1I am Peter, and this letter is from me. I’m sending it to you people that God picked to be in his family. I’m sending it to you Christians in a lot of different places, called Pontus, and Galatia, and Cappadocia, and Asia, and Bithynia. You now live in those places like you are strangers, living away from your homes. I work for Jesus Christ. He sent me to do this work.
2A long time ago God, our Father, knew you and he picked you out to be in his family. His spirit picked you out from other people to make you his special people. You listened to Jesus’s words and you did whatever he said, so God made you good for himself. Jesus died and his blood came out, and it is like God put that blood of Jesus on you to make you clean. I’m asking God to be properly good to you, and to make you feel really happy and quiet inside yourselves.
3God is very good to us. We went wrong, but still he is good to us. Now he puts new life in us, like we get born all over again. Jesus died, but God brought him back to life. From that we know God will save us too. So let us thank God, the Father of our leader, Jesus, and say that he is really good.
4We are his family, so he will give us a lot of good things. He has it all ready in heaven for us, so now we just wait for those things. God looks after them all there for us in heaven. They will never rot or get dirty there, and nobody can ever mess them up.
5God has a lot of power and he looks after us, all of us that trust him. He will look after us until the last day. Then he will show everyone that he saved us.
6So think about all this and you will get really happy. You might get different kinds of trouble now and you might be sad for a little while, but think about the things that will happen later, and you will be really happy. In the end God will save you from those troubles.
7You know about gold. It is very dear. People put that gold into a fire to make it really clean. The fire makes it better after it burns away all the rubbish that isn’t real gold. But even gold will not last for ever. It belongs to this world. Now think about the troubles that come to us. They make us better because they show that we really trust God. If we keep trusting him, God will say, “You are very dear to me. You are much more dear to me than gold.” So keep trusting God and after Jesus comes again, God will talk to you like that, and make you important.
8You have never seen Jesus, but you love him. You can’t see him now, but you trust him.
9You are trusting God and he is saving you, so you are really happy. You are so happy you can’t properly say how happy you are.
10A long time ago, the men that brought God’s messages told about God. They said that he is good, and he saves us.
11At that time they wanted to find out more about God saving people. The spirit of Jesus Christ was in them and showed them that at first Jesus will get big trouble and he will die. But after that, God will make Jesus really important.
12His spirit told them that this word wasn’t for themselves, but it was for you. That all happened a long time ago, and now God’s people have told you that good word about Jesus. The Holy Spirit from heaven gave them power to talk to you. This is all very wonderful. Even God’s angels in heaven don’t know all about the things that God does to save people, and they want to find out more.
13So you have to think about it more clearly and be careful about everything you do. Keep waiting for Jesus to come and get ready for him. God will show him to everybody, and he will be very good to you at that time.
14In the past you didn’t know that God was good, so at that time you did all the bad things you wanted to do.
15But now you are God’s children. So you have to stop doing those bad things, and be properly good and right, just like God. He picked you out for himself. So you have to be good, just like him.
16In his book we read, “God is properly good and he keeps away from everything that is bad, so you have to be like that too, you have to be properly good and keep away from everything that is bad.”
17You know that God is our Father, and you pray to him. He looks at everything we do, and he treats us in a fair way. You are only living in this world a little while, like you are strangers here. Later you will live in God’s family in heaven. So you have to properly respect God.
18Your grand-parents and elders taught you some good ways to live, but they didn’t teach you God’s way. That old way was useless, and you weren’t free. But God has saved you from that wrong way. He paid a lot to set you free from that old way. Sometimes people pay money to get somebody out of prison and let them go free. But money doesn’t last for ever.
19So God didn’t pay money to set you free. He did more than that. I’ll tell you the price he paid for you. Do you remember the old Jewish ceremonies? Do you remember that they used to pick a young sheep that had nothing wrong with it, and they gave that sheep to God? Well that is a picture of Jesus. There was nothing wrong with him and he never did anything wrong. He was perfect. But they killed Jesus. He bled and died for you. This is the price God paid to set you free, and it is better than money, it lasts for ever. You see, you belong to God now.
20A long time ago, before God made the world, he picked Jesus to set you free. Then, later, Jesus came into the world. And now you know about him. You know that he died for you, and so you believe in God too. After Jesus died God made him alive again, and God made him very great and gave him a lot of power. Now you can trust God and wait for everything he promised you.
22You listened to the true message from God, and you did everything he said in that message. Then God cleaned up your lives and you stopped doing bad things. So now you love each other. Well, keep on loving each other very much.
23God has given you new life. It’s not like the life you got from your mother and father. That life will end. But when you listened to God’s message, he gave you new life, like you got born again. Your new life will not end, because God’s word will never finish up. It lives for ever.
24In his book we read, All people are like grass. They are beautiful like flowers in the bush. But grass gets dry and dies, and so do the flowers in the bush.
25But God’s word will never die, it will last for ever. And that is the message which God’s people told you.
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