22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another fervently from the heart,h 23 because you* have been born again, not from perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For

“all flesh is like grass,

and all its glory like the flower of the grass.

The grass withers and the flower falls off,

25 but the word of the Lord endures ⌊forever⌋i.”j

And this is the word that has been proclaimed to you.

Chosen as Living Stones

2 Therefore, ridding yourselves of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn infants long for the unadulterated spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up to salvation, 3 if you have tasted that the Lord is kind,a 4 to whom you are drawing near, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and precious in the sight of God. 5 And you yourselves, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in scripture,

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”b

7 Therefore the honor is for you who believe, but for those who refuse to believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected,

this one has become ⌊the cornerstone⌋c,”

8 and

“A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,”d

who stumble because they* disobey the word to which also they were consigned. 9 But you are a chosen race,e a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s possession, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, 10 who once were not a people, but now are the people of God, the ones who were not shown mercy, but now are shown mercy.f