The Christian’s Character

13 Therefore concentrate your minds, with the strictest self-control, and fix your hopes on the blessing that is coming for you at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 14 Be like obedient children; do not let your lives be shaped by the passions which once swayed you in the days of your ignorance, 15 but in your whole life show yourselves to be holy, after the pattern of the Holy One from whom you received your call. 16 For scripture says –

“You will be holy, because I am holy.”

17 And since you call on him as “Father,” who judges everyone impartially by what he has done, let respectful awe be the spirit of your lives during the time of your stay on earth. 18 For you know that it was not by perishable things, such as silver and gold, that you were ransomed from the aimless way of living which was handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but by precious blood, as it were of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. 20 Destined for this before the beginning of the world, he has been revealed in these last days for your sakes, 21 who, through him, are faithful to God who raised him from the dead and gave him honour, so that your faith and hope are now in God.

22 Now that, by your obedience to the truth, you have purified your lives, so that there is growing up among you a genuine affection, love one another earnestly with all your hearts; 23 since your new life has come, not from perishable, but imperishable, seed, through the message of the Everliving God. 24 For –

“All earthly life is but as grass,

and all its splendour as the flower of grass.

The grass fades,

its flower falls,

25 but the teaching of the Lord remains for ever.”

And that is the teaching of the good news which has been told to you. 2 Now that you have done with all malice, all deceitfulness, insincerity, jealous feelings, and all backbiting, 2 like newly born infants, crave pure spiritual milk, so that you may be enabled by it to grow until you attain salvation – 3 since “you have found by experience that the Lord is kind.” 4 Come to him, then, as to a living stone, rejected, indeed, by men, but in God’s eyes choice and precious; 5 and, as living stones, form yourselves into a spiritual house, to be a consecrated priesthood, for the offering of spiritual sacrifices that will be acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For there is a passage of scripture that runs –

“See, I am placing in Zion a choice and precious cornerstone;

and those who believe in him will have no cause for shame.”

7 It is to you, then, who believe in him that he is precious, but to those who do not believe he is “a stone which, though rejected by the builders, has now itself become the corner-stone,” 8 and “a stumbling-block, and a rock which will prove a hindrance.” They stumble because they do not accept the message. This was the fate destined for them. 9 But you are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, God’s own people,” entrusted with the proclamation of the goodness of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were “not a people,” but now you are “God’s people”; once you “had not found mercy,” but now you “have found mercy.”