November 23
1 Pet 1:13-2:10
Therefore prepare your
minds for action, be sober, and set your hope fully on the grace that will
be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ— as children of
obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in
your ignorance, but just as he who called you is holy, you yourselves also
be holy in all of your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy;
for I am holy.” If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons
judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as
foreigners here in reverent fear: knowing that you were redeemed, not with
corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed
down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a faultless and pure
lamb, the blood of Christ; who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of
the world, but was revealed at the end of times for your sake, who through
him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory;
so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through
the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from the heart
fervently: having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of
incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and remains forever.
For,
“All flesh is like grass,
and all of man’s glory like the flower in the grass.
The grass withers, and its flower falls;
but the Lord’s word endures forever.”
This is the word of Good News which was preached to you.
Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and
all evil speaking, as newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word,
that with it you may grow, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is
gracious: coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen
by God, precious. You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual
house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable
to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in Scripture,
“Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, chosen, and precious:
He who believes in him will not be disappointed.”
For you who believe therefore is the honor, but for those who are
disobedient,
“The stone which the builders rejected,
has become the chief cornerstone,”
and,
“a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”
For they stumble at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were
appointed. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: who in time past
were no people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but
now have obtained mercy. |