003:017 For it is better that you should suffer for doing right,
if such be God's will, than for doing evil;
003:018 because Christ also once for all died for sins, the innocent
One for the guilty many, in order to bring us to God.
He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,
003:019 in which He also went and proclaimed His Message to the spirits
that were in prison,
003:020 who in ancient times had been disobedient, while God's
longsuffering was patiently waiting in the days of Noah
during the building of the Ark, in which a few persons--
eight in number--were brought safely through the water.
003:021 And, corresponding to that figure, the water of baptism now saves you--
not the washing off of material defilement, but the craving
of a good conscience after God--through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ,
003:022 who is at God's right hand, having gone into Heaven, angels and
authorities and powers having been made subject to Him.
004:001 Since, then, Christ has suffered in the flesh, you also must
arm yourselves with a determination to do the same--
because he who has suffered in the flesh has done with sin--
004:002 that in future you may spend the rest of your earthly lives,
governed not by human passions, but by the will of God.
004:003 For you have given time enough in the past to the doing of
the things which the Gentiles delight in--pursuing, as you did,
a course of habitual licence, debauchery, hard drinking,
noisy revelry, drunkenness and unholy image-worship.
004:004 At this they are astonished--that you do not run into the same
excess of profligacy as they do; and they speak abusively of you.
004:005 But they will have to give account to Him who stands ready
to pronounce judgement on the living and the dead.