17/ Now if you invoke as Father him who judges impartially according to each one's works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning,
18/ realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold
19/ but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb.
20/ He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you,
21/ who through him believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
22/ Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere mutual love, love one another intensely from a (pure) heart.
23/ You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and abiding word of God,
24/ for: "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of the field; the grass withers, and the flower wilts;
25/ but the word of the Lord remains forever." This is the word that has been proclaimed to you.
Holy confidence in God as a Father, and awful fear of him as a Judge, agree together; and to regard God always as a Judge, makes him dear to us as a Father.
If believers do evil, God will visit them with corrections. Then, let Christians not doubt God's faithfulness to his promises, nor give way to enslaving dread of his wrath, but let them reverence his holiness.
The fearless professor is defenseless, and Satan takes him captive at his will; the desponding professor has no heart to avail himself of his advantages, and is easily brought to surrender.
The price paid for man's redemption was the precious blood of Christ.
Not only openly wicked, but unprofitable conversation is highly dangerous, though it may plead custom. It is folly to resolve, I will live and die in such a way, because my forefathers did so. God had purposes of special favour toward his people, long before he made manifest such grace unto them.
The soul must be purified, before it can give up its own desires and indulgences. And the word of God planted in the heart by the Holy Ghost, is a means of spiritual life, stirring up to our duty, working a total change in the dispositions and affections of the soul, till it brings to eternal life.
In contrast with the excellence of the renewed spiritual man, as born again, observe the vanity of the natural man. In his life, and in his fall, he is like grass, the flower of grass, which soon withers and dies away.
We should hear, and thus receive and love, the holy, living word, and rather hazard all than lose it; and we must banish all other things from the place due to it. We should lodge it in our hearts as our only treasures here, and the certain pledge of the treasure of glory laid up for believers in heaven.
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