1 Peter 3:13-22 - Suffer For Doing What Is Good

¹³ for who can hurt you, if you strive to excel in virtue. ¹⁴ However, if you suffer in the cause of virtue, it is your happiness: and instead of being over-awed by their threats, and struck with concern, ¹⁵ adore the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready to show with modesty and respect to every one that asks it, what ground there is for the expectations you have: ¹⁶ always maintaining a good conscience, that instead of inveighing against you as evildoers, they may be cover'd with confusion, who traduce your virtuous behaviour as Christians. ¹⁷ for since it is the will of heaven you should suffer, it is better you should suffer for your virtue, than for any crimes.

¹⁸ for Jesus Christ himself has already suffer'd for our sins, the innocent for the guilty, to bring us to God: who, tho' he died with respect to his body, was rais'd to life by that spirit,

¹⁹ by which he went with guardian spirits to preach to ²⁰ those antient rebels in the time of Noah, when the divine forbearance waited, till the ark was quite finish'd, in which only eight persons were saved by means of the water. ²¹ thus baptism, which corresponds to the deluge, does now save us, not as it is a cleansing from external filth, but as it is an engagement to lead a divine life, from the belief of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who being ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God, where angels, dominations, and potentates have been subjected to him.