1 Peter 4:1-6

THE CALL TO HOLY LIVING

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1 Peter 4:1. In the flesh.—Or to the flesh; i.e., so far as the flesh is concerned. The same sphere in which Christian disciples were called to suffer. Same mind.—Or thought. The same temper of trust, obedience, and submission. Put yourselves into the same disposition. Ceased from sin.—“Hath been caused to rest.” The moral result of the suffering is deliverance from the motions of sins. But it is suffering borne in the mind of Christ’ that alone has its full moral power on us. See Romans 6:7.

1 Peter 4:2. This verse explains the previous verse. Suffering, rightly borne, brings a mood of submission to the will of God, and this involves our deliverance from our own self-will. A man ceases to live unto the lusts, desires, of his own heart, when he comes fully to do and bear God’s holy will ἐπιθυμίαις All sensual objects, pleasures, profits, honours, which are repugnant to the will of God.

1 Peter 4:3. Will of the Gentiles.—Almost satirical, as addressed to Jews. It was altogether unworthy of them to take up with the self-indulgent customs of the Gentiles; it was impossible for Jews who had become Christians in any way to keep association with old evil practices. It seems that both Gentiles and bigoted Jews were trying to draw the Christian Jews away from their profession by the enticements of sensual indulgence, and public excitements. If we could understand the state of society in those days, we should readily see how attractive, and how subtle and strong in their influence, those enticements and temptations were, and therefore how needful was the apostolic warning. Those pledged to do the will of Christ must in no sense allow themselves to do the “will of the Gentiles.” To us Christ our Master must be all, or nothing at all. Lasciviousness.—A plural form for all kinds of bodily impurity. Lusts.—See above. Excess of wine.—A contemptuous word is used—“wine-swillings.” Involving loss of due self-restraint. Revellings.—Roystering parties. Banquetings.—Or carousings; drinking-bouts. Idolatries.—With reference to the excitements and immoralities usually associated with idol feast-times. It is evident that licentious Jews had sadly fallen into evil ways, but it is difficult to conceive that the Christian Jews had yielded to such enticements. Perhaps St. Peter only warns them of serious possibilities of temptation.

1 Peter 4:4. Wherein.—In regard to which fleshly life. Christians always excite surprise in persisting in separation from carnal indulgences. Riot.—Or letting loose of bodily passions. The word used may mean, sink, slough, puddle. Speaking evil of you.—Slanderously affirming that you are as bad as themselves. Such slander was part of the suffering of the Christians; and they must take care that they gave no conceivable occasion for it.

1 Peter 4:5. Who.—That is, these revilers and slanderers. They will surely be called to account before God. “They who now demand an account, will one day have to render it.” St. Peter offers the consideration of God’s near judgment, fur the comfort and assurance of Christians unjustly slandered. The early disciples thought of Christ’s vindication as near at hand, “Hence St. Peter includes the slanderers of his day among the living, as just about to be judged” (Bengel).

1 Peter 4:6. Them that are dead.—Not the souls of the dead; but to those who once were alive, and are now dead; e.g., the men of the age of Noah, to whom reference is made in the preceding chapter. This sentence should help us to understand the preaching to the “spirits in prison.” In 1 Peter 4:5 the “quick” and the “dead “are distinguished. The familiar apostolic meaning is the “dead” before Christ’s coming, and the “quick “or “alive “at Christ’s coming. This is the idea of “dead” in this verse. Alford thinks those in their graves are meant. According to men.—That is, the discipline of life, the common experience of human suffering, was God’s gospel preached to them, with a view to their quickening to spiritual life. If they failed to respond, there could be for them but “a fearful looking for of judgment.” St. Peter is comforting tempted and tried Christians, by assuring them that their tempters and persecutors are in the hands of God, in the just judgment of God. “Even such as are now dead had the gospel preached to them, with this result, that the common judgment should pass upon them in the flesh, and yet that they should have a higher life before God by the operation of the Spirit” (W. W.). “They were judged after the manner of men, by the laws by which all men are judged according to their works; but the purpose of that judgment, like that of the judgments that come upon men in this life, was to rescue them from a final condemnation” (Plumptre). Many of the slanderers and persecutors of the Christians would be their personal friends and relatives; and St. Peter would feel it necessary to temper and relieve, as far as possible, his denunciations of them. We all want some ground of hope concerning our unbelieving and ungodly friends.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 4:1

Suffering in the Flesh as Help to Ceasing from Sin.—It will be seen how directly adapted, pointed, and practical, St. Peter’s teachings are. They apply precisely to the conditions, sufferings, and temptations of the brethren of the “Dispersion,” to whom the epistle is addressed. St. Peter has not the interest in theology which characterises St. Paul, and he should not be studied in order to find settings of doctrinal truth. His supreme interest is in Christian living, and in truths only so far as they may inspire and guide godly living. And in this epistle he is mainly concerned with the hindrances to Christian living which come from the disabilities and distresses which making a Christian profession then involved. He looks at the sufferings of the brethren from different points of view, and from every point of view he finds encouragement by showing that they always “work together for good.” Here his point of view is the peril occasioned by having to live in the very midst of a licentious Gentile society—a peril all the greater because they once indulged in the unrestrained and degrading customs of Gentile life, and there was some affinity for such things left in their fleshly nature. And he reminds them that suffering in the flesh was the very thing to deliver them from the power of these evils, the very thing to work the very last relics of these things out of their natures, and enable them to cease altogether from sin.

I. Christ’s example of suffering in the flesh.—What was the point of that example? What was the power that sustained Him? And what were the results of His endurance? It was distinctly and precisely such suffering as we have to undergo, suffering in the fleshly, human sphere; bodily and mental suffering, arising from conditions similar to ours; bodily states, sensibilities, oppositions of evil men, etc. It is only too easy to represent Christ as so unique a Being that we cannot see in His any likeness to our own bodily, fleshly sufferings. He was “in all points” tested, disciplined by suffering, even as we are. St. John vigorously pleads for the truth that Christ is “come in the flesh” St. Peter vigorously pleads for the truth that Christ “suffered in the flesh.” As to the power which sustained Him under the suffering, we have to see that the grace of God rested upon Him as it rests upon us; but beside that, and as the special point of interest now, Jesus was sustained—as we may be, and ought to be sustained—by His full loyalty and devotion to God, and absolute resolve to serve Him in righteousness and well doing, whatever that might involve. And as to the result, it may be said that, in entire consecration to God, to righteousness as God’s will, is always found the deliverance of a man from the “motions of sins in his members.” Sin is essentially self-centredness, self-seeking; and a man ceases from self-willedness and sin when he gives himself wholly over, in devotion and service to another. Christ absolutely ceased from the service of self, because He was entirely absorbed in the service of the Father.

II. Deliverance and elevation may come to Christians through their suffering in the flesh (1 Peter 4:2).—The acceptance of bodily suffering in doing what we know to be right, and the will of God, is the sign of the highest moral triumph, of deliverance from the self. It lifts a man right up above the plane in which men seek their own pleasures, and indulge their own lusts and passions. To be willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake is proof of self-mastery. No man ever chooses suffering, or submits easily to it, save under the persuasion of some high and holy motive. Illustration may be taken from the case present to the mind of St. Peter. These Christians once had shared in the self-indulgent and demoralising Pagan life around them. On principle they had separated themselves from it all. But the separation was putting them under disability, and causing them suffering. Their loyalty to principle was severely tested, but if they held fast their loyalty, and patiently bore their sufferings, they would surely find that this would perfect the separation, and make it easy to stand quite aloof from every evil feature of the old Pagan life. It is the point which may be set in adaptation to the circumstances of every age. In the earnestness of the Christian life—and earnestness is effectively shown in willingness to endure—lies the true safety from surrounding evils, howsoever they may appeal to the fleshly nature.

III. The misunderstanding those must expect who are willing to suffer in the flesh (1 Peter 4:4).—“Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot; speaking evil of you.” The early Christians were, in a remarkable way, exposed to slander and misrepresentation; and these are often harder to bear than actual persecutions affecting body and circumstances. A Christian who is indifferent concerning material things is intensely jealous concerning his good name, because the honour of his Lord is bound up in his keeping his good name. But even this he must be willing to bear; by his persistency in good and gracious living “putting to silence the ignorance of foolish men.” A Christian has always this effective power against the slanderer he can live so that no one can by any possibility credit the slanders. He can live so as to stand in the acceptance of the righteous God, and so as fearlessly to anticipate the time when human lives must be appraised and judged. The apostles, with their anticipation of the immediate return of Christ for judgment, constantly urge that whatever benefits accrue to the faithful will be shared by the Christians who have died before He comes, as well as by those who are alive when He comes. As they contemplated material blessings from the coming, it was necessary to show that those who had died before He came would be placed under no disability. St. Peter in no way refers, in 1 Peter 4:6, to old-world sinners, but entirely to the Christians who had suffered in well-doing right up to death. The gospel—this same gospel of suffering with Christ, and in His spirit—was preached unto them (see Matthew 5:10). They were misunderstood, judged, persecuted by men in their fleshly life. But in their loyalty and faithfulness they lived their spiritual life; in their spirits—their inner spiritual life—they kept true to God, and the will of God, as they knew it. And their being dead would prove no hindrance to their sharing the full Divine acceptance with the loyal living, and with Christ, who in the same way “suffered in the flesh.”

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1 Peter 4:1. Suffering in the Flesh.—A key to the passage is found in the fact that it is addressed to martyrs and prospective martyrs, and through them to all sufferers of bodily woes. Willingness to suffer is the sign of ceasing from sin, the essence of sin being our living according to our self-will, and unto our self-pleasing. Willingness to suffer was a sign of Christ’s life to the will of God, and death to self-will. He was willing to suffer even to extremity, even unto death. That mind of willingness was Christ’s defence and power, and it may be ours. Christ presents the example of putting the body under restraint by the dominion of the will or spirit. His suffering in the flesh was for us, as an example and power upon us. Take these points:

1. Christ’s experience of suffering in the flesh.
2. In what senses this suffering was borne for us.

3. How the mastery of the flesh—which takes such a diversity of forms—can be regarded as one great battle.
4. What are the two possible laws under the control of which human lives can be conducted—the will of God or the will of the flesh?
5. How altogether inconsistent a fleshly life must be to a Christian, seeing he is a regenerate man and born unto God. Paraphrase. “As Christ suffered in the flesh without shrinking, take for your protection and support the same thought which proved a protection and support to Him—viz., that to be rid of sin for ever was the greatest of all possible blessings, and that this is only attainable through the bodily death. And the result of embracing this thought will be that for the rest of your lives on earth (so soon, perhaps, to be cut violently short) you may no longer live to men’s lusts, but to God’s will.”—Ellicott’s Commentary.

Christ’s Sufferings.—The Redeemer of the world is infinitely above us, and in another sense actually beside us. We adore Him as King of angels, and love Him as our Elder Brother. His sympathy is as true as His sovereignty; and because He once suffered being tempted, He is able now to succour them that are tempted. His incarnation was necessary. The suffering humanity of our Lord is the point where we may touch Him. He was a real man, living, sensitive, suffering, sympathetic, and such a Saviour became us. To see His footprints in the path we have to tread inspires us with willingness to endure to the end.

I. Try to understand what the sufferings of Jesus Christ were.—There is a mystery about His sufferings which even far-seeing angels cannot discover. Let reverence walk hand in hand with study.

1. There can be no doubt that Jesus was exempted from many of the physical ills from which we suffer. He was healthy, vigorous, with life replete. Many of our physical sufferings we bring on ourselves. Jesus suffered as a man, but not as a sinner. His whole life was a martyrdom. The pure amongst the impure.

2. His utter loneliness. His was the solitude of a holy soul surrounded by sinners; of a heavenly spirit in contact with things earthly and sensual; of a mind whose higher thoughts not a single being on earth could appreciate; whose truest objects in living and dying as He did none could comprehend.

3. The expression “in the flesh” reminds us of His uncongenial surroundings. The environment of our life has much to do with our happiness or misery. He lived and died among a despised people. At any moment He might have left the world to its sins and sorrows, and risen triumphant above them all. Then He could not have been our Brother, our Great High Priest. Jesus is our Example.

II. How these sufferings were endured by Him.—

1. It is evident that He accepted them as God’s appointment for Him here. “The cup which My Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?” indicates His attitude to trouble right through. It was a “cup” measured and proffered by the Father’s hand—a Father whose will was wise and good. The secret of patient, brave endurance of the ills of life is that God rules them, and in the long run will bring Divine issues out of them, as He did out of Gethsemane and Calvary.

2. Our Lord never allows Himself to be absorbed in His own sorrows. Suffering tends to make us self-absorbed. No selfishness in Jesus. He was always ready to enter into other people’s joys and griefs, whatever His own sorrows might be. If a follower of Christ, our couch of pain will be the centre of joy and peace to those who circle round us. Effort for others shall mitigate our own distress. “Arm yourselves also with the same mind.”

III. How can we do this?—

1. By God’s help in answer to prayer. We must set Christ before us as our Pattern. A living example is more helpful than abstract principles. Keep Jesus steadily before you.

2. Jesus is no historic personage, but a Living Presence. “I am with you alway.”

3. He identifies Himself with us. If we suffer with Him, we shall be also glorified together. Trials of faith and patience and temper are not purposeless. Nothing in all this multitudinous world walks with aimless feet. The end of His pathway was not Calvary but heaven. Those who follow it will find at last, not a plunge into an abyss, but a path of ascension to realms sorrowless and sinless, which He entered and claimed for us when He ascended on high and a cloud received Him out of His servants’ sight.—A. Rowland, LL.B., B.A.

1 Peter 4:1. The Mind of Christ the Christian’s Armour.—The ruling thought of the text is this: You may be persecuted, you may even be martyred; you may have much to suffer in your flesh, in your circumstances; but so had Christ. You may escape it all by giving up your allegiance to Christ. Live to yourself and to your own self-will, to the indulgence of your own love of ease and safety, and then you need not thus “suffer in the flesh.” But if you have the same mind as Christ, if you are determined to set the will of God first, and bear whatever doing that “will” may involve, then you will find yourself lifted up in spirit so as to look cheerfully on to suffering, even to martyrdom, and you will feel that self-will—the essence of sin—has ceased; it is crushed within you. Christ’s “suffering in the flesh” specially directs our thought to the physical sufferings of the cross. It was from those physical pains that His human nature shrank, and in Gethsemane He triumphed over that shrinking, and won the victory of a perfect and submissive trust in His Father’s will. He suffered, yielding His body to the great and prolonged agony, but able to bear it all calmly unto the end, because the self—the essence of sin—was quite mastered, and He could say, “Thy will be done.” “Arm yourselves with the same mind.” Christ was defended from yielding to bodily suffering, defended, too, from human shrinking from it, by a certain intent, thought, purpose, resolution, which may be sharply expressed in this way: “I shall do and bear the will of God, whatever it may have in it.” We can have that mind. Prospective suffering will show whether we have it. Actual suffering will test its power and influence on us. “Ceased from sin.” Understand “sin” here to stand for that which is the essence of sin, self will, self-pleasing, and the sentence becomes clearer. Live to do the will of God. Set that first, and you will surely find that you become dead to self; you cease from sinful shrinking back; nay, the actual suffering will but help to kill the self in you. The mind of Christ then will arm us for the battle and suffering of life.

I. What is that mind?—Like the early Christians, we find that in the Christian lot there is the “needs be” for what answers to their persecutions and martyrdoms. And we cannot control our circumstances. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.” Indeed, no man can master his circumstances until he has mastered himself; but then, even if he never can alter the things, he can alter the set and tone of his mind and feeling towards the things, and mate and master them thus. For, after all, the various things of life are to men according to their mind and feeling towards them. Things hurt us in one mood of mind which we do not at all feel in another; and by differences of disposition men’s troubles vary. The one most impressive of all lessons learned from the human life of the Lord Jesus is this: He could not change His circumstances or surroundings; He would not have done so if He could; and yet He really mastered them all by the inward feeling and purpose of submission and obedience which He so fully cherished. Nothing can master the disabilities of a human life but soul-strength; nothing can give and keep soul-strength save the simple, cheerful determination that everywhere and in everything we will do and bear God’s will. Here is the answer to the question, What shall arm us for the battle and sorrow of life? It is “the mind of Christ,” the set of soul towards God, and so towards holy things, which was characteristic of Christ. Can we yet more fully see what that prevailing mind and purpose of Christ was? Look at His childhood. There we often find the fore shadowings of the life; and in such a child as Jesus we may well expect to see the prophecy of the life. The thought evidently abiding in Him was this: Life for Me is My Father’s business. He began with something in His mind—with an idea and a resolution that lifted Him above the thought of suffering. Upon our Lord, during His ministry, there came awful visions of the woe awaiting Him in the Holy City, and He plainly saw, at the centre of all that woe, the agonising cross; and yet, what was His mind? It is revealed at once in this: “He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem.” Strong to go forward, even into the mists and the darkness, because He must simply do God’s will. Gethsemane is the place where the mind of Christ is so fully revealed. It was Calvary without the bodily pain. There came upon the frail and worn human nature of our Lord the full vision of the awful scenes of the next day, and that human nature cried out in its shrinking, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” But quickly after it comes the triumph-cry of the soul’s set purpose: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” That is the mind of Christ which armed Him for all bearing work. And He was victorious right to the end. The last words that broke from His dying lips showed how thoroughly He had ceased from sin; He was dead to all self-will, all self-seeking—“Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Get that spirit or mind of Christ. Be like Him, and it will not be hard to live the rest of life in the flesh, not to the lusts of men, not to the self-seekings of our own hearts, but to the will of God.

II. How may this mind be gained?—Christ’s suffering in the flesh was intended to bring closely home to us His kinship with us. Suffering is the common lot of humanity. However we separate Christ from us in His Divine nature, we must keep Him quite near in His human nature. We cannot be like Him in degree, we can be in kind. How can the mind of Christ be gained? We must have the same thought of God that Christ had. That only comes out of personal relations. We must have the same thought of self that Christ had. Self second, God first. We must have the same thought of life that Christ had. Life, the sphere of God’s mission. We must have the same thought of suffering that Christ had. The testing of the full obedience and trust.

III. How will this “mind” practically help us?—See how it will make us soul-strong

(1) in cases of bodily depression;
(2) in those changes that involve suffering;
(3) in perplexed, anxious times;
(4) when called to part with beloved friends. We might cover all human woes, and show how the medicine for all is the “mind of Christ”; we shall only cease from self as we can get it. It is the uplifted face of the Son to the Father, and the trembling cry from the bitter cross—“As Thou wilt.” But neither Christ, nor we, can ever feel it, or ever say it, until our souls get a vision of the Father’s hands. All is well then. We can suffer and be strong.

1 Peter 4:6. Preaching to the Dead.—Having just spoken of Christ as the judge of the living and the dead, he now affirms that the dead—those who are now dead—will be judged according to men in the flesh; that is, as those now living will be judged. But to those now living the gospel has been preached. They have heard of the redemption provided for them in Christ Jesus, and have, therefore, been placed in the most favourable circumstances for preparing for the judgment, and escaping final condemnation. Is this the case also with the dead? with the heathen world, who, indeed, ran to all kinds of excess in sin, but never had the light of revelation? The apostle answers in the affirmative, for the gospel was preached to them also; for when Christ, in His disembodied spirit, went into Hades, He proclaimed to them the good tidings of salvation, and offered to them deliverance from their prison, and a title to eternal life. St. Peter goes back to the former passage (1 Peter 3:18), and re-affirms the fact of Christ’s preaching to the inhabitants of the unseen world; and further, he affirms the object of the preaching, that they, being judged as having merited death, might, notwithstanding, live as regards the spirit. St. Paul affirms, “The body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10), meaning that the body, even of a Christian, dies on account of sin, but that the spirit lives because of the righteousness it has obtained through Christ. Even so have all past generations died, whilst the antediluvians especially, and others who died in a state of alienation from God, were judged to imprisonment in Hades, until Christ came and offered them salvation. If any of them accepted it—and perhaps many of them did—they already live in the spirit, having entored upon a state of blessedness which Christ prepared even for them.—Thornley Smith.

The Dead and the Living.—The dead here, contrasted with the living, must naturally mean those who were in the state of the dead when this message came to them. It sounds like an unexpected and mysterious extension of the gospel message, so that not living men alone, but the departed also, came directly within the range of its proclamation. The change was to affect their state, not in the sight of men but of God alone. The men in the days of Noah, the dwellers in the cities of the plain, the Egyptian host, the Canaanite armies, to the eye of men were all swept away in one indiscriminate judgment. Yet in each case there may have been a secret and powerful work of repentance, by which a remnant turned to God in the hour of calamity and desolation. To all such the message of mercy might come, when our Lord, in His separate spirit, preached to the dead, to the spirits in prison; and the destined result was attained, “that they might live according to God in the spirit,” or gain a firm hold of that Saviour and His finished sacrifice, on whom, as the promised seed of the woman, with a dim and starlight faith they had learned to put their trust in the hour of judgment, when all their refuges of lies were swept away.—Birks.

Alive and Dead.—The remarkable expression used by St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, “We that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep,” indicates a prevailing sentiment in the early Church which materially helps in the understanding of this difficult verse. When the visible coming of Christ was daily expected, those seemed to be placed at grave disadvantage who were taken away by death before He came. In this way Christians mourned over their dead fellow-Christians, as having missed the great Christian hope and privilege. St. Peter intends to comfort such distressed souls. He is speaking of dead Christians and living Christians. He bids the troubled ones be quite sure that as the gospel was preached to their dead friends, and they found the eternal life through it, they do live, according to God’s thought for them, that very spiritual life into which we all are to be brought at Christ’s coming, though, in the ordering of God’s providence, they had died. The mistakes in apprehending both this and the previous passage arise from our putting our modern ideas into St. Peter’s mind, instead of simply endeavouring to discover what actually was in his mind.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4

1 Peter 4:2. Lawful Pleasure.—Undoubtedly there is a degree of natural pleasure, connected with the exercise of the appetites, which is lawful. But it is very obvious that self is the natural man, which, in always seeking for pleasure, without regarding either its nature or its lawfulness, has polluted everything here. It is in connection with the appetites in their unsanctified state that we find one of the strong ties which bind man to his idols, and which subject his proud spirit. This strong bond must be sundered. No one can be acceptable to God who does not crucify and reject every form of attraction and pleasure from this source which is not in accordance with the intentions of nature, and does not receive the Divine approbation and sanction.—Upham.