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.”

Yesterday, in dealing with the passage above, we looked at the spiritual means God has given us to understand spiritual truth. He’s given us His Holy Spirit, a resident teacher to reside within us. He’s given us the privilege of prayer, a means by which we can personally ask God to give us understanding of His Word.  He’s told us to meditate on His Word as another means by which He opens up our mind to understand what lies below the surface, to receive not just spiritual milk from what He’s told us, but the meat of the Word as well.  And he’s given us spiritually gifted teachers that can help us as we delve into spiritual Truth.  And so, as I studied the verses above in these ways, I grew in my understanding of what, at first glance, was difficult to see. 

For one, note how the passage begins with the word “therefore.”  As various teachers have told me over the years, whenever the Bible says “therefore,” we should look to see what that word is “there for.” In other words, what came prior? What’s the context of the words we read?  And so, if we look back to chapter 3 of 1 Peter, we see that the suffering of Christ that is being referred to was His suffering unto death. It was by His death and resurrection that He conquered sin and all of its consequences for those who will believe. 

Then, as we turn to the passage above, we are told to “arm ourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.”  Peter was talking to persecuted Christians. They lived under the constant threat of death.  In light of this reality, Peter is encouraging them to think about their own death as Jesus did about His, for as Jesus conquered sin and death by His death on the cross, it is in our death as Christians that we will step into a realm in which sin has no more hold on us. It is at that moment of physical death that every Christian is ushered into eternal life, a life in which sin and its effects are vanquished forever – Praise the Lord! 

Peter than follows that with the encouragement that, until that moment comes, we should “live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” He is telling us that we should live in the reality that we have ultimately died to the effects of sin.  One day it will have absolutely no effect on us.  Therefore, why would we live until that time in bondage to it? Why continue to sin like those who are still slaves to it, as if we’ve never been born again.  The apostle Paul speaks along the same lines in Romans 6:1-4, where he says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  Paul is telling us to actually be what we are – those who have been forgiven of our sin and freed from its ultimate power.  Later he asks them, that as they look back to the time in their lives before they were saved, “what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (Romans 6:21-22).

May God help us who are believers to be what we are: forgiven from sin and no longer slaves to it.  We are headed for the kingdom of God where there is no sin. May we show ourselves to be ambassadors of Christ from that place, for that, incredibly, is who we really are (2 Corinthians 5:20).