Mercy can be difficult to pass on to others.
22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.
23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.
1 Peter 2:1-3 So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. 2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord's kindness.
Since God paid a ransom to save us from our empty meaningless temporary lives, we are born again to an eternal life, so then we need to live for him.
We should look different from the other people that don't know Jesus, Peter told us to love each other deeply and now he shows us how that is supposed to be done, all we have to do is get rid of all evil behavior.
That doesn't sound so bad, when we think of evil we think of some pretty bad stuff, but Peter elaborates on what he calls evil and all of a sudden he is hitting us right between the eyes. He tells us to get rid of a list of our favorite sins: deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech.
Now that we have tasted the Lord's kindness and how well he treated us, we are supposed to treat each other the same way.
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Help us to treat each other with the same kindness that you offered to us. Thanks for showing us how to love our enemies so that there can be peace in our lives, peace that can only come through love.
