Verses 1-2 > If you have Christ’s attitude and are willing to suffer for your faith; it means you have turned from your sinful life to embrace Christ’s life of purity and holiness.
Your outlook always determines your outcome. We need to militantly hate sin. A good attitude is a good weapon to defeat sin.
Warren Wiersbe tells this story: A friend and I met at a restaurant to have lunch. It was one of those places where the lights are low, and you need a miner’s helmet to find your table. We had been seated several minutes before we started looking at the menu, and I remarked that I was amazed how easily I could read it. “Yes,” said my friend, “it doesn’t take us long to get accustomed to the darkness.”
A believer living in sin is a weapon that Satan can use.
Verse 3 > To those who don’t know Jesus their capacity for sin just keeps increasing. To those of us who do know Jesus we lose our taste for sin because we have tasted something much better in Jesus. Purity always tastes better than putrid.
1 Peter 2:3 (NLT) — 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.
Verse 6 > In context the phrase those who are dead refers to those now dead who had accepted the gospel while they were still living and had suffered persecution for their faith. Though they “suffered judgment” in this earthly life (i.e., they died, in the midst of physical abuse from the ungodly), they will enjoy life from God in the spiritual, heavenly realm because of the gospel (v. 6b). It clearly does not assume a second chance for conversion offered to unbelievers who had died; why would Peter urge people to suffer in this life for the sake of the gospel if he believed that mercy would be extended to all the dead in the hereafter?
We are told that love covers a multitude of sins. That phrase encourages us to forgive others and not be offended by others. Our love for them prevents a downward spiral or retribution and revenge.