Context No. 52 of 4322 · 1 Peter

1 Peter 4:1-6: in context

1Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. 3For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles, and having walked in lewdness, lusts, drunken binges, orgies, carousings, and abominable idolatries. 4They think it is strange that you don’t run with them into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you. 5They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6For to this end the Good News was preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed as men in the flesh, but live as to God in the spirit.

First Peter is written to Christians scattered across what is now Turkey, living as a suspect minority. The letter's steady theme is how to suffer without being deformed by it, and this passage gives the reasoning.

Since Christ suffered in the flesh, Peter says, arm yourselves with the same intention. It is military language, putting on a mindset like armor before the fighting starts. The one who has suffered in the flesh is done with sin, having settled in advance that the rest of life goes to God's will and not to human appetite. Then a candid line about the past: we have spent quite enough time already doing what the pagans do, and he lists it, drinking parties, wild nights, the idol feasts that came with them.

The social consequence is exact. Your old friends think it strange that you no longer plunge into the same flood of dissipation, and they abuse you for it. Not argument, abuse. In that world, refusing the guild dinners and the neighborhood festivals read as antisocial, even disloyal to the gods who protected the city. Where has a change in me been read as a judgment on someone else, and how much of their reaction did I actually earn?

Sources

1 Peter's audience, Christians scattered across Asia Minor and treated as a suspect minority
1 Peter 4:3: the catalogue of the former life, including the idol feasts of civic and guild religion
1 Peter 3:18-22: Christ's suffering in the flesh, the premise this passage argues from