Well, as we make our way back into I Peter after 3 weeks away from it, let me sort of reintroduce you to some points that I have been making. The first of which, very briefly, is to remind you of our thought experiment. And I put it in a question form: What if Peter, what if I Peter were the only New Testament that we had? Or maybe better, what if I Peter were the only New Testament Epistle that we had. So let's picture for our thought experiment a New Testament made up of the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and I Peter. This is where our information for being Christians and living as Christians comes from. It is just a thought experiment but what I said before the reading is a reason why the thought experiment can be helpful. Because if we are trained confessionally and catechetically or just in the Protestant tradition then everything that comes to the Bible comes through a filter so that we've already decided what's really really important and what will just kind of come later. If Peter thinks that this is really really really important and he stresses it by developing this lengthy argument based on the Old Testament prophets and we have arrived at a place in the story of redemption that is the place of the highest honor and privilege but if we are locked into the legal relationship with God justification/sanctification, then maybe what Peter says here isn't going to come at us with the force that he intended...