1 Peter 4
Welcome! Today we continue our series of messages in I Peter. Today we look at Chapter 4. Because it starts with a “therefore,” I am going to start with I Peter 3:18 and then jump into Chapter 4.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit… - I Peter 3:18
Therefore, since Christ suffered in His body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. – I Peter 4:1
I Peter 3:18 is a statement of the gospel, the good news that is the basis for all that we do and the reason for why we are together as believers. Christ, the righteous one, Son of God and God Himself, died to reconcile us to God. Sin had separated us from God, and that sin demanded a consequence, or God could not remain holy. Jesus took on that punishment meant for us, taking our penalty upon Himself, so that we could again enter into God’s presence, ourselves holy, clothed with the holiness of Christ bought for us by His blood. This payment for our sin was presented to us as a gift, and our role is to accept His sacrifice, to receive His gift of eternal life through profession of faith and a new, enduring, personal relationship in Him and with Him.
Now, these passages call on us to look at this from Christ’s point of view. From His perspective, He knew what He had to do: He had to die. He had to obey the Father completely, without regard to the cost, without regard to His personal comfort, without regard to His own desires and wishes. He had to make even those desires and wishes bow to the Father and with complete dedication and purpose, submit completely, totally, unreservedly to the Father’s will. This was Jesus’ attitude as He went to the cross.
And so in I Peter 4:1, it says, arm yourselves with this same attitude. I love looking at the Greek, and so I couldn’t resist looking at the Greek for “arm yourselves.” The Greek word is in fact a military term. A variant of the word is used in 2 Corinthians 10:4 where we are told that the weapons of this world are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. In case you have never really meditated on what this means, understand that at the time the New Testament was written, they didn’t have particularly powerful weapons such as laser-guided bunker-busting missiles or nuclear bombs. The point of 2 Corinthians 10 is not just that our weapons are different than conventional weapons; the point is that they are much more powerful!
Conventional weapons were not able to demolish strongholds; you could only do that with a large army and with much loss of life, and in some cases, it might be impossible regardless of the size of the army. That is why sometimes in those days the approach to dealing with a stronghold was to surround it, cut off its supplies, and wait for a really long time. But imagine, in such a world as it was back then, if you had weapons that could instantly reduce strongholds to dust. That is what it is saying in 2 Corinthians 10. Isn’t that awesome?
Now, back to our passage. Christ had this single-minded attitude of making His body a slave even unto death; He was going to follow the Father no matter what. Peter, inspired by the Spirit, tells us in I Peter 4:1 to arm ourselves with this same attitude, an attitude that truly is like a powerful weapon, so powerful that it can demolish strongholds. Why? Because, he who has suffered in his body, he who has this kind of attitude, this single-minded dedication to follow God no matter the cost, is “done with sin.”
Now, this “done with sin” statement does not refer to Christ, who of course never sinned. It refers to us. The point is that someone who has taken an attitude to follow God like Christ did will not be double minded, living for the flesh one moment and turning back to God the next; he will be done with that kind of half-hearted living.
As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. – I Peter 4:2-3
Now, you may wonder about verse 2 and ask, well, what about other human desires? What about the human desires that aren’t evil? Well, I would argue that there are no other desires. Desires that are not in accordance with the will of God are by definition evil human desires. And you may read verse 3 and think, “Well, I didn’t do any of those things.” Maybe you hadn’t – yet, but there are really only two ways to live, to please God or to please self. And the nature of self is that it always needs a little more. The self is addicted to excitement. And the nature of self is that it always demands that you go a little further, to do a little more. Living for self sets you on a path towards depravity.
Now you may say that you know plenty of non-Christians who seem to be good people, who do not live like as is described here. And all of our experiences tell us that not every unbeliever is directly involved in these outward indulgences. But I can assure you that every unbeliever is in fact, in some area of their life, slipping towards an increased selfishness in some area, an increased setting up something as an idol. The fruit of not living for God is living for self, and because this never satisfies, as we talked about last week, we continue to be thirsty unless we turn to Christ, the only source of “living water” that truly quenches our thirst.
Now I believe the point of what Peter is saying here is that the person who arms himself with the attitude of Christ, who decides to live totally for the will of God, is invariably a changed person. This person invariably will become different from what he was, and will have this mindset of saying, “I have spent enough time as I was. By the grace of God and through the power of His Holy Spirit, I am done with that.” And when someone lives like this, people around him will notice, as it says in the next verses.
They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the Spirit. – I Peter 4:4-6
The person who truly lives for God will attract attention. If a person had friends before they were saved and keeps up these friendships after they are saved and really start living for God, some of these friends will, as it says, think it strange. Where it says they will heap abuse on you, the Greek word is the word from which we obtain blaspheme. They will blaspheme your name. That’s an odd way to think of things, isn’t it? We all know what it means to blaspheme the name of God, but as you follow Him, your name as well may be blasphemed. But they will give account for this.
Tied into this new mindset we are to have, being armed with the attitude of Christ, is a dependence on the Spirit. The Spirit was the one who made Christ alive after death, as it says in I Peter 3:18, and the Spirit is likewise the one who makes us alive in Christ, able to live for God and in accordance with the will of God.
We could easily spend a whole teaching or even multiple teachings on this incredibly important fact, but our time today is limited. Let me just say that the last thing arming yourself means is that you are to tough it out solely in your own strength and effort and be good through your own power. This is a sure and certain path to failure, even spectacular failure. God will use it, if you try, to teach you the truth of what I am saying, and if you are like me, like I used to be, no teaching will fully convince you. That is, you may hear what is said, but come Monday morning you will try to live in your own strength. All I can tell you is that I have been there and done that.
Eventually God will get your attention; eventually, as you fail, you will see the truth of what I am saying, not just in your head, but in your soul, and at that point, as you turn to God in brokenness, I pray that you would remember that arming yourself does not mean going it alone; in fact, it means that you are more dependent on God, more reliant on His constant presence through His Spirit, more in tune with Him through prayer, than you have ever been before. The only way to truly live for Him is to live in Him.
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. – Romans 8:5-6
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. – Galatians 5:16
If you know that you are failing to live for God because you leave God out of your daily, hourly life, if you know that you are not living by the Spirit, these are good verses to meditate on and memorize, along with the passages surrounding them. Again, tying this together, arming yourself means to have a mindset that you are going to die to self and live for God. You are thinking of Christ, and how He similarly was so devoted to the Father that He gave His life. But once you have grasped this mindset, once you are armed with it, you live it out by constant dependence on God to empower you by His Spirit. And a big part of that is to regularly communicate with God, that is, to pray. As this passage continues:
The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. – I Peter 4:7
Literally, to be clear minded in the Greek is to be sober. Not sober as in sad, but sober as in not drunk. Be in your right mind, the one you have when you haven’t been drinking. In other words, don’t think in fantasyland, but think correctly about how things are. Be clear about your resolve to be armed with your devotion to Christ. Be clear about your absolute dependence on your Spirit for the power to carry any of this out. Be clear minded about these things.
The word for self-controlled also means to be sober as in not drunk. Now some people when they drink become lose and kind of wild, whereas others become sleepy. The Greek word for clear-minded seems to be associated with the opposite of being wild, whereas the Greek word for self-controlled is associated with the opposite of being asleep. Peter is saying that we should be neither wild nor half-asleep, but instead we should be prayerful.
Many people don’t want to pray in the middle of the day, when their lives are full of activities; they are, in a way, choosing to be wild rather than to pray. And some people try to pray at night right before they go to sleep, but don’t pray very much or very well because they are just so sleepy. Peter is saying not to make either error, but to pray while you are at your best with regards to concentration and alertness. And again, prayer, talking with God, is essential if we are to live by the Spirit. We simply must be in communion with God if we are to live by His power.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Do you understand? Pray. Years ago there was a popular movement within Christianity based on the phrase “What would Jesus do?” All the Christian bookstores even sold bracelets that said WWJD. At the risk of oversimplifying this, let me say that that was all wrong. The thing to do is not to ask yourself what Jesus would do, but to ask Jesus what you should do! Pray! Pray for wisdom; pray for help; pray for strength; pray.
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. – I Peter 4:8-9
And here Peter seems to take a kind of sharp turn in his message. Prior to this in this chapter, there is very much a sense of each person’s individual battle against sinful living. Each person in their own heart must choose to arm themselves with an attitude of living and dying for Christ; each person in their own heart must choose to be reliant on the Spirit, devoted and dependent on God through prayer. But now, in a sense, Peter corrects this view by saying that living for God is not something you do apart from other people; how you deal with other people is where the rubber meets the road.
If you want to take a spiritual checkup, perhaps a better measure than the number and length of your quiet times is a survey of your relationships with other people. And not just the people you are forced to be close to, such as the people you live with (although those are very telling), but even the people you don’t have to be close to.
Our culture is so completely at odds with what this is saying that it is actually shocking to grasp what Peter, inspired and led word for word by the Holy Spirit, is really saying. He starts with the phrase “Above all.” Don’t rationalize that away. Don’t ignore it. Don’t think God didn’t really mean that. He did! Above all, love each other deeply. Not just be at peace with people, not just don’t have enemies, no – love each other how? Deeply! The word could also be translated unceasingly, continually, always, independent of what the other people do or say to you. Another use of this word means to be stretched and strained. It is used outside the Bible to describe the muscles of a racehorse, stretching while in a full-speed run. Don’t love like you are taking a casual jog through the park; love like you are in the Olympic 100 meters finals. And that word for love is agape, so this is not just agape love, but deep, continual, intense agape love.
And what does this kind of love look like? Read I Corinthians 13 and you will get a pretty good idea. This kind of love is willful. It is not a response based on your emotions, but it is driven by your will. And it is not a tit-for-tat response to how you are treated, but it is a choice you make despite how you are treated. And how do you do this? As we have said, you arm yourself with the attitude of Christ. You rely on the Spirit to empower you. And you pray.
Now what does it mean when it says that love covers over a multitude of sins? From I Corinthians 13: Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love always hopes. Love always endures. Love never fails. This is not some kind of doctrinal statement; it is simply what love is. By the way, does anyone know what Proverbs 10:12 says?
Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. – Prov. 10:12
This is saying exactly the same thing. When Peter says “because,” I think it is because he is actually quoting this verse, and he expects people to know it. Again, this is not some kind of doctrinal statement; it is simply a statement on the nature of true agape love.
Now verse 9 says to offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. The Greek word for hospitality implies something shown to strangers or to those who you don’t know well. What? I have to show love to people other than my friends? Like people at work? People at other activities I do? People at school? Even strangers? And do so without grumbling? Come on, I like to grumble. A little grumbling, and a little coffee, gets me through the day!
What’s wrong with grumbling, aside from the fact that God sees and hears your unloving thoughts? Grumbling means that your love isn’t genuine. We aren’t talking about faking it. You are to show genuine love to people. If you heart isn’t there, you need to ask God to change your heart.
God can change your heart! When I was a new believer in Illinois there was a guy in our home fellowship who just rubbed me the wrong way. It was something about his jokes, his mannerisms, just a combination of things, probably combined with some deep neuroses I picked up from my messed-up relationship with my parents, but anyway, I really didn’t like the guy. Everything he said, how he said it, just grated on my nerves. When I was around him I would fake it. And at some point I remember being convicted of this, perhaps reading this passage or some other passage about genuine love, and so I knew I was powerless to change anything in my own strength, so I prayed. I began to pray regularly not for God to change this guy, but for God to change me. And you know what happened? Exactly that!
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit… - I Peter 3:18
Therefore, since Christ suffered in His body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. – I Peter 4:1
I Peter 3:18 is a statement of the gospel, the good news that is the basis for all that we do and the reason for why we are together as believers. Christ, the righteous one, Son of God and God Himself, died to reconcile us to God. Sin had separated us from God, and that sin demanded a consequence, or God could not remain holy. Jesus took on that punishment meant for us, taking our penalty upon Himself, so that we could again enter into God’s presence, ourselves holy, clothed with the holiness of Christ bought for us by His blood. This payment for our sin was presented to us as a gift, and our role is to accept His sacrifice, to receive His gift of eternal life through profession of faith and a new, enduring, personal relationship in Him and with Him.
Now, these passages call on us to look at this from Christ’s point of view. From His perspective, He knew what He had to do: He had to die. He had to obey the Father completely, without regard to the cost, without regard to His personal comfort, without regard to His own desires and wishes. He had to make even those desires and wishes bow to the Father and with complete dedication and purpose, submit completely, totally, unreservedly to the Father’s will. This was Jesus’ attitude as He went to the cross.
And so in I Peter 4:1, it says, arm yourselves with this same attitude. I love looking at the Greek, and so I couldn’t resist looking at the Greek for “arm yourselves.” The Greek word is in fact a military term. A variant of the word is used in 2 Corinthians 10:4 where we are told that the weapons of this world are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. In case you have never really meditated on what this means, understand that at the time the New Testament was written, they didn’t have particularly powerful weapons such as laser-guided bunker-busting missiles or nuclear bombs. The point of 2 Corinthians 10 is not just that our weapons are different than conventional weapons; the point is that they are much more powerful!
Conventional weapons were not able to demolish strongholds; you could only do that with a large army and with much loss of life, and in some cases, it might be impossible regardless of the size of the army. That is why sometimes in those days the approach to dealing with a stronghold was to surround it, cut off its supplies, and wait for a really long time. But imagine, in such a world as it was back then, if you had weapons that could instantly reduce strongholds to dust. That is what it is saying in 2 Corinthians 10. Isn’t that awesome?
Now, back to our passage. Christ had this single-minded attitude of making His body a slave even unto death; He was going to follow the Father no matter what. Peter, inspired by the Spirit, tells us in I Peter 4:1 to arm ourselves with this same attitude, an attitude that truly is like a powerful weapon, so powerful that it can demolish strongholds. Why? Because, he who has suffered in his body, he who has this kind of attitude, this single-minded dedication to follow God no matter the cost, is “done with sin.”
Now, this “done with sin” statement does not refer to Christ, who of course never sinned. It refers to us. The point is that someone who has taken an attitude to follow God like Christ did will not be double minded, living for the flesh one moment and turning back to God the next; he will be done with that kind of half-hearted living.
As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. – I Peter 4:2-3
Now, you may wonder about verse 2 and ask, well, what about other human desires? What about the human desires that aren’t evil? Well, I would argue that there are no other desires. Desires that are not in accordance with the will of God are by definition evil human desires. And you may read verse 3 and think, “Well, I didn’t do any of those things.” Maybe you hadn’t – yet, but there are really only two ways to live, to please God or to please self. And the nature of self is that it always needs a little more. The self is addicted to excitement. And the nature of self is that it always demands that you go a little further, to do a little more. Living for self sets you on a path towards depravity.
Now you may say that you know plenty of non-Christians who seem to be good people, who do not live like as is described here. And all of our experiences tell us that not every unbeliever is directly involved in these outward indulgences. But I can assure you that every unbeliever is in fact, in some area of their life, slipping towards an increased selfishness in some area, an increased setting up something as an idol. The fruit of not living for God is living for self, and because this never satisfies, as we talked about last week, we continue to be thirsty unless we turn to Christ, the only source of “living water” that truly quenches our thirst.
Now I believe the point of what Peter is saying here is that the person who arms himself with the attitude of Christ, who decides to live totally for the will of God, is invariably a changed person. This person invariably will become different from what he was, and will have this mindset of saying, “I have spent enough time as I was. By the grace of God and through the power of His Holy Spirit, I am done with that.” And when someone lives like this, people around him will notice, as it says in the next verses.
They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the Spirit. – I Peter 4:4-6
The person who truly lives for God will attract attention. If a person had friends before they were saved and keeps up these friendships after they are saved and really start living for God, some of these friends will, as it says, think it strange. Where it says they will heap abuse on you, the Greek word is the word from which we obtain blaspheme. They will blaspheme your name. That’s an odd way to think of things, isn’t it? We all know what it means to blaspheme the name of God, but as you follow Him, your name as well may be blasphemed. But they will give account for this.
Tied into this new mindset we are to have, being armed with the attitude of Christ, is a dependence on the Spirit. The Spirit was the one who made Christ alive after death, as it says in I Peter 3:18, and the Spirit is likewise the one who makes us alive in Christ, able to live for God and in accordance with the will of God.
We could easily spend a whole teaching or even multiple teachings on this incredibly important fact, but our time today is limited. Let me just say that the last thing arming yourself means is that you are to tough it out solely in your own strength and effort and be good through your own power. This is a sure and certain path to failure, even spectacular failure. God will use it, if you try, to teach you the truth of what I am saying, and if you are like me, like I used to be, no teaching will fully convince you. That is, you may hear what is said, but come Monday morning you will try to live in your own strength. All I can tell you is that I have been there and done that.
Eventually God will get your attention; eventually, as you fail, you will see the truth of what I am saying, not just in your head, but in your soul, and at that point, as you turn to God in brokenness, I pray that you would remember that arming yourself does not mean going it alone; in fact, it means that you are more dependent on God, more reliant on His constant presence through His Spirit, more in tune with Him through prayer, than you have ever been before. The only way to truly live for Him is to live in Him.
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. – Romans 8:5-6
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. – Galatians 5:16
If you know that you are failing to live for God because you leave God out of your daily, hourly life, if you know that you are not living by the Spirit, these are good verses to meditate on and memorize, along with the passages surrounding them. Again, tying this together, arming yourself means to have a mindset that you are going to die to self and live for God. You are thinking of Christ, and how He similarly was so devoted to the Father that He gave His life. But once you have grasped this mindset, once you are armed with it, you live it out by constant dependence on God to empower you by His Spirit. And a big part of that is to regularly communicate with God, that is, to pray. As this passage continues:
The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. – I Peter 4:7
Literally, to be clear minded in the Greek is to be sober. Not sober as in sad, but sober as in not drunk. Be in your right mind, the one you have when you haven’t been drinking. In other words, don’t think in fantasyland, but think correctly about how things are. Be clear about your resolve to be armed with your devotion to Christ. Be clear about your absolute dependence on your Spirit for the power to carry any of this out. Be clear minded about these things.
The word for self-controlled also means to be sober as in not drunk. Now some people when they drink become lose and kind of wild, whereas others become sleepy. The Greek word for clear-minded seems to be associated with the opposite of being wild, whereas the Greek word for self-controlled is associated with the opposite of being asleep. Peter is saying that we should be neither wild nor half-asleep, but instead we should be prayerful.
Many people don’t want to pray in the middle of the day, when their lives are full of activities; they are, in a way, choosing to be wild rather than to pray. And some people try to pray at night right before they go to sleep, but don’t pray very much or very well because they are just so sleepy. Peter is saying not to make either error, but to pray while you are at your best with regards to concentration and alertness. And again, prayer, talking with God, is essential if we are to live by the Spirit. We simply must be in communion with God if we are to live by His power.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Do you understand? Pray. Years ago there was a popular movement within Christianity based on the phrase “What would Jesus do?” All the Christian bookstores even sold bracelets that said WWJD. At the risk of oversimplifying this, let me say that that was all wrong. The thing to do is not to ask yourself what Jesus would do, but to ask Jesus what you should do! Pray! Pray for wisdom; pray for help; pray for strength; pray.
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. – I Peter 4:8-9
And here Peter seems to take a kind of sharp turn in his message. Prior to this in this chapter, there is very much a sense of each person’s individual battle against sinful living. Each person in their own heart must choose to arm themselves with an attitude of living and dying for Christ; each person in their own heart must choose to be reliant on the Spirit, devoted and dependent on God through prayer. But now, in a sense, Peter corrects this view by saying that living for God is not something you do apart from other people; how you deal with other people is where the rubber meets the road.
If you want to take a spiritual checkup, perhaps a better measure than the number and length of your quiet times is a survey of your relationships with other people. And not just the people you are forced to be close to, such as the people you live with (although those are very telling), but even the people you don’t have to be close to.
Our culture is so completely at odds with what this is saying that it is actually shocking to grasp what Peter, inspired and led word for word by the Holy Spirit, is really saying. He starts with the phrase “Above all.” Don’t rationalize that away. Don’t ignore it. Don’t think God didn’t really mean that. He did! Above all, love each other deeply. Not just be at peace with people, not just don’t have enemies, no – love each other how? Deeply! The word could also be translated unceasingly, continually, always, independent of what the other people do or say to you. Another use of this word means to be stretched and strained. It is used outside the Bible to describe the muscles of a racehorse, stretching while in a full-speed run. Don’t love like you are taking a casual jog through the park; love like you are in the Olympic 100 meters finals. And that word for love is agape, so this is not just agape love, but deep, continual, intense agape love.
And what does this kind of love look like? Read I Corinthians 13 and you will get a pretty good idea. This kind of love is willful. It is not a response based on your emotions, but it is driven by your will. And it is not a tit-for-tat response to how you are treated, but it is a choice you make despite how you are treated. And how do you do this? As we have said, you arm yourself with the attitude of Christ. You rely on the Spirit to empower you. And you pray.
Now what does it mean when it says that love covers over a multitude of sins? From I Corinthians 13: Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love always hopes. Love always endures. Love never fails. This is not some kind of doctrinal statement; it is simply what love is. By the way, does anyone know what Proverbs 10:12 says?
Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. – Prov. 10:12
This is saying exactly the same thing. When Peter says “because,” I think it is because he is actually quoting this verse, and he expects people to know it. Again, this is not some kind of doctrinal statement; it is simply a statement on the nature of true agape love.
Now verse 9 says to offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. The Greek word for hospitality implies something shown to strangers or to those who you don’t know well. What? I have to show love to people other than my friends? Like people at work? People at other activities I do? People at school? Even strangers? And do so without grumbling? Come on, I like to grumble. A little grumbling, and a little coffee, gets me through the day!
What’s wrong with grumbling, aside from the fact that God sees and hears your unloving thoughts? Grumbling means that your love isn’t genuine. We aren’t talking about faking it. You are to show genuine love to people. If you heart isn’t there, you need to ask God to change your heart.
God can change your heart! When I was a new believer in Illinois there was a guy in our home fellowship who just rubbed me the wrong way. It was something about his jokes, his mannerisms, just a combination of things, probably combined with some deep neuroses I picked up from my messed-up relationship with my parents, but anyway, I really didn’t like the guy. Everything he said, how he said it, just grated on my nerves. When I was around him I would fake it. And at some point I remember being convicted of this, perhaps reading this passage or some other passage about genuine love, and so I knew I was powerless to change anything in my own strength, so I prayed. I began to pray regularly not for God to change this guy, but for God to change me. And you know what happened? Exactly that!
I can honestly tell you that this guy’s idiosyncrasies over time completely stopped bugging me. I could truly accept this guy as he was and love him as a fellow child of God. I am telling you, never fall for the lie of this world that says that you must follow your heart. No, you can make your heart follow you, if you pray.
Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. – I Peter 4:10-11
I often think about this passage as I come up to share on Sunday mornings. At Clemson there is an interesting picture of this; at important functions like graduation, the president of Clemson wears a kind of necklace made of largish squarish pieces of metal. Perhaps you have noticed it at graduation. Well, the story behind this piece of jewelry is that when someone puts it on, they should remember to no longer speak for themselves but only for Clemson University, that every word they say should be in this official capacity. Now if you think about this the wrong way it can be a little creepy, as if the person wearing it is supposed to be possessed or something by the spirit of Clemson.
But I think this is an apt picture for these verses. As we speak, as we serve, how appropriate to think of ourselves as God’s instrument to be played by Him. We should be possessed, in a way, possessed by Christ. There is something about thinking about your service, your speaking, in an “official” capacity that makes you take what you do much more seriously, that makes you much more devoted to seeking God’s empowerment, to giving it your all, that I think is quite appropriate and is very much what these verses are getting at.
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. – I Peter 4:12-15
Now, we can tend to struggle with this passage because we are, generally speaking, not under the kinds of persecution that are implied here. A number of commentators think that I Peter was written shortly after 64 AD, which one day that summer, was the day that, as the saying goes, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Rome had been built largely of wood, multi-story apartment houses very close together, and the fire that ensued was fierce and ferocious.
Many people believed that Nero was responsible for this fire, because he had stated prior to the inferno that he wanted to build a new Rome, a better Rome. Well, he got his wish. Because the people had lost everything, they were very angry, and Nero was an early target of their anger. To deflect this anger, Nero began to openly and loudly blame the Christians for the fire. The Christians were already extremely unpopular, because Christianity was viewed as a sect of Judaism, and anti-Semitism was already very strong and had been strong for some time. In addition, Christian doctrines were twisted and taken out of context. For example, they were accused of eating actual human flesh and drinking actual human blood at the Lord’s Supper, meetings that were closed to non-Christians.
In addition, these meetings, called Agape Feasts, Love Feasts, were accused of being filled with immoral behavior. Even the way the greeted one another (with a holy kiss) was accused as being a kind of secret code for this immoral behavior. And Christians were also hated because, as this chapter states earlier, Christians would not participate in the drunken revelries and other gross sins of the general populace. Much like you sometimes hear today, they were accused of being “holier than thou.” Now never mind that these charges were completely self-contradictory. That did not stop the hatred. And Nero’s charge that they had burned Rome caused the hatred to grow by leaps and bounds, and persecution grew rapidly and terribly.
In these dark days, which were really only the beginning of much darker days that would last for more than 100 years, Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote that the people should not despair, but, in fact, rejoice. Now here in America, we don’t undergo anything close to what Peter was referring to, at least not yet. But in much of the world today, Christianity goes hand in hand with persecution. If you are not aware of what is going on and what like to be, I encourage you to go to the Voice of the Martyrs web site, where you can subscribe for some free periodical literature that helps you to pray for the persecuted church.
But persecution does go on in America. It is much more subtle, but it is certainly there. It is when you are passed over for a promotion or treated less seriously at work because you are seen as one of those “religious nut-jobs.” It is when you lose friends over your faith. It is when you come from a non-Christian family, come to Christ, and your family treats you differently, more distantly, because of your new-found faith. I have experienced all of these things, and perhaps you have experienced things like this as well.
If you haven’t, don’t be surprised when you do. That’s what this passage says. But it also says to rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ. Is this true? What does it mean? When you have been through a particular kind of experience that someone else has gone through, something that is not all that common, there is a kind of connection with that person. You understand them, and they understand you. So it is with Christ and suffering.
Jesus suffered for His faith. When we suffer for our faith, we go through something Jesus went through, and we build a kind of connection with Jesus that is distinctive to suffering for His name. He understands us, and we, more than before, begin to understand Him. This is a privilege, an honor, Peter says, in effect, and we are blessed to experience this honor.
Does this mean we should seek to be persecuted? No, I don’t think so. But neither should we fear it or shy away from activities that are more likely to lead to persecution. Perfect love casts out fear. Our love for Christ and what He has done for us should override our concerns for our comforts and even our lives. For He is worthy to receive glory and honor and praise. Jesus is our deliver, our salvation, our redeemer. There is no greater blessing than to know Him more.
We will finish this chapter and the remainder of I Peter next week. This week, I would encourage you to arm yourself with the attitude of Christ, an attitude of willing and eager submission, no matter the cost, and I would encourage you to live victoriously by faith, deeply loving one another, living for Christ by the power of prayer, intimate fellowship with God, and by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
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