language and one could scarcely refer to the Church as the λαὸς θεοῦ without at the same time ‘borrowing’ scriptural phraseology. This brief overview gives us something of a perspective from which to assess the significance of 1 Pet. 2:9a in terms of establishing the idea that Christian identity is specifically an ethnic or ethnoracial identity, that is identity as a ‘people’, a ‘nation’, or a ‘race’. Several points are noteworthy: (1) This is the only New Testament text in which all three ‘people’