1 Peter 4:7

1 Peter 4:7. But the end of all things is at hand. This indicates another turning- point in the Epistle. The subjects which are now introduced, however, are not unconnected with the previous section. The ‘end' is the new view-point from which they are offered to the eye, but the graces themselves are such as relate specially to what Christians should be in face of temptations to heathen vice and under the burden of heathen persecution. In speaking of the ‘end,' Peter refers neither to the mere destruction of Jerusalem, nor to the end of the lives of individuals, but to the termination which awaits the present system of-things as a whole when Christ returns. The death of the individual believer has a very secondary place in apostolic teaching. The event with which the New Testament is accustomed to fill the Christian's vision of the future, and which it proposes as a supreme motive to a circumspect walk, is an event of universal, not of merely personal, importance that Second Coming of Christ which is to put an end to the present world itself. This ‘end,' too, is ‘at hand' a rendering which occurs again in Romans 13:12; Philippians 4:5, and better conveys the impending imminence of the event than the ‘draweth near' or ‘draweth nigh,' which appears elsewhere (Luke 21:8; James 5:8). The same expressive term is applied to the advent of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17; Matthew 10:7; Mark 1:15; Luke 10:4), to the approach of the traitor and the ‘hour' of the Son of man (Matthew 26:45-46), to the entrance of the ‘day' (Romans 13:12), etc. This vivid realization of the nearness of the end, which appears in all the apostolic writings, is specially characteristic of Peter. To all the New Testament writers, but perhaps specially to him, and his comrade John, their own time was the ‘last time,' the dispensation beyond which there was to be no other, and the close of which was so near that nothing seemed to stand between them and it. Yet the chronology of the ‘end,' as Christ Himself had taught them (Acts 1:7), was not disclosed to them, and there were things which they knew must intervene before that time (2 Thessalonians 2:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:7). ‘This principle is to be held fast,' says Calvin. ‘that ever since Christ first appeared, nothing is left to believers but with minds in suspense to be always intent upon His Second Advent.'

be therefore sound-minded. The word here rendered ‘sober' by the A. V., after Cranmer and the Genevan (Wycliffe gives ‘prudent,' Tyndale ‘discreet,' the Rhemish ‘wise'), means literally ‘sound-minded,' and is so used in the description of the healed demoniac as ‘in his right mind' (Mark 5:15; Luke 8:35). Then it comes to mean sober-mindedy discreet, self-controlled. It points to what Jeremy Taylor calls ‘reason's girdle and passion's bridle,' the healthy self-restraint which keeps the curb on appetite, extravagance, and all intemperate feeling or action. Its cognates occur almost exclusively in the Pastoral Epistles. The noun itself is found only thrice in the New Testament, in Acts 26:25 (of Paul's ‘words of truth and soberness'); 1 Timothy 2:9, where ‘shame-fastness' and ‘sobriety' are coupled, the former denoting the ‘innate shrinking from anything unbecoming,' the latter the ‘well-balanced state of mind resulting from habitual self-control' (Ellicott); and 1 Timothy 2:15, where it is the fence of ‘charity and holiness.' In the Classical ethics it was opposed to licentiousness and excess, and was defined by Socrates as the ‘foundation of manly virtue.'

and sober. This is an idea nearly akin to the former, though perhaps more limited. It is better translated ‘be sober than ‘watch.' Only in two out of the six New Testament occurrences of the verb does the A. V. depart from the rendering ‘sober' (here and in 2 Timothy 4:5). The primary sense is that of freedom from drunkenness. The secondary sense is that of wariness, and thus in the New Testament it comes to have a much larger meaning than that of the mere denial of gross appetite. It is more than doubtful, however, whether it ever means vigilance in the sense of wakefulness. See also on 1 Peter 1:13.

unto prayers. The true reading here is neither ‘prayer,' nor ‘the prayers' (as if the social prayers of the Church were exclusively in view), but ‘unto prayers.' Prayer of all kinds, therefore, whether private or public, personal or social, seems to be in view. This is the end to which the cultivation of the previous graces should look, the great interest which it should advance. Soundness of mind and sobriety are essential to the prayerful frame, and specially so where the believer suffers from the contagion of vicious surroundings and the distraction of trial. Tyndale's rendering, therefore, expresses the point most happily, ‘Be ye, therefore, discreet and sober, that ye may be apt to prayers.' The prayerfulness which sustains the believer under heathen revilings, and brings health to the life of the Church itself, must be fed by a mind lifted above the agitations of passion and fear. This circumspect walk, too, in which self is ever under control and prayer ever in view, not fanatical excitement or retreat from duty, is what should be fostered by the thought of the imminence of the end.