1 Peter 4
The 1St verse of the fourth chapter of Peter is undoubtedly connected with the 18th verse of the previous chapter, which latter gives a most beautiful motive why a Christian never should suffer for sins, as, we have seen. In between, the apostle has given a, parenthesis, brought in for the comfort of these Hebrew believers, who were taunted with the thought that because they were a little company therefore they were not right.
“Forasmuch then as Christ path suffered for us in the flesh,” &c. As man, Christ actually died on the cross in this world. It is not exactly the same truth as Paul gives you—Paul gives us the doctrine; Peter gives you the practical side of it. He is showing US all through his epistle how a Christian must expect to suffer. If you do what Jesus did you must suffer. He did the will of God perfectly, and the result was He suffered in the flesh.
Satan came in the wilderness and offered Him everything, if He would bow down to him, and again in the garden the enemy sought to turn Him aside, but there was nothing in Christ to answer to his temptations; and therefore He suffered being tempted, but would rather die than not do the will of God.
He did the will of God, and it brought Him into death. Now, he says, you must arm yourselves with the same mind.
The expression “flesh” is not used as meaning the principle of evil, as Paul uses it; Paul means that standing in which I am found as a child of Adam,—the principle of evil which man has in him as a child of Adam fallen, having a corrupt nature, away from God. Peter means by “flesh,” our life here in the body. Christ as a man suffered here, and if doing the will of God produces suffering, well, I get into glory by suffering.
Verse 1. First, he takes up what is within. You have a nature that likes its own way; but if you do God’s will it is always at the expense of your own at the expense of suffering here.
Verse 2 and 3. That is the contrast between the lusts of men and the will of God. If I give way to the lusts of men, I do not suffer—not in the sense in which Christ suffered, doing God’s will. How Christ might have saved Himself had He pleased Himself!
To do the will of God brought the blessed Lord into, the deepest suffering, brought Him into death, and the apostle says you must arm yourselves with the same mind, be prepared to suffer, and to die too.
Then if you arm yourself with the same mind, you do the will of God and do not sin. God has left us here for a little while, and what for? To do the will of God. Supposing you suffer by the will of God, go to God about it. It is often His will that we should suffer. The person who does not suffer, we may confidently say, is not walking with God. If you are in a pathway without suffering, you may safely conclude you are not in God’s pathway.
Verse 4. Here he is giving them comfort. The Gentiles say you are mad; never mind, the apostle says; supposing you did go with them, they would think it inconsistent of you, and now that you do not, they think it strange. But, says Peter, we are walking not to please them, but to please the Lord, and they have to remember this, that God is ready to judge the quick and the dead, and they have to give an account to Him. The judgment of the living was evidently that with which a Jew was familiar. The apostle is bringing out here that God is going to judge both the living and the dead—the living, according to Matthew 25, at the commencement of the kingdom, and the dead, as the final act of the kingdom, at the end of the millennium.
There are three things that Peter says are “ready.” In the first chapter he tells us that God is ready to take us out of the world; in the fourth chapter he tells us that He is ready to judge the world: and between these two moments, the Christian is always to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks him the reason of the hope that is in him.
Verse 6. This verse may have allusion to the end of the 3rd chapter, to those who lived in Noah’s day but I do not think we can limit it to these, but rather that it takes in all who had died before the time of the coming of the Messiah, to whom promises had been made. God holds us responsible, not only for what we have received, but for what we have heard, that is, for our privileges. The testimony God has given, whether in that day or in this, is that men should live in view of God by the Spirit. They will be taken up and dealt with on the ground of the privileges they have had. If they turn their back on the testimony of the Lord, that testimony turns for a witness against them, and by it they will be judged.
Verse 7. We must not forget that the apostle was writing to a little Jewish company, and no doubt had before his mind that the moment drew near when the Lord’s word would be fulfilled that everything should be upset, and not one stone remain upon another of the Temple. But the verse goes farther than this. Peter feels that a saint should be one who is always taking, as it were, his last step—feeling, I am on the threshold of all that God is going to bring me into, the world is just going to be judged, and therefore there should be temperateness, and watchfulness, and prayer. And if this were true in Peter’s day, how much more true is it in ours! because one cannot but see that the elements which conduce to the bringing in of the Antichrist are at work now, and there never was a time when even Christians were in such danger of letting go the foundations, thus paving the way for believing a lie, for man was not born to be an infidel. The devil is seeking to clear out the truths of Christianity, in order to get the house clean swept and garnished, ready for the entrance of the seven devils, by-and-bye.
Men do not go on long believing in nothing, and if they turn away from the truth, the re-action will come in a little while; but what will that reaction be? Not the reception of the truth of Christ, but the reception of the lie of Antichrist.
Verse 8. The apostle now turns to what is very helpful for us who are within. Towards those who are outside, there is to be sobriety, watchfulness, and prayer; but now among yourselves, what is there to, be? Fervent charity. Why? Because that is the thing that God delights in, (Prov. 10:12,12Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins. (Proverbs 10:12)) “Love covereth all sins.” This was the reason why he presses that this fervent charity should work in them, because it not merely keeps people going on well with God, but happily with each other.
There are no people who have got such opportunities of irritating each other, as we who have come out side human systems, because we are so much together, and we have all the old barriers broken down, and are simply brought together on the ground of the Church of God. Unless grace thoroughly works, there is no place where people can so pain and wound each other, and therefore Peter says you need this fervent charity; and not only for going on together, and for the restraint of what is not lovely, but also for the activity of divine love in the saint of God, and finding the very opportunity for its activity in the naughtiness of someone else!
The worse a thing is in another the more lovely an opportunity it gives you for covering it up. “Love covers a multitude of sins.” Not one or two, but a multitude—a thousand little things that the devil brings in to upset saints; some dead fly! What is the cure? says Peter. Oh, this divine love; you cover it up. Peter says, God has His eye on you, and if you are keeping up a thing you are keeping it up for God to see, and He cannot like that.
But supposing you cover with a mantle of love my naughtiness, what does God see? The reproduction in you of the same love and grace there was in Christ.
Peter says, I expect you to get on smoothly with the saints, no matter what other people are.
Verse 9. This is perfectly beautiful, though some people would grumble at you for doing it; not so says Peter. I find in Rom. 12 “Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.” First, look out that nobody is in want; and secondly, you are to keep an open house, a beautiful divine balance.
God often not only brings people together, but binds them together. Use your house to get your brethren in, and get to learn them and they you, and that not because you must—not grudgingly, but in love.
Verse 10. When the apostle talks of a gift, it is not only a man being able to preach, or teach. He says, “As every man hath received the gift.” Then you have a gift, and you are responsible to use it, and the sphere in which you are to use this gift is the Church, first of all. Whatever you have it is not yours; you are only a steward. It all belongs to Christ; and you must be a good steward, because you will have to give an account of your stewardship by-and-bye.
Verse 11. If you speak, that is a gift for edification. If you minister—that is, carrying (may be) a little bacon of soup to some sick saint, or a few shillings to one who is in need of them—according to the measure of your ability, do it. It is the question of using the temporal things of this life for the glory of God.
How beautiful it makes the acts of everyday life! God is as well pleased with the right use of every day’s things as with the spiritual gifts, either preaching, for the conversion of the world, or ministry, to the building up of the body of His dear Son.
I deny that either you or I have a right of ministry. No! We have no liberty to speak in the assembly, unless we speak “as oracles of God”; and that is not liberty merely, but bounden responsibility.
If you possess a gift you are bound to use it. Not that a man who has a gift need always be using it; he has always plenty to learn, and can hold his peace and listen to his brethren.
If I rise to speak in the God’s Assembly, I must speak not according to the oracles of God as revealed in Scripture, but as being the direct mouthpiece of God to the saints at that very moment, giving forth to them exactly what God would have them hear at that moment.
First, we have in the 10th verse, God communicating something to those who speak, which they are bound to give forth—something of His mind. Then if you have anything to give away, well, do it, and all is to be done for God’s glory.
vs. 12. Now, you notice he turns round to speak to them of their circumstances—of the trials of the pathway. The apostle brings in now for the first time the thought of being with the Lord in glory as the answer to suffering for Christ here. This is the highest kind of suffering that a Christian can go through. The suffering of the 13th verse is different from the suffering of the 14th verse. In the 13th verse we are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; in the 14th verse we suffer for Christ.
We are partakers of Christ’s sufferings—that is, of those sufferings which He passed through down here, excepting His suffering in the way of atonement. The suffering of the 13th verse every Christian has part in, but every Christian has not part in the suffering of the 14th verse. The 13th verse is suffering with Christ; the 14th verse is suffering for Christ. I ask you, have you never, in going through this scene of death and misery, heaved a groan because of it all? That is suffering with Christ, in sympathy with what He felt.
That groan is the groan which the Spirit of God produces in the saint, and is in character like the groan of Christ at the grave of Lazarus. Christ suffered going through this scene as a perfect man, and seeing the sin, and misery, and sorrow, and how God was dishonored. We suffer in our measure in seeing the same things, and that is suffering with Him.
But we do not all suffer for Christ. If we go on with this world, and seek to save ourselves, no doubt it can be done; but then there’s the missing of all that Peter speaks of here. If we do as Moses would not do, we may escape it. You may be called everything that is bad, because of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, Peter says, happy are ye; instead of being downcast about it, take it as a privilege that you may be reproached for His blessed name. Oh, for a little more of the spirit of the apostles in the 5th of Acts: “And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.”
Verse 15. As soon as I touch the things that do not belong to me, I am sure to suffer. Do not be ashamed to suffer as a Christian; but be ashamed to suffer as a busybody; and if you suffer as a Christian do not forget this, that in all God is letting you pass through there is a blessed purpose.
Verse 17. It is a great thing to remember the government of God, and that it begins with us, and that He has His own blessed purpose to work out in our souls, and if He lets suffering and trial come in, though we do not like it, yet He sees the need.
Verse 18. Why with difficulty? Because the devil is against you, and the world is against you, and the devil sets pitfalls and snares for your feet, and God uses these very temptations and trials to bring you nearer to Himself. It is part of His plan in leading you to glory, to give you these sufferings and trials by the way, which He sees are needed.
Verse 19. You did your own will in days gone by, and it worked death: you are suffering now according to the will of God. You have to do now, Peter says, what Jesus did—commit yourself to God. He casts you on Him who has almighty power, but who is your Father likewise. The Lord keep us seeking to do His will so always that it may turn to praise, and honor, and glory by Christ Jesus.