower that dries and dies. God is keeping these things safely in heaven for you. ₅God is strong. He also keeps you safe and protects you who believe in Him. He is ready to save you on the last day, and everyone will see it.

₆You must rejoice because you know that God will save you. You are suffering all kinds of things now and some of you may think you should stop serving God. But you will suffer only for a short while. ₇These things that make you suffer are testing your faith and your faith is worth more than gold. People melt gold in a fire to make it pure, and so the gold melts and changes. It is purified. It is the same with your faith. When you suffer and God tests your faith, people will see that your faith becomes better than gold that people have melted and purified. And when Jesus Christ comes again, you will be important and God will praise and honour you. ₈You have never seen Jesus Christ, but you love Him. You don't see Him now, but you believe in Him. You rejoice and you are so happy that you can not say with words or signs how happy you are. It is God who makes you so happy. ₉You are happy because you know what God will give you. He will save everyone who believes in Christ.

₁₀The prophets of the Old_Testament told you about the message of God's grace. Yes, they tried very hard to understand how God would save you. ₁₁The Spirit of Christ, who was in the prophets, told them long ago that Christ would suffer and that He would become King after that. The prophets tried to find out when and how these things that the Spirit told them about would happen to Christ. ₁₂God showed the prophets that the promises that they were talking about were not for themselves, but for you. God sent the Holy_Spirit and his Spirit gave the good message to the people who gave it to you. Even the angels would like to understand this message and to know more about it.

₁₃That is why you must always be ready to ask: ‘What are the right things to do?’ You must hope and be sure to get the grace that God wants to give to you on the day when Jesus Christ comes and everyone sees Him. ₁₄You must live like children who listen to their parents. Do not live like you lived before you started to believe, when you did not know the Good_News of God and you always wanted to do bad things. ₁₅No, God has chosen you to be his people and He is holy. That is why you must live like people who belong to God in everything that you do. ₁₆You must live like that because God said in the Old_Testament: ‘You must consecrate yourselves to Me because I am holy.’

₁₇You pray to God and say that He is your Father. He does not think that one person is more important than another person and that is why He will judge each person by what he has done. You must respect God while you live as strangers in the world. _18-19You know that Christ has freed you from a worthless and sinful life, the way of life that you have learned from your forefathers. Christ has saved you, but He did not buy you with silver or gold or something that will stop being valuable. No, Christ paid a lot more when He freed you. He gave his life and freed you when He died for you on the cross. He was the sacrifice like a lamb that was perfect, without any fault. ₂₀God chose Christ before He made the world but He sent Christ to the world, now, at the end of time, to save you. ₂₁You believe in God because you belong to Christ. Christ was dead, but God made Him live again and made Him King. That is why you believe in God and why you are sure that He will save you.

₂₂You have listened to God and obeyed the truth and so you have purified yourselves. Now you can truly love each other and this is what you must do: You must love each other with all your hearts and do not stop doing it. Do not only pretend to do it. ₂₃God has given you a new life and you have been born again, not like a child who is born from parents who will die. No, God gave you this new life when He spoke to you through his Word, which is alive and will always be here. ₂₄It is written in the Old_Testament:

This is the Word of the Lord, the Good_News that God's messengers have preached to you.