1 Peter 4:1-6 Ancient Paths
Good morning! I’m very happy to be back with you today. Last weekend Sam and I were at Camp Washington up in the woods of Maine to celebrate the ordination of my good friend Darrell Young. It was a very encouraging time there at the camp that I grew up going to. I think Sam is hooked too!
Immediately after we got back from that celebration we headed straight for New Jersey for six days for our last baseball tournament of the year. That trip was not without its own twists and turns with field temperatures over a hundred degrees, not to mention flat tires on the highway.
And it’s the idea of twists and turns along our path that has been swirling around in my spirit as I considered our text for this morning, 1 Peter 4:1-6, page 1016 in the pew Bibles.
Usually we read our text for the morning and then pray but this morning I would like to read a different text and then pray. The text I’d like to read in Matthew 7:13-14.
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Let’s pray
Christianity has its own vernacular, its own vocabulary, “Christianese,” if you will. There’s actually a website called dictionaryofchristianese.com, if you get a kick out of that sort of thing you might also like stuffchristianslike.net.
One of the most popular phrases used to describe life as a Christian is the phrase, “Christian walk,” or, “our walk with Christ.” The verse that this phrase is borrowed from is Colossians 2:6-7 and of course Matthew 7:13-14 that I read earlier.
Colossians 2:6-7 says, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
I think the idea of hiking on a path very closely parallels our text for this morning. So let’s read that together and get to work. 1 Peter 4:1-6:
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
Ten years ago on Father’s Day my Dad and I went on a memorial fishing trip. My Grandfather had died that spring and we wanted to do something to honor him that Father’s Day.
So we decided to hike the old trail along the Magalloway River to Parmacheenee Dam where Grampa taught my dad to fly fish and, in turn, my dad taught me.
It was about a three mile hike along the river from the Number 10 bridge to the dam, which isn’t a dam anymore just some old wooden pilings that also used to be a bridge a hundred years ago.
The dam isn’t the only thing that isn’t there anymore, the old trail isn’t there anymore either.
It had been so little used that any sign of it had all but disappeared. So we bushwhacked for three miles to Parmacheenee Dam so we could fish down the river back to our truck.
Three miles, through thick brush, in waders, carrying fly rods, for three… miles…
The irony here is that there is a road on the other side of the river that we saw several Subarus zip along with their kayaks and out of state plates. That would have been so much easier but would kind of miss the point of our memorial adventure.
We finally made it all the way to the dam and fished our way back down the river and caught salmon and trout in every hole we put a line in.
It was the best day of fishing I have ever experienced.
So what does this have to do with 1 Peter? I’m glad you asked! Look at verses 1-2.
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
Now you have to remember the context here, remember where Peter has just come from, he had just been discussing how baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience, and how Christ had suffered for our sins but now at the right hand of God.
So when Peter says to arm yourselves with the same way of thinking he is telling us that those of us who follow Christ, follow on the path that He has cut through the wilderness and we need to be prepared, we need to arm ourselves with His way of thinking.
And this isn’t just an arbitrary, nebulous statement about having the mind of Christ, this is taking up Christ’s perspective on suffering as a shield.
Jesus knew that there was purpose to His suffering and that there was a glorious goal at the end of the trail.
But don’t be deceived into thinking that Christ’s suffering was just on the cross, it certainly culminated there at His death but it began with His birth. He was faced with all the same temptations that we are yet He did not sin. He followed the Law of God and the will of God to perfection and was constantly assailed by the temptation to stray from the path, to find an easier way, to reject the end goal and avoid all the trouble.
But Jesus chose to endure the suffering, to bear up under temptation, to continue blazing the trail that God the Father had laid out for Him, and at the end of that trail was a glorious reward for Him and for us who believe in Him, and that is: an end to sin and therefore a reunion with our Heavenly Father.
When we come to faith in Jesus Christ and repent of our sin, temptation to sin no longer has any power over us, sin no longer has mastery over us.
Those apart from Christ don’t know this freedom, but the truth is, those of us who walk this path with Christ, seldom know that freedom either, and it’s not because that freedom from the power of sin isn’t real, but we just choose to allow the power of sin to control us.
As we walk along the path that Jesus has cut through the wilderness of this life, it is easy to lose the markers of the trail and get lost.
Sometimes the trail of Christ is not a four lane highway and it’s hard to see through the bushes and trees to see where to go next. Sometimes it’s tempting to find another way around the obstacles in front of us when He is calling us to go straight through.
But it’s that suffering, that bearing up under trial, that consistent turning from sin, choosing not to follow the passions of our flesh that reminds us that the power of sin over our lives really is broken, we don’t have to stray from Christ’s path.
I don’t know how to say this any clearer: If you belong to Jesus, every time you leave the path it is because you chose to. Every time you sin, it is because you chose to. You believed the lie that sin is better, sin is more satisfying, that the path of sin is easier than following Christ through the thicket.
Acquire the mind which is done with sin, so that your relation to sin may be that of one who has died and risen again, dead to sin and alive to Christ.
Robert Jamieson wrote, “The Christian is by faith one with Christ: as then Christ by death is judicially freed from sin, so the Christian who has in the person of Christ died, has no more to do with it judicially, and ought to have no more to do with it actually.”
Simply put: We’ve played around with sin enough already, it’s time to move on.
When we become dead to the flesh through faith in Christ, we can have no more to do with sin, that it should reign in us and exercise its power in our lives.
Peter gives us that reminder in verses 3-4, he also reminds us that we are not the only ones who are aware of our past and our choice to follow this new path.
3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
As we walk along this path, no matter how smooth or how difficult, there will be times when the people that we knew before we knew Christ will be surprised at our new way of life and our choice to stay true to the narrow way.
Many of us, I’m sure, have been made fun of or questioned by those we know and love that don’t understand why we act differently from before we knew Christ, or will remind us of how we were and what we used to do and use those times to accuse us.
But what we were is not what we are now, the old has gone and the new has come, in Christ we are new creations!
And though there may be those on the far side of the river on the nice smooth road in their Subaru’s laughing at us winding our way through the puckerbrush, judgment is looming for those who reject Christ and His Way, we are on the trail that Christ has blazed for us.
The statement in verse six is tricky, For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
It could be referring back to what Peter said in the previous chapter about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison, but I think a more obvious meaning is that the gospel had been preached to people who have since died at the writing of this letter, and though their flesh died as if they had been judged, by faith in Christ they still have eternal life just as we were promised in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”
Sometimes the path of Christ is confusing, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to us, sometimes it’s just hard and people will make fun of us for sticking with it, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to wander off.
Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The will of God comes from the heart of God and therefore is an expression of the love of God. We may not always understand what He is doing, but we know that He is doing what is best for us. We don’t live on explanations, we live on promises.”
The question I’ve been wrestling with in thinking about this path that Jesus has cut for us is simply, “What is your goal in life?”
Finishing the path, reaching the end, getting to Parmacheenee Dam, really isn’t up to us, the Father determines when and how this life will end.
Our goal has to be: to stay on the path no matter what, and the only way to consistently stay on the path is to consistently say, “no,” to sin.
In our dark hours of temptation to sin He is not absent, He has not left us to walk this path alone, He has given us His Holy Spirit, He has given us His Word, the Bible, and He has given us each other. If we call out to anyone of those, help will come.
“This is what the Lord says, ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’” Jeremiah 6:16
Amen.
