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