To Encourage You

1 Peter 4:1-2 “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.”

Last week, in an adult Sunday School class that I teach, one member of the class asked an interesting question about the verse above.  It’s a passage that our pastor had preached on that morning, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about one part of the it. It’s the statement “whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.”  He asked the class, what we thought this meant.  I, and others, without having studied it for ourselves recently, tried our best to answer his question, but I, for one, was not satisfied with my answer. 

Interestingly, one person in our class suggested that perhaps Peter could have said it in a better way.  Perhaps you’ve had the same thoughts about the wording of the Bible or, at least, certain parts of it.  What bothers me about going down that line of thought, however, is the fact that the Bible tells us that “all Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16).  In other words, although Peter wrote the words in the passage above, he was being inspired by God’s Holy Spirit.   Therefore, if it was only Peter that was speaking to us in this passage, then perhaps he could have said what he said in a better way. However, because the Bible tells us that it was actually God speaking through Peter, I seriously doubt that He could have said it in a better way, for if He could have, He surely would have.  In other words, who am I to ever say to God, “you could have done this better!” 

As I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve thought about how so much of what Jesus said in the New Testament (although you do realize that it is all His Word, not just the red letters, correct?) often stops me in my tracks.  I often ask myself, “What did He mean by that? Why did He say that in the way He did?”  I believe the answer to these questions is that He said it that way because it was the best way to say it.  It’s the very best way He could have said what He said in order that I could come to know what He meant in saying it.  And if it stops me in my tracks and makes me wrestle with what He is saying, then it does that to me because He meant for it to do just that.  It is His will for me, for all of us, to think deeply about what He has told us. It’s not something that we should expect to understand at first glance. And to think of it, why would we ever think we should be able to, when we consider that He has told us that “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).   Sometimes, it makes me wonder how we understand anything in God’s Word!  Yet He has wonderfully condescended to us to make what He has told us understandable.  But it requires study, meditation, and the help of the Holy Spirit. It’s one of the reasons the Lord has given believers this resident teacher, for “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned: (1 Corinthians 2:14).

And so, if we are to ever understand spiritual truth, we must go at it by spiritual means.  We must have the Holy Spirit, which means we must be born of Him. But we must also obey Him.  He’s told us to study, to “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  He’s told us to meditate, to think deeply about what He has told us, for as He has told us of the one who would live a blessed life, “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And we must pray, for hasn’t God given us such wonderful examples of the psalmist who prayed, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). 

So, do you want to see wondrous things in the Word of God? Do you want to truly understand it?  And beyond that, do you want its benefits to accrue to you?  Then approach the wonderful spiritual truth that God has spoken to us from heaven in His Word in the ways He has told us to – but then, once you understand it, once it fully dawns on your heart, then put it into practice, for as Jesus told us in the following words from Matthew 7:24-27, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”