Text: 1 Peter 3:13-17

As parents or employers, we would never ignore benchmarks of healthy development in our children or in our employees.  Yet, within the church we are inexplicably comfortable with allowing others and even allowing ourselves to stagnate in spiritual immaturity.  In these verses, Peter begins to wrap up the main body of his letter in which he has called all believers into a conduct that is holy and missional.  He warns us that a commitment to righteousness will lead to suffering and persecution.  Only a maturing Christian faith will be able to endure such opposition and from these text we can glean three clear markers of maturing Christianity.