Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?
If you are doing what is right, who would complain?
But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.
Sometimes people feel threatened by your good deeds, because it shows that what they are doing is not good. We suffer, then we are blessed with rewards.
And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled (Isaiah 8:12).Peter quotes Isaiah here to encourage his readers, that we don't need to pay attention to detractors, to let them have any negative affect on our own sensibilities.
But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,
Set aside our Lord to have first place in your thinking.
always being ready to make a defense
This means we need to be studied up, to be ready.
to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you,
Whenever anyone asks you why you're so happy, or calm, or otherwise grounded while in the middle of the turmoil that sets them on their ear.
yet with gentleness and reverence;
We need to pay attention to our own attitude and tone of voice while we're talking with them. Remember that they bear God's image, and He loves them, too; even if they have done their best to obscure that beauty.
and to keep a good conscience
Always endeavor to have the right attitudes and feelings behind everything you say, because a bad attitude or feelings of not liking the person will come through in our tone of voice, and may offend the hearer.
so that in the thing in which you are slandered,
So that whatever it is that they've made up about you will appear to not be consistent with the character you have displayed.
those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.
Whatever it is that they've said about you will be found to be false, reflecting badly on the one who propagated it.
For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.
This is a World in which we must suffer something sometime. The choice is whether we will decide to do what is right anyway, and be rewarded, or if we'll do wrong and suffer the consequences.
For Christ also died for sins once for all,
Jesus only died once. That was sufficient. Being God, the Eternal Person, He could pay our Eternal debt we owe that we could never pay ourselves. One death for all sinfulness for all time. Finished. Done.
the just for the unjust,
Even Jesus, who never did anything wrong, had to suffer. He was perfectly just, without even a suggestion of sin. So He qualified to die for us, who deserve it. Each one of us is a criminal, an enemy of God, and each of us deserves the execution death Jesus died. That's why He gave the Levites to teach the people to offer the personal sacrifice first, in the first chapter of Leviticus. Because that's the one He fulfilled for each one of us individually to save us.
so that He might bring us to God,
We could never face God in any sinfulness. Even the least shadow of a stain of sin would render us vulnerable to be destroyed by the holiness of His Person. Jesus had to die, to splatter His Blood on the sides of the Cross, His altar, to wash us totally clean, pristine, as though we'd never sinned. Now He can bring us to God safely, and we can live with Him where He lives.
having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit;
When Jesus died, His body had to be taken down from the Cross and buried; it was a dead body, a corpse.
But Life is spirit, and His Spirit was still Alive, and made His body Alive again, too, when He was Resurrected.
in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison
This is what Jesus was doing while His body laid in the grave. He went down into Sheol, the Place of the Dead, which He had described in His story about the Rich Man and Lazarus, as having two sides, the fire side and the Paradise side (Luke 16:19-31). He went into Paradise and proclaimed to all those in the Hell side that He had cleansed all the saints in the Paradise side, who could now go to Heaven. And He organized the saints into a triumphal procession in full view of all the demons and lost people who had rejected God's offer. (See also Ephesians 4: 8-9 and Colossians 2:15.)
Who were these people?
who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the Ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.
Most of the lost souls there were those whose wickedness was great in the Earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of [their] heart[s] was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). Noah here is spoken of as a real person, because that Flood really did happen in our History. God really did wipe out that whole civilization from the face of the Earth and He started over with Noah. The eight persons were: Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives. All the Nations today came from these three sons of Noah, everyone else died.
Corresponding to that,
Noah and his family survived by being able to float on top of the water of the Deluge, so they are said to have been saved by the water, by being in the Ark.
Baptism now saves you--
Baptism is the picture we act out using water: being "buried" under the water because we died with Christ, and rising up out of the water to show publicly that we are now living a new life, different than before (See Colossians 2:12).
--not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience--
The water itself doesn't do anything, nothing physical has any affect on spiritual realities (John 6:63, Jesus said, The Spirit quickens, the flesh profits nothing...Life is spiritual, flesh is physical and can do nothing).
--through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,
What saves us is the reality of Christ's Resurrection that works in us that New Life He gives us when we're "born again." That is the picture we act out using the water of Baptism.
who is at the right hand of God, having gone into Heaven,
Now that Jesus has completed His work of Saving us, His Sacrifice is finished, and He sat down at the right hand of God, which means He shares the Authority God the Father has over Creation.
after Angels and Authorities and Powers had been subjected to Him.
He "earned" the right to rule over Angels and Authorities and Powers because He sacrificed Himself to purchase all of Creation with the endless value of His Blood. He suffered, then received the Reward. So He is also our Owner, our Master, and our Lord. He is the rightful Ruler and Judge over every being in all Creation.
O my Father, help us as Your children to live our lives here according to Your ways, thinking Your thoughts and feeling Your attitudes about stuff.
Strengthen us to be steadfast in being faithful to You, and to love others as You have Loved us. Continually. Even when they don't appreciate it. Teach us how to be prepared to give an answer when we're asked, and to share Your Truth accurately. And to be prepared to suffer if need be, for doing what is right.
Thank You so much, Father, for all that You do. You have thought of everything, and You are always just in Time for us every time. You have already provided all the resources we need to do all the works You planned for us to accomplish. We just haven't seen it yet. But it's there, waiting for when we need it.
And when we have finished the works You wanted us to do, and every person in all the Nations of the World have heard Your Good News and had an opportunity to choose or reject Your wonderful offer; then King Jesus will return to claim this Earth as His possession, and set up His Kingdom to rule.
And every eye will see, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess in every language that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord God Almighty and King and Judge, to the glory of Almighty God the Father.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
