1 Peter 4:1-11
1 So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too.
Last week, in chapter 3 we read:
18 Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.
This is what Peter is talking about.
You must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too.
How do we go about this? How do we prepare or arm ourselves to be ready to suffer too? Peter’s world must have felt close to the end. Jerusalem will be obliterated in 10yrs time, the fires in Rome that destroyed ¾ or Rome happen within a year of 1 Peter and Christians are then blamed and persecuted. Peter’s world was extremely rocky.
In the early 2000’s (and reprinted in 2017) OpenDoors developed a 280-page manual called ‘Standing Strong Through the Storm’. It’s a training course they deliver to tens of thousands of Christians across the world who live in places where it is dangerous or harmful to be a Christian. I want to show you the topics covered:
Standing strong through the storm:
- Knowing our enemy
- The battle within: Internal tactics of the enemy (pride, guilt, false guilt or legalism, fear, syncretism, busyness, materialism)
- The battle around us: (Isolation & conflict, nationalism, clash of cultures, guilt, shame & fear, secular humanism, religious intolerance, the process of persecution)
- Spiritual warfare
- The Bible
- Prayer
- The Holy Spirit
- Righteousness
- Love shown in community
- Perseverance and encouragement
- Forgiveness and grace
- Our unique Savior: Who is Jesus?
- Our unique calling: The cross‑centred message, cross‑bearing messengers (Suffering & persecution, meaning & purpose in suffering for the will of God, suffering and persecution today, being prepared for persecution)
- Responding to persecution: Not “if” but “when”! (Appropriate biblical responses when persecution comes, biblical principles from the persecuted church, inappropriate responses to persecution).
- Prison power: How God uses imprisonment to enlarge His kingdom
- Trauma healing: (Healing the wounds we do not deserve, let the healing begin)
I think this is a good example of how to prepare for suffering for God.
You can’t read the book of Acts without coming face-to-face with the reality of persecution. Rather than causing the early church to crumble, it was the spark that ignited it. You would think it would be just the opposite. You would think the church would grow in times when it has materially prospered, but such is not usually the case.
The contrast is clear. Both in the early church, and especially over the past couple of centuries we have seen the most significant church growth where it is strongly persecuted. China, Egypt, Iraq and many other nations come to mind. It isn’t always the case though as you can see in Afghanistan and Somalia where Christianity have been virtually eradicated.
In our situation, I think it is better to talk of the suffering from the seduction of our world rather than the suffering from persecution.
Billy Graham said, “It is unnatural for Christianity to be popular.” Maybe that’s why the American church has become so insipid and apathetic. We cannot and should not expect better treatment than our Lord (see Matthew 10:17-20; John 15:18-19).
Peter’s next verse is interesting:
1b For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. 2 You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God.
OK – in today’s passage we’ll have to keep working out what Peter is trying to say. Again, what we read is slightly ambiguous in a couple of instances and it requires interpretation. Peter was aided by Silas (Silvanus) in writing 1 Peter. Silas also helped Paul write 1st and 2nd Thes. Silas was also chained up in prison in Phillipi. He was a real help to both Paul and Peter, and to the early church.
I’d love this verse to mean that if I suffer physically for Christ, I will no longer have any problem with sin – like bullets bouncing off the chest of superman, I will be untouchable by sin or temptation. Unfortunately this can’t be what Peter is saying.
He stood by Jesus as Jesus taught,
‘If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it for it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. (Matt 5v30)
Arm yourself with the same mind: Many of us are defeated in our battle against sin because we refuse to sacrifice anything in the battle. We only want victory if it comes easily to us. Jesus called us to have the kind of attitude that would sacrifice in the battle against sin (Matt 5:29-30).
Jesus communicated the same idea when He told us that anyone who would come after Him must take up his cross and follow (Matt 16:24). Taking up the cross meant that you were absolutely committed, showing complete surrender and self-sacrifice.
Wayne Grudem (a Baptist theologian and prolific writer who oversaw the ESV translation and Study Bible) explained it this way. “Whoever has suffered for doing right, and has still gone on obeying God in spite of the suffering, has made a clear break with sin.”
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 6:6-7:
“We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.”
I’m sure this is what Peter and Silas meant when they say, “we are done with sin”. We are set free from the power of sin.
3 You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.
4 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. 5 But remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead.
Most people around us are happy to let ‘you do you’. They offer religious freedom – so long as you don’t offend, confront or try and impose your beliefs on others. So where does this leave us?
Scott McKnight said, “I do not want to go to bed at night worrying about whether I will be damned by God, but neither do I want a God who is so soft that I do not have to fear him or stand in awe of his judgment if I live in sin. In the word of John Stott: “To live, work and witness in conscious anticipation of Christ’s presence and judgment is a wholesome stimulus to faithfulness.”
6 That is why the Good News was preached to those who are now dead — so although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the Spirit.
I’ll come back to this later in the sermon. But this is a verse we can only guess the meaning to.
7 The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. 8 Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.
Love covers over a multitude of sins – OK, this is another phrase that requires interpretation. I can imagine an abuser or oppressor holding this verse over someone saying, if you really loved me, you would keep things quiet. If you loved me, you wouldn’t tell the police what we both know is illegal… Peter isn’t talking about this kind of ‘covering over of sins’. Instead I believe he is saying that if we love deeply and well, we will be averted from many sins. If we lovingly hold each other accountable, and supported, we can do so much better at being ‘done with sin’.
So let me ask:
Who speaks truth into your life?
Who knows your struggles?
Who holds you accountable?
Who loves you enough to have difficult conversations?
9 Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.
The NIV say’s ‘be hospitable without grumbling’. You may notice those two words shouldn’t go together. How often do we give of ourselves – our money, time, attention, but do it begrudgingly, lethargically or as powerless victims.
10 God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. 11 Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
Use your gifts in a way that benefits other people of God. Give your all. The end is near.
Having been through three near-death experiences in my teenage years, I began the long maturing journey of realising that I was not immortal. I think it only really sunk in once I was a father and I had vulnerable people depending on me. However, this week I have been realising the significance of my ‘immortality’. While my body is mortal and will return to the dust at some stage unless Jesus returns first, my spirit will live on not only for all time, but for eternity – outside of time and space. If I see my spirit as eternal, then the suffering that I go through now, and the ‘giving my all’ that I do now will be but a tiny blip in my existence. This week I heard a sermon from C.S. Lewis held at St Mary’s in Oxford on June 8th 1941 – in the darkest months of WWII – 85 years ago tomorrow)
I’d like to finish by reading some of that sermon.
The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly strongly in awe of… It is in the light of this overwhelming possibility that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit… This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously— no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.
As Christ suffered for us, we must arm ourselves with the same mindset, make a decisive break with sin, and devote ourselves to loving and serving others in light of eternity.
References
The NIV Application Commentary by Scot McKnight 1996.
C.S Lewis’ ‘The Weight of Glory’ https://www.doxaweb.com/assets/weight_of_glory.pdf
Questions:
- What does it mean to “arm yourselves with the same attitude” as Christ?
Read 1 Peter 4:1-2. What attitudes or mindsets enabled Jesus to endure suffering faithfully? How can we cultivate those same attitudes in our daily lives?
- Our greatest challenge may be seduction rather than persecution.
What aspects of our culture most tempt Christians away from wholehearted devotion to Christ? How can we recognize and resist those influences?
- Peter says that “love covers a multitude of sins” (v.8).
How can Christian love help protect us from sin and help us grow spiritually? What role does accountability play in a healthy Christian community?
- What gifts, abilities, or opportunities has God given you to serve others?
Read 1 Peter 4:10-11. Are there ways God may be calling you to use your gifts more intentionally for the benefit of others and the glory of God?
- C.S. Lewis wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
How does viewing people as eternal beings change the way we treat them? What difference could it make this week in your family, workplace, neighbourhood, or church?
- What is one area where you sense God saying: “It’s time to be done with that and live more fully for Me”?