Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me

 Good morning. For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Gentiles were looked down upon by the Jews. We had no part with the inheritance of God – it was strictly for the Jews. We were scattered into various groups unlike the Jews who were all one. I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. That's kind of like Paul's "I find that I'm doing what I don't want to do". Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evil doers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. This is so true today. Non-Christians are looking for anything that they may use to accuse Christians of doing something bad. And it doesn't matter to them that God would not think that it was bad. They just want to put another notch on their gun. But we are to keep doing what we know is right in God's eyes, not theirs. Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right. This is just the opposite of the way people of the world act today. Today civil disobedience is a badge of honor, especially if you get thrown in jail. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Father thank You that the reader is Your child and behaves in a manner worthy of being called a child or God!