Submit, then, to God; stand up against the devil and he will ^m away from you. Come to God and he will come to you. Wash your hands clean, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you doubters. Be miserable and mourn and lament; let your laughter tum to sorrow and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Brothers, do not speak against each other. The man who speaks against his brother or judges his brother is speaking against the law and judging the law. But if you judge the law you are not one who carries out the law, but its judge. But there is one lawgiver and judge, the one who can save you and who can destroy you. Who are you to judge your neighbor?
Come now, you who say: Today or tomorrow we shall go to a certain city and spend a year there and do business and make money. But you do not know about tomorrow or what your life will be like then. For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears. You should rather have said: If the Lord wills it and we are alive we shall also do this or that. But as it is, you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is bad.
If one knows how to do right and does not do it, that is a sin in him.
Come now, you rich men: Lament, bewailing the miseries that are advancing upon you. Your wealth has rotted away and your clothes are eaten by moths, your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will testify against you and feed on your flesh. You have stored away treasures for the fire in the final days. Behold, the unpaid wages of the laborers who mowed your fields cry out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of the hosts. You reveled and luxuriated upon the earth, you fed your hearts on the day of slaughter. You condemned and murdered the righteous man. Is he not against you?
Be patient then, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer looks for the precious harvest of his land when he watches patiently over it until it gets the early and the late rain. Be patient, you also, strengthen your hearts, because the coming of the Lord is near.
Do not complain, brothers, against each other, for fear you may be judged; behold, the judge stands before your doors. As your example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we call blessed those who have endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you know what the Lord did in the end, because the Lord is generous and takes pity.
Before all else, my brothers, do not swear, neither by heaven nor earth, nor any other oath. Let your yes be yes and your no, no, for fear you may be brought to judgment.
Is one of you in distress? Let him pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing praises. Is one of you sick? Let him call in the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sufferer, and the Lord will restore him; and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. So confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person at work has great strength. Elijah was human, with the same nature as ours; and he asked in his prayer that it should not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months; and again he prayed, and the sky gave its rain, and the land grew a flourishing harvest.
My brothers, if one among you is led astray from the truth, and someone else brings him back to it, be sure that the man who brought back the sinner from the error of his ways will save his own soul from death, and cover up a multitude of sins.
The First General Letter of Peter
11PETER, APOSTLE OF JESUS CHRIST, TO the chosen exiles in their dispersion through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the predestination of God the Father, by the consecration of the Spirit to the service of Jesus Christ and through the sprinkling of his blood. May grace and peace be multiplied for you.
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through his great mercy he granted us to be born again into living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance which is imperishable and stainless and cannot fade, which has been kept in heaven for you who are held safe in the power of God through your faith in the salvation which is ready to be revealed in the final time. Rejoice over this, even if for a little while, when it had to be, you have been hurt by all kinds of trials; this was so that the quality of your faith might be found far more precious than gold— which, though perishable, is proved by fire—for praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You have not seen him but you love him, and now, not seeing him but believing in him, rejoice, with a joy which is inexpressible and glorious, as you win what is the end of faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who prophesied about the grace that would be yours, studied and sought for answers, trying to determine the time for which the spirit of Christ within them foretold the sufferings of Christ and his glory thereafter; and it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in these matters which have now been announced to you by those who have brought you the gospel through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven; secrets into which angels long to look.
Accordingly, gird up the loins of your mind, in complete sobriety, and put your hopes in the grace which is brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ. As children of obedience, do not conform to the desires you had before in your ignorance, but, like the holy one who summoned you, be yourselves holy in all your behavior; because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy. And if you invoke as Father the one who judges without prejudice according to what each has done, then spend the time of your exile here in fear; knowing that it was not by perishable things, silver or gold, that you were ransomed from the vain way of life you inherited from your fathers, but by precious blood, as of a blameless unblemished lamb, Christ. He was foreknow before the establishment of the world but revealed at the end of the ages, for you, who because of him believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave glory, so that your faith and hope is in God.
Sanctifying your souls in obedience to the truth toward unfeigned brotherly affection, love each other from the heart, constantly, since you have been reborn not from a perished seed but from one that is imperishable, through the word of God which lives and endures. Thus: All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and its flower falls to the ground, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
11 This is the word which was brought to you as gospel. Putting aside, therefore, all malice and all treachery and hypocrisy and envious thoughts and calumnies, crave, like newborn babies, the guileless milk of reason, so that by it you may grow to salvation, if you have tasted and know that the Lord is good. Come to him, a living stone, rejected by men but selected for honor by God; and yourselves, like living stones, be built into a spiritual house for sacred priestly service, to offer up through Jesus Christ spiritual sacrifices which are well pleasing to God. As it says in scripture: Behold, I lay down on Zion a stone that is select and prized at the uttermost corner; and he who believes in it shall not be put to shame. It is a thing prized by those who believe; but for those who do not believe, it is: The stone which the builders rejected has come to be at the head of the corner, and a stone to stumble on and a rock of catastrophe. On which they stumble, by disbelieving in the word; to which end they were appointed. But you are a race elect, a royal priesthood, a sacred nation, a people to be preserved, so that you may proclaim the virtues of him who summoned you from darkness into his own wonderful light; who once were no people but now are the people of God, who received no mercy but now have been granted mercy.