ENGAGE/TENSION
Did you know that there are a number of online calculators that will calculate your life expectancy? Just for the fun of it, I tried a few of them this week. Some of them, like the once used by the Social Security Agency are pretty simple, requiring you only to submit your birthdate, and they calculate your life expectancy based on overall averages of people living in the United States. According to them I can expect to live to be 83.4 years old.
Another calculator, developed by professors at the University of Pennsylvania, requires you to enter several different lifestyle factors. That calculator predicted that I will live to be 90 years old. I like that one better.
Finally, I went to one called The Death Clock and that calculator actually predicted the exact date of my death on Sunday, April 20 2031 at the age of 74 years, 3 months and 29 days. Obviously that was my least favorite.
Clearly nobody but God Himself knows exactly when we will die. But as I fooled around with those calculators this week, it got me thinking. What if I really did know exactly when I was going to die? My guess is that I’m not the only one here this morning who has thought about that. And certainly all of us know people who have come face to face with that question because of a medical diagnosis in which they are only given a limited amount of time to live.
So let’s just imagine for a moment that every one of us in this room knew exactly when we were going to die. What kind of difference would that make in our daily lives? Would we be like Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson and develop a bucket list and spend the rest of our life trying to fulfill it? Would we be more attentive to our relationships with the people we love? Would we have a greater sense of urgency about our walk with Jesus?
Those are some of the kinds of questions that undoubtedly came to Peter’s mind as he wrote his letter to the Christians in Asia Minor who were facing tremendous persecution for their faith in Jesus. The truth is that it was possible, and even likely, that some of them would, just like Peter himself, die rather soon because of their faith. So in light of that possibility, Peter writes to them about how they were to live out the rest of their days in light of that real possibility.
In effect, Peter is writing to them, and to us, to describe the kind of spiritual bucket list that God desires for us to develop and fulfill in our lives, especially as we live in a world that is hostile to Jesus. Turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 4 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 1:
TRUTH
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. 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; 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.
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
(1 Peter 4:1-11 ESV)
Although they certainly don’t rise to the same level as what we dealt with last week, there are two portions of this passage that do present somewhat of a challenge in trying to understand what Peter is trying to convey here. So let’s tackle them first and then we can proceed to draw some practical principles from this passage.
The first challenge is in verse 1 in trying to determine what Peter meant when he wrote:
…for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin…
The first thing we need to do is to look at the underlying Greek here and when we do that we find that the wording here is parallel to the first part of the verse:
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh…
In both phrases the same verb is used and in both phrases that verb is in the past tense and it is also a 3rd person singular verb. It is helpful here to look at a more literal translation of the underlying Greek. Even though this doesn’t flow really well in English, it is helpful in determining what Peter means here:
Christ therefore having suffered in the flesh you [plural] also arm yourselves with the same thinking, because the one having suffered the flesh is done with sin.
When we look at the verse like that, it seems likely that both references to suffering apply to Jesus and not directly to the Christians to whom Peter is writing. So the idea here is that Jesus, the one who suffered in the flesh, is done with sin. That is certainly consistent with this verse that we looked at last week:
For Christ also suffered once for sins…
(1 Peter 3:18 ESV)
As we saw last week, the principle here is that Jesus suffered for our sins once and then he ceased from doing that any more. That one-time suffering was sufficient to deal with sins of man and therefore Jesus doesn’t need to continue to do that.
There is one other passage that we’ve looked at previously in Peter’s letter that I believe is the key to interpreting verses 1 and 2 here in chapter 4:
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
that we might die to sin and live to righteousness…
(1 Peter 2:24 ESV)
Now let’s compare that to verses 1 and 2 of chapter 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,
so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God
I’ve used the colored boxes here to show the parallels between the passages. The suffering of Christ in the flesh is parallel to Him bearing our sins in his flesh and the idea of living our lives in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God is parallel to the idea of dying to sin and living to righteousness. This is the idea that is at the heart of the section of Peter’s letter that we’re studying this morning. We can summarize that idea like this:
Jesus lived and died for me
so that I can die and live for Him
Before we focus more on that idea, let’s briefly look at the other challenging part of our passage. It’s found in verse 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.
I briefly mentioned this verse last week because here the verb “preached” is different that the verb “proclaimed” that we saw in chapter 3, verse 19, where Peter wrote about Jesus making a proclamation to the spirits in prison. Here this verb “preached” is the word from which we get our English word “evangelize”.
This is another one of those verses that has been taken out of context and used to develop all kinds of false doctrines which lead people to think that somehow they can do something that will result in those who rejected Jesus in their life here on earth and are now dead somehow being saved. Clearly that idea is clearly refuted consistently throughout the Bible.
But if we consider this in light of Peter’s purpose for writing this letter, it’s actually pretty easy to understand what Peter means here. Remember he is writing to Christians in Asia Minor who are undergoing tremendous persecution for their faith. And many of their fellow Christians have died as a result of that persecution. Peter is merely reminding his readers that they don’t need to worry about the fate of those people because before they died, the gospel had been preached to them and they had placed their faith in Jesus. Because of that faith, even though they had been judged by other men while they lived on this earth, because they had died to sin and lived for Jesus, their spirits were now alive in the same way that Jesus was alive spiritually after His death.
Now that we’ve dealt with the two parts of our text that could draw us away from the main idea, let’s get back to that idea and see what practical implications that has for our lives.
Jesus lived and died for me
so that I can die and live for Him
As we’ve already seen, the key to dying to self and living for Jesus is to live our remaining time here on earth, however long that may be, by living according to the will of God rather according to my human passions. I’m pretty sure that all of us here this morning would say that is the way we want to live our lives. But I’m also pretty sure that most of us struggle to do that on a daily basis Fortunately, Peter gives us the key to living like that in verse 1 with this command:
…arm yourselves with the same way of thinking…
By using that particular verb – arm yourselves - Peter reminds us that we are in a battle. And by commanding his readers to arm themselves with the same way of thinking in which Jesus engaged as He suffered on our behalf reminds us that the battle is one that takes place in our minds. Once again, as we have seen consistently throughout Peter’s letter our outlook determines our outcome. The key to transforming our conduct is not to focus on the conduct itself but rather to focus on changing our mindset.
There are obviously many different aspects of developing a mind that thinks the same way Jesus thought when He suffered on my behalf. But here in this passage, Peter specifically deals with how I need to think about four different impacts of sin.
APPLICATION
In order to die to self and live for Jesus, I must have the mind of Christ when it comes to sin:
• What it did to Jesus
Obviously I’m not talking here about His sin because Jesus was 100% sinless. But we do need to constantly remember what my sin and your sin did to Jesus. Beginning all the way back at the end of chapter 2, Peter has been reminding his readers of what our sin did to Jesus. It cost Him His life. When we constantly remind ourselves of that fact we will undoubtedly come to hate our sin because we will hate what it did to Jesus.
• What it did to me in the past
In verse 3, Peter reminds his readers of what their lives were like in the past when they were slaves to sin. At that time, they lived just like the pagan Gentiles did, engaging in all kinds of sinful behaviors.
The apostle Paul also reminded the believers in the church in Ephesus about what their sin had done to them before they became disciples of Jesus:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
(Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)
That passage describes the condition in which all of us lived at one time. We lived, as Peter put it, for our human passions rather than for the will of God. And as a result, we deserved God’s wrath.
For some of us, looking back on that time is going to be way more dramatic than for others of us. For those of you who became believers at a young age, you probably can’t remember very well what it was like to live like that. And even for those of us who placed our faith in Jesus later in life, the degree to which we lived for our own human passions differs greatly. But hopefully for all of us, remembering what it was like to be in slavery to our fleshly desires will motivate us not to continue to live that way now that we are disciples of Jesus.
• What it does to others in the present
We see this in verse 4. When we choose to live for the will of God rather than according to human desires, others are going to be surprised at us and they are going to ridicule us for not joining in that sin with them. These people are so blinded by and enslaved to their sin that they can’t imagine why anyone else would not want to join in.
I see this all the time with some of my fellow officials. Even though they are often polite about it, they seem to find it odd that I have no desire to join in their coarse language or to listen to their off color jokes or to make lewd comments about the good looking women in the stands or to go out to the bar with them after the game.
That reaction reminds me that it is only through the grace of God that I’m not still exactly like them. And that thought keeps me from doing anything in my life that might cause me to once again revert back to that lifestyle. I am motivated to live for the will of God and not my own passions.
At the same time, it also breaks my heart to see their reaction because it reminds me of the final aspect of sin that I need to think about…
• What it means for everyone in the future
In verse 5, Peter reminds us that everyone will one day have to give an account for their lives. And for those who have not had their sins forgiven through faith in Jesus, that is not going to be an experience that any of us want to go through. Even though people may make fun of us here on earth because we chose not to join them in their sin, one day we will be vindicated for choosing to die to sin and live for Jesus and they will receive the fruit of their sin and experience God’s wrath.
As Peter has been writing about in this section of his letter, we are to live our lives in a way that we are an example to others. And understanding that I might be the person that God wants to use to be a blessing in the life of someone else so that they would desire to become a disciple of Jesus should be motivation enough for me to live in such a way that others see Jesus in me.
Remember that last week we saw how Jesus’ death in the flesh resulted in triumph in the spirit? The same is true for us. When we die to sin and live for Jesus by having the same mind as Christ, we triumph as well. We triumph over sin and its horrible consequences. And as a result, we find that our relationship with God and our relationships with others are radically transformed:
When I die to self and live for Jesus, it impacts my relationships with:
• God – manifest in a robust prayer life
In verse 7, Peter points out that the return of Jesus and the consummation of this age is drawing closer and therefore we are commanded to be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of our prayers. I think Peter brings in our prayer life here because it is one of the best indications of whether in fact I am thinking like Jesus and living according to God’s will or if I am living according to my human passions. If my prayer life is consistently characterized by asking God for the things I want – good health, money, comfort, etc. – then that may very well indicate that I’m living for my own human passions. On the other hand, if my prayers are focused on seeking what God desires for my life, then it’s likely that I’m living for His will.
And once again, Peter reminds us that a robust, effective prayer life begins in the mind. Developing a mind that is self-controlled and sober requires discipline. It will not just happen automatically. If I want to die to self and live for Christ, I must constantly be filling my mind with His Word, which is the primary way that God reveals His heart and His purposes, plans and ways.
And, at the same time, I must also be guarding my mind to keep it from being filled with those things that would kindle my human passions. We’ve talked frequently about the importance of being very careful about what I’m reading and listening to on the radio and watching on TV and at the movies and looking at on the internet because all those are potential sources of things that will cause me to focus on my own desires rather than those of God.
• Others - a fervent love in which:
If I arm myself with the same way of thinking that Jesus had when He suffered for me, then I can’t help but have a genuine, fervent love for other people. And Peter points to three different ways that kind of love will manifest itself. When I love others like Jesus loved me…
o I don’t hold their sins against them
We’re probably all familiar with the phrase “love covers a multitude of sins”. We find that same idea elsewhere in the Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments:
Hatred stirs up strife,
but love covers all offenses.
(Proverbs 10:12 ESV)
let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
(James 5:20 ESV)
Perhaps most relevant to our understanding of what Peter meant here is this verse from the “love chapter” - 1 Corinthians 13:
it [love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
(1 Corinthians 13:6 ESV)
The verb “does not rejoice” is an accounting term which literally means “does not keep an account”. The idea here is that love doesn’t hold someone else’s sin against them. It does not mean that we are to condone the sins of others or to excuse them or to ignore them. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when out of love we have to confront another person about his or her sin.
What it does mean is that, in the same way that Jesus loved us in spite of our sins, we are not to let the sins of others become an excuse for not loving them.
o I show hospitality to them
The underlying word translated “hospitality” literally means “love of strangers”. That was particularly important among the members of the early church who were undergoing tremendous persecution and who were often driven from their homes and families. And Peter makes it clear here that hospitality was to be extended “without grumbling”. It was to be done out of genuine love for others and not merely out of a sense of duty or obligation.
For us, this might mean loving others we might not know all that well in a tangible way. It means that we might have to go outside of our comfort zone to love someone who is a stranger to us.
o I serve them
The verb translated “serve” is the word from which we get our English word “deacon”. In that culture it was used to refer to those who did the most menial tasks, like waiting on tables. The idea here is that if we have the mind of Christ, that will be demonstrated by doing practical things that serve the needs of others, no matter how menial or insignificant those tasks might be.
We have seen this morning that…
Jesus lived and died for me
so that I can die and live for Him
ACTION
We’ve discussed a lot of different aspects of developing the kind of mindset that allows us to live like that. But as we close this morning I’m going to encourage all of us to make one practical application from what we’ve learned.
You’ve probably noticed that from time to time I’ll ask you to consider doing something radical and outside your comfort zone for the next week. I do that because sometimes I think our system needs a shock to get us to think in new ways.
So this week I’m going to ask you to pray differently. Instead of focusing on the normal things that you might ask God for, ask God to reveal His heart and His purposes, plans and ways. Do that each day before you read the Bible and then keep your mind open to receive what God has for you.
INSPIRATION
None of us know exactly how long we have left to live here on this earth. But whether that is one hour or another 100 years, it is God’s desire that our spiritual bucket list be to live out the rest of that time by dying to self and living for Jesus as we live according to God’s will and not according to our human passions. That’s not an easy thing to do, for sure. But the more we develop the kind of thinking that Jesus had as He suffered on our behalf, the better we will be able to live like that and the more our relationships with God and with others will be radically transformed.
