Sermon Tone Analysis

13. Confidence in Christ's Example

When I was at the basic course for Army chaplains, on the first day, at the first briefing the commandant of the school said to us: “The mission of the Army is to find, close with, and kill the enemy.

If you have a problem with that, see these guys on my left and they’ll fill out your discharge papers, no questions asked.”

A few months later, our National Guard unit was facing possible deployment, and we had some who complained “I didn’t sign-up for this!

I only joined to get the money for college!”

We might shake our heads at anyone who signed up for the Army without understanding what they are all about, and the risks involved — you’re basically handing your country and its leaders a blank check for any amount up to and including your life!

You are basically “all in.”

When it comes to the Christian life, what understanding do we have about it?

What do you do with statements from the Bible such as “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God,” from Acts 14:22? or what about the teaching that we are heirs with Christ,

“provided we suffer with him, “ (Romans 8:17).

When was the last time you saw a plaque at a Christian book store with Philippians 1:29

What do you do with these verses?

(Sanchez, 139)

Peter has been encouraging the believers to whom he’s written to face the real potential of suffering for righteousness’ sake for their following Jesus.

He encourages them, and us, to entrust ourselves to Christ in His care for us, even and especially in the midst of such trials, knowing that He has undergone these things and He was raised from the dead.

And it is the same for all of us who are in Christ that we face the Fridays of death and, praise God, the Sundays of Resurrection.

Peter abuses us of the notion that has infected our thinking and the lifestyle we’ve adopted: that following Jesus is an accessory to our life, an add-on activity, and if it gets inconvenient or cramps our style or requires sacrifice of us, we go soft, we look for the easy way out, the path of least commitment.

One might suppose that Christians living in a hostile environment would want to shun all that reeks of paganism, but in practice things are not so simple.

In the first place, everyone of us is weak and attracted by what the writer to the Hebrews realistically calls “the pleasures of sin” (Heb 11:25).

Even though we know that certain activities are wrong, we are still attracted by the element of pleasure that they contain.

In a weak moment we are prepared to disobey.

Second, we can have genuine uncertainty as to whether a particular activity is right or wrong (and whether earlier generations made the right decisions in “gray areas”) or as to where we draw the line.

For example, is the use of alcohol and other potentially addictive drugs for other than medicinal reasons (1 Tim 5:23) allowable for Christians?

If it is, where do you stop?

Third, we know that Christ prayed for us to remain “in the world.”

We must not cut ourselves off from the very people to whom we are trying to bear Christian witness.

How do we keep in touch with a pleasure loving, affluent society?

And finally, we are all tempted to conform in order to avoid being thought of as killjoys by other people.

To these kinds of struggles Peter addresses himself in this section.

He asserts that, despite the pressures of society, Christians should live as the people of God, following the example of Christ.

He stresses in various ways that his readers must regard themselves as being done with sinful pleasures, which will lead in the end to divine judgment.

(Marshall)

I. Sinning or Suffering, 1

II.

Two Ways To Live, 2-4

III.

Judgment Day’s Coming, 5-6

(outline adapted from Marshall)

I. Sinning or Suffering, 1

This ties back to what we saw in 1 Peter 3:18

There we saw the value of imitating Christ’s example of willingness to suffer, if necessary, in order to do God’s will.

Peter sought to encourage his readers to give a good Christian witness.

Here, though, at 1 Peter 4:1, his emphasis shifts to our willingness to suffer while doing good in order to avoid sinning.

(Grudem) We must make the conscious choice to obey God, doing good, rather than to do nothing, or worse, to give-in to the sinful ways of the world - 1 Peter 1:18

If we are prepared to suffer, we will demonstrate that we have a particular attitude toward doing what is right in God’s sight.

Jesus was prepared to suffer, and therefore he must have had this attitude: “Arm yourselves with the same way of thinking....”

“Since Christ suffered in the flesh, “ Peter reminds us that Jesus was fully man — he experienced the suffering we face, including death.

He knows what it is like to be ridiculed, reviled, beaten, spat upon, and subjected to the grossest miscarriage of justice.

He knows what is like to ask your closest friends to pray for you, but discover they would rather sleep.

He knows what it is like to be abandoned, to be humiliated in public and to be murdered.

Jesus understands suffering for righteousness’ sake.

He is a sympathetic Savior.

(Sanchez, 140)

Peter’s point is this: since you have been called to suffer like Jesus did (3:14–18), you should also adopt the same attitude as he had.

(It would be foolish merely to suffer without holding the principles which His sufferings demonstrated that he held.)

Calvin said of this: we are really and effectually supplied with invincible weapons to subdue the flesh, if we partake as we ought of the efficacy of Christ’s death.

We face a three-fold enemy: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

This is how we prepare to do battle with these enemies!

The Christian life is war!

Peter’s point is that we are to ready ourselves for the fight and be prepared to suffer, possibly even to die, in doing what is right before the Lord.

To follow Jesus is not not just in vindication and glory, but also in suffering and dying.

It is to follow Him in our thinking about all these things, making our perspectives and our expectations line-up with His, and to allow His words to shape our view of life: Mark 8:34-35 (Sanchez, 140, 141)

Peter calls us to arm ourselves with this attitude.

Suffering for righteousness’ sake accomplishes God’s purposes.

It exposes within us what or whom we are trusting:

Suffering for righteousness’ sake provides a platform for faithful Christian witness.

Righteous suffering is not a sign of God’s abandonment of us or his disfavor.

It is an indication that we are following Christ, that we are faithfully living out the Gospel in our lives — 1 Peter 2:21

We suffer in this way because we have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back!

(Sanchez, 141)

How do we understand this phrase: whoever has suffered has ceased from sin?

What it does not mean: that we somehow have become perfected prior to death.

The rest of Scripture tells us of this ongoing struggle against sin that we have as believers, and that is only forever done with when the Lord takes us home to be with Him.

What it does mean: If you have decided to follow Jesus, suffering for righteousness’ sake, you are done with the old way of life of giving yourself over to sin, of living with the anti-God way of life of the world.

Your orientation is to be submitted to Christ and doing what is right in His sight.

As we arm ourselves with this attitude and approach, we live in stark contrast to the world, as we demonstrate that there are

II.

Two Ways To Live, 2-4

We have chosen so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. ( 1 Peter 4:2)

We have chosen not to live for ourselves, but for Christ; not to live according to the old man, but the new creation we are in Christ.

The will of man with its passions is a dead-end.

We have chosen to live for Jesus, for the will of God with its righteousness.

Christians are not to live in debauchery, lust and drunkenness, not to go to orgies or spend their time carousing or bowing down to idols.

Pagans of the first century viewed Christians as killjoys who lived gloomy lives devoid of pleasure (Colwell 1939; Frend 1967; Sherwin-White 1974).

The pleasures from which Christians of the first century typically abstained were the popular forms of Roman entertainment: the theater with its risqué performances, the chariot races, and the gladiatorial fights with their blood and gore.

Christian lifestyle also condemned the “pleasures” of an indulgent temper, sex outside marriage, drinking, slander, lying, covetousness, and theft (Colwell 1939: 61).

These attitudes toward contemporary Roman customs and morals, combined with the Christians’ refusal to burn incense to the emperor—a gesture of civic gratitude intended to assure the well-being of the empire—earned Christians the reputation of being haters of humanity and traitors to the Roman way of life.

(Jobes)

So believers refused to participate in these activities.

The unbelieving world doesn’t like this.

The lives of righteous people are an affront to the unrighteous because they amount to an unspoken criticism, proof that men and women really ought to live in a manner that pleases God.

We all know, according to Romans 1, all mankind knows, that there is a God who has made them and to whom we are accountable.

We suppress that truth, though, in unrighteousness.

People know down deep how they ought to live, but they don’t wish to make the sacrifice.

They love their sins.

So, when someone comes along who rejects the sinful life and lives righteously, he or she pricks the conscience of the sinful and makes them feel guilty and then angry because this person who lives righteously has made them feel bad about themselves.

Indeed, our refusal to celebrate and support them in their sins proves to be an affront.

It is all a question of the fundamental orientation of one’s life – either toward or away from God, and thus how we relate to sin – and the visible manifestation of that orientation in one’s behavior.

(Rayburn)

So the question to you and to me is this: does my life evidence that I have committed to follow Christ, that I am oriented toward Him, that I am seeking, striving toward, living for Him in the midst of this wicked and perverse generation?