'Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered
in the flesh hath ceased from sin. 2. That he no longer should live
the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the
will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to
have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in
lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and
abominable idolatries: 4. Wherein they think it strange that ye run
not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: 5.
Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and
the dead. 6. For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to
them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in
the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. 7. But the end
of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
prayer. 8. And, above all things, have fervent charity among
yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.'--1 Peter
iv. 1-8.
Christian morality brought two new things into the world--a new type of
life in sharp contrast with the sensuality rife on every side, and a new
set of motives powerfully aiding in its realisation. Both these
novelties are presented in this passage, which insists on a life in
which the spirit dominates the flesh, and is dominated by the will of
God, and which puts forward purely Christian ideas as containing the
motives for such a life. The facts of Christ's life and the prospect of
Christ's return to judge the world are here urged as the reason for
living a life of austere repression of 'the flesh' that we may do God's
will.
I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the
broad view of Christ's earthly history. 'Christ hath suffered in the
flesh.' That is the great fact which should shape the course of all His
followers. But what does suffering in the flesh mean here? It does not
refer only to the death of Jesus, but to His whole life. The phrase 'in
the flesh' is reiterated in the context, and evidently is equivalent to
'during the earthly life.' Our Lord's life was, in one aspect, one
continuous suffering, because He lived the higher life of the spirit.
That higher life had to Him, and has to us, rich compensations; but it
sets those who are true to it at necessary variance with the lower types
of life common among men, and it brings many pains, all of which Jesus
knew. The last draught from the cup was the bitterest, but the
bitterness was diffused through all the life of the Man of Sorrows.
That life is here contemplated as the pattern for all Christ's servants.
Peter says much in this letter of our Lord's sufferings as the atonement
for sin, but here he looks at them rather as the realised ideal of all
worthy life. We are to be 'partakers of Christ's sufferings' (v. 13),
and we shall become so in proportion as His own Spirit becomes the
spirit which lives in us. If Jesus were only our pattern, Christianity
would be a poor affair, and a gospel of despair; for how should we
reach to the pure heights where He stood? But, since He can breathe
into us a spirit which will hallow and energise our spirits, we can rise
to walk beside Him on the high places of heroic endurance and of holy
living. Very beautifully does Peter hint at our sore conflict, our
personal defencelessness, and our all-sufficient armour, in the
picturesque metaphor 'arm yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to
us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an
impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and
resist the fiercest sword-cuts.
The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the
moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised
Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same
mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the
will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as
in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ
gives to us yield to.
But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow
it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the
Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after
Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer
has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further
emancipating him from it.
But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian
life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the
regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to
copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness'
sake.
II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
life, follow, interwoven, as in the preceding verses, with a statement
of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness.
The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in
its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,'
because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined
with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially
rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was
addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of
poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New
York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and
perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on
both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the
suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with
these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal
nature.
Observe the strong motives which Peter just touches without expanding. A
sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh
had had enough of time given to it,--had not God a right to the rest?
The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the
readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they
not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our
wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible
flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is
characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to
that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America
and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased, and
so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless
luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become
more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and
earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day
for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in
all things belonging to 'the flesh.'
If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the
world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the
idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared
with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to
do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship.
The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing
to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is,
perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar;
but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from
intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or
consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and
so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make
common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after
Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to
laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.
Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the
blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will
vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of
those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other,
life everlasting.
The difficult verse 6 cannot be adequately dealt with here, but we may
note that introductory 'for' shows that it, too, contains a motive
urging to life, 'to the will of God,' and that no such motive appears in
it if it is taken to mean, as by some, that the gospel is preached after
death to the dead. Surely to say that 'the gospel was preached also (or,
even) to them that are dead' is not to say that it was preached to them
when dead.
Peter's letter is of late enough date to explain his looking back to a
generation now passed away, who had heard it in their lifetime. Nor does
one see how the meaning of 'in the flesh,' which belongs to the phrase
in the frequent instances of its occurrence in this context, can be
preserved in the clause 'that they might be judged according to men in
the flesh,' unless that means a judgment which takes place during the
earthly life.
We note, too, that the antithesis between being judged 'according to men
in the flesh,' and living 'according to God in the spirit' recalls that
in verse 2 between living in the flesh to the lusts of men and to the
will of God. It would appear, therefore, that the Apostle's meaning is
that the very aim of the preaching of the gospel to those who are gone
to meet the Judge was that they might by it be judged while here in the
flesh, in regard to the lower life 'according to men' (or, as verse 2
has it, 'to the lusts of men'), and, being so judged, and sin condemned
in their flesh, might live according to God in their spirits. That is
but to say in other words that the gospel is meant to search hearts, and
bring to light and condemn the lusts of the flesh, and to impart the new
life which is moulded after the will of God.
III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a
life of suppression of the lower nature,--the near approach of the end
of all things. The distinct statement by our Lord in Acts i. 7 excludes
the knowledge of the time of the end from the revelation granted to the
Apostles, so that there need be no hesitation in upholding their
authority, and yet admitting their liability to mistake on that point.
But the force of the motive is independent of the proximity of the
judgment. Its certainty and the indefiniteness of the time when we each
shall have to pass into the other state of being are sufficient to
preserve for each of us the whole pressure of the solemn thought that
for us the end is at hand, and to enforce thereby Peter's exhortation,
'Be ye therefore of sound mind.'
The prospect of that end will sweep away many illusions as to the worth
of the enjoyments of sense, and be a bridle on many vagrant desires.
Self-control in all regions of our nature is implied in the word. Our
various faculties are meant to be governed by a sovereign will, which is
itself governed by the Divine will; and, if we see plain before us the
dawning of the day of the Lord, the vision will help to tame the
subordinate parts of ourselves, and to establish the supremacy of the
spirit over the flesh. One special form of that general self-control is
that already enjoined,--the suppression of the animal appetites,
especially the abstinence from intoxicants. That form of self-control is
especially meant by the second of these exhortations, 'Be sober.' How
could a man lift the wine cup to his lips, and drown his higher nature
in a flood of drunken riot, if the end, with its solemnities of
judgment, blazed before his inner eye? But this self-command is
inculcated that we may be fit to pray. These lower appetites will take
all desire for prayer and all earnestness in it out of us, and only
when we keep the wings of appetites close clipped will the pinions grow
by which we can mount up with wings as eagles. A praying drunkard is an
impossible monster.
But exhortations to self-control are not all. We have to think of
others, as well as of our own growth in purity and spirituality.
Therefore Peter casts one swift glance to the wider circle of the
brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing
direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our
fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of
ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our
religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here
enjoins will save us from the possible evils of self-regard, and it will
'cover the multitude of sins,'--by which is not meant that, having it,
we shall be excused if we in other respects sin, but that, having it, we
shall be more desirous of veiling than of exposing our brother's faults,
and shall be ready to forgive even when our brother offends against us
often. Perhaps Peter was remembering the lesson which he had once had
when he was told that 'seventy times seven' was not too great a
multitude of sins against brotherly love to be forgiven by it in one
day.