Peter had earlier written that his readers had been “born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). As born-again persons they also do what all healthy newborns do: they crave God’s kind of milk (1 Peter 2:2). This imagery of newborns and feeding awakens in the mind of the reader the concept of a household, a family. Such a household lives in a house, but what kind of a house? What opportunities and responsibilities characterize the members of such a house? That’s the topic the apostle addresses in the present paragraph.
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,