days for the sake of you who, through Him,
001:021 are faithful to God, who raised Him from among the dead and gave
Him glory, so that your faith and hope are resting upon God.
001:022 Now that, through your obedience to the truth, you have
purified your souls for cherishing sincere brotherly love,
you must love another heartily and fervently.
001:023 For you have been begotten again by God's ever-living and enduring
word from a germ not of perishable, but of imperishable life.
001:024 "All mankind resemble the herbage, and all their beauty is like
its flowers. The herbage dries up, and its flowers drop off;
001:025 But the word of the Lord remains for ever." And that means
the Message which has been proclaimed among you in the Good News.
002:001 Rid yourselves therefore of all ill-will and all deceitfulness,
of insincerity and envy, and of all evil speaking.
002:002 Thirst, like newly-born infants, for pure milk for the soul,
that by it you may grow up to salvation;
002:003 if you have had any experience of the goodness of the Lord.
002:004 Come to Him, the ever-living Stone, rejected indeed by men
as worthless, but in God's esteem chosen and held in honour.
002:005 And be yourselves also like living stones that are being built
up into a spiritual house, to become a holy priesthood to offer
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
002:006 For it is contained in Scripture, "See, I am placing on Mount Zion
a Cornerstone, chosen, and held in honour, and he whose faith
rests on Him shall never have reason to feel ashamed."
002:007 To you believers, therefore, that honour belongs; but for
unbelievers--"A Stone which the builders rejected has been
made the Cornerstone,"
002:008 and "a Stone for the foot to strike against, and a Rock to
stumble over." Their foot strikes against it because they are