1 Peter

First Peter is written to exiles, scattered believers across Asia Minor whose faith had made them strangers in their own towns. Peter's answer to their suffering is a living hope, born of the resurrection and kept in heaven, unfading. He gives them a new identity in some of Scripture's richest phrases: a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, living stones built into a spiritual house. Suffering for doing good, they follow in the steps of Christ, who bore our sins in his body on the tree. Humble yourselves, he closes; cast every anxiety on the God who cares.