1 Peter 4:1-6 | Arming Ourselves to Follow Jesus
4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
What is greater than knowing Jesus is on your side? When everything else falls away and you’re left alone and exposed wondering how you’ll endure, what is greater than knowing you are accepted by the King of the universe, by God himself? You’re not accepted because of what you’ve done or because of who you have become on your own but because God has graciously set his love upon you and sent Jesus to save you. Though excluded by this world, you are chosen by God. You are safe and secure in the love of Christ, with all the power of the Holy Spirit living inside you. You have been joined to Christ, and though he died, he now lives so when you die you too shall live forever with him.
What is greater than that?
That changes everything, the entire purpose of our life.
But it also puts us at odds with this world, and that’s hard for us. Following Jesus means some people won’t like us, and Peter wants to show us how to navigate life when we suffer for following Jesus.
The great German pastor and author Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” We die to self. We die to the world. We die to all that we once loved more than God. But death is not the final answer. It never is with God. Death gives way to resurrection life. Christ bids us come and die so that we might live.
There is no resurrection without death and there is no death without suffering. So how do we suffer well, following Jesus to resurrection life? That’s where Peter wants to take us.
How will he take us there? By giving three hopes we can cling to in the dark times.
Jesus arms us with a way of thinking (vv. 1-2)
Jesus changes us from the inside out (vv. 3-4)
Jesus saves us from a wasted life (vv. 5-6)
Jesus Arms Us with a Way of Thinking (vv. 1-2)
Following Jesus does not make for an easy life. Glory never comes easily. Christ suffered. He suffered in the flesh. His body bore the marks, and still bears the marks today. And if we are to follow him in this world, we need to be ready to suffer with him so that we might be glorified with him. Following Jesus is dangerous.
So what is our hope? What does Jesus give us to endure? Peter explains in verses 1 and 2. “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.”
Notice the logic. Peter says, “Since therefore.” Whenever we see therefore in the Bible, we need to ask what it’s there for. Peter is making sure we aren’t mistaken. We aren’t following a Savior who refused to walk the walk. Jesus suffered, and his suffering wasn’t theoretical; it was real and physical, in the flesh. That’s why the author of Hebrews says Jesus is sympathetic toward us. He knows what it’s like to suffer in the flesh. He knows us intimately because he came to us incarnationally. He lived a human life.
But suffering didn’t break Jesus. The Bible says, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Christ’s suffering was his pathway to glory (Schreiner). Jesus prepared himself to suffer. He wasn’t surprised by it. He knew it would come. And he wants us to know it will come because of him. Remember what Jesus said of the Apostle Paul before he saved him on the Damascus road, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). Suffering for Christ is part of the Christian life. Following Jesus is dangerous.
But Jesus isn’t sending us out unarmed. He’s a good general, and he makes provision for the soldiers in his army. What does he give? He gives an attitude. “Arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.”
Jesus arms us with a way of thinking. What is it? I’ve used the Ugandan pastor Festo Kivengere as an illustration before. In 1977, he fled Uganda after his Archbishop was murdered by the dictator Idi Amin. A reporter asked Kivengere, “If you were in a room with Idi Amin, and you had a gun, what would you do?” He answered, “I would give the gun to him and say, ‘This is your weapon. My weapon is the love of Jesus.’”
That is arming yourself with this way of thinking. It’s more than intellectually agreeing with the truth of the gospel. Mere intellectual agreement doesn’t make us give up our guns. Only real transformation can do that. We will either truly believe the gospel and arm ourselves with the love of Christ or we will say we believe the gospel but look for other options just in case. It comes down to what we really believe. Can we suffer? Can we leave it all in God’s hands? Is he good enough? Can Jesus really be trusted with our life or is he just a good insurance plan?
Let’s think it through some more. What did Jesus do for you? Here’s what the gospel says. You wrecked your life by your sin. You rebelled against God. You looked at his law and said, “No, thanks,” and turned to your own way. You didn’t do that just because you wanted to but because that sinful urge was already inside of you when you were born. As the Bible says, you were born in sin. But you added sin to sin and went your own way. So Jesus came to live the life you should have lived but never could. He came to obey God perfectly on your behalf. And as he did that, he was ridiculed. He was maligned. He was disbelieved and dishonored. But he never gave in. He never stopped loving. As he approached Jerusalem, the city that would kill him, he wept over it out of love. Then he went to the cross. On the way, people lied about him. They beat him. They ripped out his beard. They spit on him. They scourged him. Then they nailed him to a cross and left him to die. And on that cross, he took upon himself every sin you ever committed and will ever commit—all the sins you know about and the sins you aren’t even aware of. The wrath of God was poured out on him and it killed him. That’s the love of Jesus. His weapon was love. Jesus is arming his disciples with the same love, and it’s cross shaped. He suffered in the flesh, dying to save you.
When the gospel lands on you and seeps into your heart by God’s grace and you believe it deeply, it changes you. You have a new way of thinking that transforms everything. You have a new distaste for sin. A new resolve to live for Christ. Suddenly suffering for him becomes not just a painful experience but a new way to live before God and bear witness to his gospel. That’s not to say suffering is downplayed. Only those who never suffer can downplay suffering. Jesus never does that. But he does transform it. Suddenly, there is a purpose, and we see the purpose. It’s making us like him. It’s taking us closer to him. He suffered, and now in our suffering, we’re joining with him in ways we never could before. When we are rejected by others because we follow him, we find the friendship of Jesus deeper than we otherwise could. When we are left out because we won’t do what others do, we find a welcome at the Savior’s table.
Peter goes on to say, “Whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” He doesn’t mean suffering makes us perfect. There is no perfection this side of eternity for us. What he means is that our suffering scorn and mockery for Jesus’s sake shows that we have a new master, a better one. We have broken with sin and we see now whose side we’re really on. That’s good for us to see. We’re not living for human passions anymore but for the will of God, and though the whole world may leave us and forsake us because of it, Jesus never will. He suffered and died for this. He’ll never give you up. We shouldn’t fear suffering because Jesus redeemed suffering by his death and resurrection.
Believing this not only arms us with a way of thinking, it shows us how deeply and profoundly we’ve been changed, how Jesus changed us from the inside out, which is our second point.
Jesus Changes Us from the Inside Out (vv. 3-4)
Our lives have a social context. Every action we take and every decision we make has a social consequence. And it’s often there that the rubber meets the road, where we find out who we really are, who we really follow. Are we really following Jesus, or do we just say we do? Our lives answer that question.
So in verses 3 and 4 Peter says, “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.”
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but throughout this letter Peter has been talking to party animals. I find this so amazingly hopeful. These were not people predisposed to following Jesus. They were not goody two shoes. Look at Peter’s list! Sex, drugs, and rock n roll. But they no longer do what they used to do. Their friends saw the change, and they didn’t like it, so they let them hear about it. In other words, they were humiliated.
But is that humiliation bad? Is public malignment the worst that can happen to us? Peter doesn’t think so. Humiliation actually works in our favor because as the world begins to no longer recognize us by our actions, we start to see something has begun to change deep within, and it’s not because it’s what we want, but because of what Jesus is giving. We would rather fit in. We’d rather go with the flow. Who wants to be disinvited to the party? Who wants to stay at home while everyone else has fun? Who wants their friends to point and laugh?
But being humiliated like this helps us see something. It shows us whose side we’re on now. Something comes up and suddenly we realize we just can’t do that anymore. We can’t even stomach the thought. What was once second nature is now foreign. This is really good for us. We’re being changed.
Of course, just because Jesus is changing us doesn’t mean we’re suddenly bold and courageous all the time. We have weaknesses. We don’t want to be embarrassed or singled out or left out. We want to blend in. More than that, there are some sins we’re just not ready to give up. We’re like Augustine who prayed, “Grant me chastity, but not yet.” So we need Peter’s words in verse 3. As one translation puts it, “You have spent time enough in the past doing what pagans like to do.” It’s time to change. We need a clean break. How do we get there? By repentance. Repentance is turning from our sin to God. It’s a redirection. How do we go from party animal to church goer? We turn to Jesus and let him change us. And when Jesus gets involved, he always does far more than we think at first. I love how C.S. Lewis put it.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
You’re no longer who you once were. Jesus lives in you now. He’s changing you from the inside out, and you don’t mind one bit. You wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s a surprising change, one you couldn’t make on your own. Only Jesus can do it. That’s why Peter says we meet surprise when we don’t join them in the same flood of debauchery.
Repentance, though, isn’t easy, is it? In fact, it’s humiliating. It’s a confrontation with who we really are, not who we tell ourselves we are. Actually, it’s when it’s really embarrassing, really humiliating, that we know we’re truly repenting. And what does the Lord Jesus Christ do with us then? Does he shame us? No. He welcomes us. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Walking in the light with Jesus is the place of cleansing, not the place of judgment.
So where is the place of judgment? Peter tells us. It’s out there in the world. Peter assumes his readers once lived like the Gentiles did—living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. But when we they came to Christ and no longer did those things out of obedience to Jesus, their old friend made fun of them. Judgment came not from Jesus—he took all the judgment they’d ever experience from God on himself at the cross. Judgment came from their former friends. They were humiliated before them, but it no longer mattered. Maybe they weren’t at the cool kids’ table anymore. But who cares? That’s fleeting. Sin is fleeting. It’s gone in a moment like the wind, but it leaves a mess like a tornado.
Through repentance, and by looking to Christ, these dear Christians found new life. They were changed from the inside out. No longer did they follow their sinful passions and desires. Instead, they armed themselves with the suffering of Christ and boldly followed him. And we can too.
How can we do that? Well, for starters, we can create an environment in which that can take place. Right here at Refuge Church, we can arm ourselves with this thinking by the way we live among one another.
For example, here’s a great formula we could all use. Gospel + Safety + Time. Here’s what we all need. We need lots of gospel, lots of safety, and lots of time. We need the good news for bad people through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. We need it again and again, all the time. We need safety to confess our sins, to repent, to live in a non-accusing, non-embarrassing, non-manipulative, non-oppressive, non-condescending community where real sinners bring their real sin into the light and find fellowship with other sinners in the light of Christ. We need lots of time with no pressure to change quickly, no deadlines on our growth, no limits to our growth, no simple answers for complicated people like us but plenty of time to rethink our lives at the deepest possible levels in light of the gospel before our patient God.
Now the world looks at that and sees weakness. There is no power there, they think. No joy. No fun. But they’re wrong. Because this is the way to the power of the resurrection. This is the path to true joy. This is, counter-culturally, the most fun we could possibly have because we’re following Jesus, our truest friend, greatest defender, and everlasting hope. And where he takes us is into a land of glory, which is our next point: Jesus saves us from a wasted life.
Jesus Saves Us from A Wasted Life (vv. 5-6)
Though Jesus is arming us with a new way of thinking and changing us from the inside out, we still hear the world questioning our lives. Maybe we are wasting it. I mean, we only live once, right? We think, “Well, why not continue partying? Why not live however I want? I mean, what’s the real harm? Why not eat, drink, and be merry while we’re still here?” In the words of one famous Tik Tok personality, why not “lighten up, get laid, go bowling?”
Here’s why. Look at verses 5 and 6. “But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”
Our problem isn’t that we take ourselves too seriously, but that we don’t take the Lord of the universe seriously enough. We’re down here playing in the slums while God is offering an eternal life of joy. Here’s Peter’s point: Jesus isn’t taking our good life away from us; he’s giving us the life we really long for. We actually don’t know what’s best for us. We need our Maker to show us how to live a truly full and satisfying life. That’s why the gospel is preached to us. That’s why the gospel was preached to those who came before us, who are now dead. This world is filled with temptations. It’s filled with amazing things, and in our sinful hands, we can take even the most innocent of things and abuse them and use them for our own sinful purposes. But Jesus saves us from that. We can enjoy good things without making them more than they are. Through the power of the gospel, we can live now and forever. We aren’t banking on our best life being here and now. We’re looking out ahead to that great day when Jesus returns and restores this broken world by his marvelous grace. He’s promised pleasures forevermore, pleasures that last longer than any pagan orgy ever could. Our life in Christ is not a pursuit of joyless perfection through abstention but a pursuit of holy joy through repentance and life in Christ. Jesus is leading us to true joy. Unbelievers won’t understand that, so they might make fun of us. They might malign us. They might even hurt us. But we can endure it all because Jesus did, and he lives. And because he lives, we will too.
Following Jesus is dangerous. It is humiliating. But following Jesus is also glorious. As we accept unjust suffering, as Jesus did, and as Peter is calling us to do, we find something amazing begin to happen. What did the suffering of Jesus bring to this world? Redemption. Remember the centurion standing at the foot of the cross when Jesus breathed his last? What did he say? “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54). The suffering of Christ made an impact on that man. In the death of Jesus, he saw something glorious, something he hadn’t seen anywhere else.
What have we seen? Is it not the same thing? “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.” As we look to Christ together, as we create a gospel culture where safety to confess sin and time to change is a way of life, as we suffer unjustly because of our rejection of this world’s idea of truth and cling to Truth himself, his redemption will spread through us to others.
When we suffer unjustly at the world’s hands, when we are misunderstood and misjudged, we have an opportunity to show the kind of Savior Jesus is, the kind of redemption he brings through suffering. By our non-freak-out response to our enemies, we bear witness to the love of Christ to us, his enemies once upon a time. After all, it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. The cross brought us to God. It can bring others to him as well. And maybe God wants to use us for that very purpose, and maybe our suffering will be the way, and others will look upon us and find a repentant community of people, suffering for the sake of their Savior, and they’ll enter and ask questions and one day look upon the cross and say, “Truly this is the Son of God!” We have answers to all the pain, hope for all the hopeless, love for all our enemies. We have Jesus, the Savior of the world, and all are invited to his party.
And to those who won’t come and refuse to worship Jesus, well, they will one day stand before God and give an account to him for their life. They will be judged. So, if we are judged by them in the flesh, well, what of it? We know that we are alive in the spirit. We can accept unjust suffering because Jesus did, and he used it to spread redemption to others.
Let’s pray.
