1 Peter 3

1 In the same way, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some disobey the word, they may be won without a word through the way of life of their wives, [a] 2 when they have watched your pure way of life in fear. 3 Let your adornment not be the outward one — braiding hair, putting gold around you, wearing clothes — [b] 4 but the hidden person of the heart, in what does not perish: a gentle and quiet spirit, which before God is costly. [c] 5 For in this way the holy women too, who once hoped in God, adorned themselves, being subject to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord — whose children you have become when you do good and are not afraid of any terror. [d]

7 Husbands, in the same way, live together with them according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman as to the weaker vessel, as also fellow heirs of the favor of life, so that your prayers are not cut off. [e]

8 Finally, all of you be of one mind, feeling with one another, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, humble-minded, [f] 9 not paying back evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, because to this you were called, so that you might inherit a blessing. †

13 And who is the one who will harm you if you become zealots for what is good? [h] 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness — blessed are you. “Do not fear what they fear or be dismayed,” [i] 15 but regard the Lord, the Christ, as holy in your hearts, always ready for a defense to everyone who asks you for a word about the hope in you — [j] 16 but with gentleness and fear, keeping a good conscience, so that in the very thing in which you are spoken against, those who abuse your good way of life in Christ may be put to shame. [k] 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if God’s will should will it, than for doing evil. [l]

18 Because Christ also suffered once concerning sins, righteous for unrighteous, so that he might bring you to God — put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit; [m] 19 in which he also went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 who disobeyed long before, when the patience of God was waiting in the days of Noah while an ark was being built, in which a few — that is, eight souls — were brought safely through water. [n] † 21 And this now saves you too, as a counterpart: immersion, not a putting away of dirt from flesh but a good conscience’s pledge toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, [o] 22 who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, with messengers and authorities and powers made subject to him. [p]