Living in Light of the End
Introduction
4:1-2 - Living for the Will of God
“He who has suffered” refers to believers and relates back to the imperative to prepare themselves for suffering. Peter explained why they should prepare themselves to suffer, seeing the commitment to suffer as evidence that they have broken with a life of sin. The point is not that believers who suffer have attained sinless perfection, as if they do not sin at all after suffering. What Peter emphasized was that those who commit themselves to suffer, those who willingly endure scorn and mockery for their faith, show that they have triumphed over sin. They have broken with sin because they have ceased to participate in the lawless activities of unbelievers and endured the criticisms that have come from such a decision. The commitment to suffer reveals a passion for a new way of life, a life that is not yet perfect but remarkably different from the lives of unbelievers in the Greco-Roman world.
Thus, following through with a decision to obey God even when it will mean physical suffering has a morally strengthening effect on our lives: it commits us more firmly than ever before to a pattern of action where obedience is even more important than our desire to avoid pain.
4:3-6 - The Old Way
Why should Peter’s readers not live by following (sinful) human passions? Because they have done enough living like that in ‘the time that is past’. Peter does not just encourage them to ‘let the time that is past’ be sufficient experience of sin; he tells them bluntly that their past experience of sin is sufficient! They should not want to live any longer the kind of life which was given to following sinful human desires. To the Christian who wonders whether ever in the future he or she might indulge in one more unrestrained time of sin, one more time of doing what the Gentiles like to do, Peter’s answer is clear: The ‘time that is past’ is ‘sufficient’, is ‘enough’ of living that way.
Augustine spent the early years of his life following the pattern that Peter describes here. Then one day he was in a garden where children were playing a game that contained the refrain tolle lege; tolle lege, which means “pick up and read.” With those words ringing in his ears, he picked up the Bible and his eyes fell upon this passage: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Rom. 13:13–14). At that moment, Augustine’s heart was stricken because he recognized himself in the text he was reading. He said in essense, “I have made every provision I could to fulfill the lusts of my flesh. I need to change my clothes. God grant that He would dress me in the clothes of Christ that I may no longer make provision for the lusts of the flesh.” Peter says the same thing. We know the bankruptcy of our former way of life. We ought to spend our time for the will of God. We have spent enough time doing the will of pagans, when we walked like they walk—lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.
When I became converted, I had a strong desire to lead my buddies to Christ. I came home from college and went to see them. They wanted to go out and do the same things we had always done, but I told them I could no longer participate. When they asked me why, I told them that I had become a Christian and that I wanted to tell them about it. They thought I was crazy, and they did not like that I would not participate with them in our usual activities. As the leader of the gang, I was naïve enough to think that they would follow my leadership and commit their lives to Jesus, but they wanted nothing to do with it. If we stop behaving as we used to behave and as the world behaves, and if we march to a different drummer, people are not going to like it. They will speak evil of us, even if we love them. They think it is strange, as Peter says here.
This verse is important for understanding the nature of the persecution in 1 Peter. There is little evidence of state-sponsored persecution that robbed early believers of their lives. Instead, unbelievers were at first puzzled and then outraged by the failure of believers to participate in activities that were a normal part of Greco-Roman culture. We see such a reaction in Tacitus when he says Christians have a “hatred of the human race” (Ann. 15.44). Pagans would feel this way because idolatry was woven into almost every dimension of their lives, from life in the home to public festivals to religious observances and even social occasions. In the Western world we take for granted the segregation of private and public spheres, but public festivals, in which the gods were venerated, were considered a civic duty in the Greco-Roman world. In particular veneration of the emperor was simply a mark of good citizenship, and the deifying of the emperor was especially pronounced in Asia Minor.374 Those who failed to participate would be social outcasts, just as today American citizens would look with suspicion on those who refused to take the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. We can imagine that those who did not fit in with the mores of society would be discriminated against in daily life and that they would be the object of abuse. Identifying the specific lineaments of persecution in 1 Peter is important, for modern readers in the West tend to restrict persecution to imprisonment, physical deprivation, torture, and execution. As we noted, there is little evidence in 1 Peter for these things. The readers were mistreated by being socially ostracized. We should not overlook that criticism and social ostracism often lead to more severe action, that sharp words can easily turn into sharp swords. If Revelation was written around A.D. 95, it is evident that in Asia Minor at least some believers were losing their lives for their devotion to Christ. When 1 Peter was written, however, the penalties were not yet that severe, though Peter wrote to prepare his readers for whatever might come.
4:7-11 - Living in Light of the End
We have a typical feature of New Testament eschatology here. Nowhere does the New Testament encourage the setting of dates or of any other kinds of charts. Eschatology is invariably used to encourage believers to live in a godly way (cf. Matt 24:36–25:46; Rom 13:11–14; 1 Cor 15:58; Phil 4:4–9; 1 Thess 5:1–11; 2 Pet 3:11–16). Nor does the New Testament ever invite believers to withdraw from the world because the end is near and to gaze at the skies, hoping that the Lord will return soon. The imminence of the end should function as a stimulus to action in this world. The knowledge that believers are sojourners and exiles, whose time is short, should galvanize them to make their lives count now.
Be of sound thinking
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
Be of sober spirit
Be sober forbids not only physical drunkenness but also (since the phrases before and after have to do with attitudes of mind) letting the mind wander into any other kind of mental intoxication or addiction which inhibits spiritual alertness, or any laziness of mind which lulls Christians into sin through carelessness (or ‘by default’). Peter uses the same word in 4:7 and 5:8 to encourage spiritual alertness for prayer and for resisting the devil. He knows how easily Christians can lose their spiritual concentration through ‘mental intoxication’ with the things of this world (cf. Mark 4:19; Col. 3:2–3; 1 John 2:15–17). We today might well consider the dangers presented by such inherently ‘good’ things as career, possessions, recreation, reputation, friendships, scholarship, or authority.