Peter Barnes | 1 Peter 4:1-6
SERMON NOTES
SUFFERING FOR A TIME
1 Peter 4:1-6
1. Because of Christ, cease from sin.
– 4:1-2. Peter knows nothing of a prosperity gospel, or any ‘If it feels good, do it’ approach to life.
– Christ’s suffering in the flesh finished His involvement with sin – Heb.9:27-28. ‘Arm yourselves with this way of thinking’ – Rom. 6:10-11; Gal. 5:24. Robert Leighton: ‘Sin will not give you rest, so long as there is a drop of blood in its veins, one spark of life in it; and that will be so long as you have life here.’
– It is not a case of whatever makes you happy, but whatever makes God happy – John 4:34; 6:38; 17:4.
2. Be separate from the world.
– 4:3-4; Luke 15:13; Ex.32:6, 19; Num.25:1-3; John Newton: ‘It was formerly my unhappy folly to busy myself in perverting others to as great a degree of infidelity as my own. I am now desirous to repair the mischief I have done as far as I am able.’
– 1 Cor.6:9-11.
3 Look to the judgment to come.
– 4:5. Note 1:17; 2:23.
– 4:6. Augustine says that the dead are the spiritually dead. Calvin says that the dead are believers now dead, but vindicated by God. To the unbeliever, dead Christians are just dead; to God, they are alive in the spirit. It is parallel to how the world treated Christ – 2:4.