Emerging Peter: A Community Gospel:
The heart of this paragraph is found in 1:22b: ‘Love one another strenuously out of a purified/cleansed heart.’ Soul-purification has its goal in loving one another and the means of that purification, the new birth, is the ground out of which this love grows. In this verse we find the center — grammatically and notionally — of the passage: new birth creates a community that loves one another. Peter has a community gospel.
How, then, will they live in the Roman Empire as a sectarian community? It begins by loving one another through thick and thin. And Peter is not messing around here with some romantic, idyllic sense of community: the word he uses is ‘strenously’ (ektenos): the notion is stretching one’s neck as one strains for the finishing line, or straining one’s efforts to get the job done, or working at it because it is hard.
Loving one another sounds good on paper. To ape the words of CS Lewis: ‘Loving one another is a great idea, until you have someone you don’t like that you are summoned to love.’ Peter knew this, and he made it the goal of what the redemptive work of the gospel accomplishes.
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(Via Jesus Creed.)
Possibly the most difficult thing we face is loving those who are a thorn in our sides. Sometimes, a reminder that we’re probably an equal or greater thorn to them can temper our feelings, but often, we just have to really work at loving people.
Of course, Scot McKnight said it better than me, which is why I quoted him 
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