Text: 1 Peter 4:1-11
Theme: A Life less ordinary by Rev David Strain
Alternative lifestyles, it seems, are not so alternative. They're all the rage. People are desperate for a life less ordinary. We want out of the consumer culture we inhabit. And so, in the very best consumer-culture-tradition, we have started to sell alternative lifestyles. It's big business. In fact the dream of ‘a better life' has become the advertiser's newest and best marketing ploy to promote just about everything.
Now pop stars strut around on Gap adverts striking painful looking yoga poses in order to sell us jeans. Eastern Meditation has been used to sell us Air Wick freshener, Norwich Union Direct insurance, Benecol low fat yogurt, cable and wireless, pregnancy tests, John Smith's extra smooth bitter, weed killer, and special K cereal. ‘Its not just a breakfast, it's a whole new life!' Before we know what has happened idolatrous eastern meditation has replaced the strawberry teas for the nice ladies at the parish church.
The alternative lifestyle has ceased to be alternative. All that was radical and different about it has been leeched out of it by the consumer culture we have made. Alternative lifestyles are so easily assimilated into the mainstream of life because at the end of the day they are all the same. They conform to the same basic rule. How can I make myself happier, richer, better?
You see, it's hard to be anything other than a conformist when you are not a Christian. You are driven by the same agenda as the rest of the world, so that even the most radical alternatives quickly become just another demographic in some marketing analyst's strategy. Our best attempts at going against the flow in no time at all become yet another fashionable trend.
But the truly radical life is far more subversive than anything our society has to offer. You'll rarely hear of it on your TV screens, however. It is just too radical for the marketing gurus to do anything with. As we turn to First Peter chapter 4:1-11 what we have before us is a call to the church to live a life less ordinary, to adopt a truly alternative lifestyle, and to find that lifestyle not in the latest Hollywood fad or marketing ploy, but in the Word of God. This is Peter's manifesto for radical Christian living.
Let's look at it together.
Peter sums up his goal in writing this part of the letter in verses 1-2. This is his theme statement. This is the big idea. "Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body has done with sin. As a result he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God."
Clearly Christ is to be our example. Before Peter went off on something of a diversion in 3:19-22 he was using Christ's example, you'll remember, to encourage us to persevere in the face of suffering (3:18), and now he returns to that theme here. Christ suffered in his body he says, and his attitude and ours should be the same. That much is clear.
But what is less clear is what is meant by the phrase ‘he who has suffered in his body has done with sin'. It's a phrase that's caused all kinds of problems and difficulties for people over the years because, on the face of it, it seems to suggest that suffering should result in sinless perfection, but we know from passages like 1John 1:8, ( if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us) we know from these passages that Christians still sin and will do so until they are made perfect in glory. So what is Peter really saying?
Well, look again at verse 1, and take out for a moment the phrase, ‘arm yourselves also with the same attitude.' Now the verse reads, "Christ suffered in his body…because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin". Peter is telling us what Christ's motivation was, what his attitude was to suffering and sin. Christ, our sin bearer, was saying to himself as he faced the cross, "by my sufferings my dealings with sin will be over, I will fully pay for the sin of the world, I will bear the sin of rebels no longer, I will put an end to my sin-bearing role by my suffering and death".
Jesus attitude to his sufferings was to see them as the occasion for the end of his sin bearing. Now, look again at the phrase, "arm yourselves with the same attitude". You see what Peter is saying? He is telling us…"Christ suffered for you to remove the weight of your sin from his shoulders. Let your sufferings for Christ make you resolve to throw off the weight of sin from your own heart, let it be the occasion for a fresh determination to put sin away and live no longer for evil human desires. Let your suffering parallel that of our Lord's. He saw his sufferings as the means by which to finish his dealing with our sin. Let your sufferings for Him crystallize your determination to live a holy life that puts sin away. "
So the principle is, people who suffer for God's sake, in imitation of Jesus Christ don't play with sin any more. Their lives are marked with a new earnestness and seriousness about what's really important. They don't live for evil human desires anymore. As far as it depends on them they're done with sin. It's not that they don't commit sin, it's that they don't live for it anymore. They are radicals. They have found a truly alternative lifestyle. They have found Christ, and pleasing him, and being like him, is worth suffering for.
Now before we go on to look at the remainder of the passage we need to pause for a moment here and confess that, all too often as Christians, we are not really ready to break with sin. We don't want to say farewell forever to some things. We like our sin! But Peter is calling us to true radicalism. "Think like Christ" he says. When it gets tough to live for Christ, and suffering and opposition start to come your way, get serious about being a believer. Set your jaw and say "I will imitate my Savior in this. I will let the trials of my life teach me about what is really important. Getting rid of sin, not playing with it, not living a moment longer with its defiling presence than I have to, that must be my great aim."
Peter knows that the grave danger for many of us when it is costly to be a public Christian is that we just compromise. We crumble under the pressure and the opposition and the mockery and we start to live like the pagans again. Well, he says, remember Jesus; remember what was done for your soul; remember how he suffered to deal with your sin. Look at the cross and ask yourself "what sufferings have I, that can ever legitimate my return to the old ways of sin? Jesus died in agony to put away my sin, should not my small trials strengthen my resolve to live the life less ordinary to which I have been called?"
So that's the principle. Radical and costly discipleship does not live for evil human desires, but like Christ it strives to get rid of sin, and suffering when it comes only strengthens our resolve to be holy.
But then Peter moves on.
Have you ever been in the car with someone on the motorway and you are lost in deep conversation, (you are in the passenger seat, of course, because if you were driving this would never have happened), and suddenly the exit you want to take is right there, and your driver is forced to take some mildly terrifying evasive maneuvers in order to get onto that off ramp? The problem wasn't that the road took you by surprise, after all the exit had been well sign posted a ways back down the road. The problem was that you didn't notice the signs pointing out the coming division of the road.
Well, having stated the key point, having outlined in brief his great burden for us in verse 1, Peter is about to explain what he has in mind in more detail. The road is about to fork, and the passage will divide into two major sections and in verse 2 Peter has put up a sign telling us to get ready and indicating the direction each section will take.
The left fork in the road will look at what a Christian is not. Negatively, a believer is not one who is (verse 2) "living the rest of our earthly lives for evil human desires". And the right fork in the road will look at what a Christian is. Positively, a Christian is one who is "living for the will of God".
And in verses 3-6 the negative description of the Christian is unpacked a little and then in verses7-11 Peter expounds the positive description.
So let's look at the negative description first. What a Christian is not. Look at verses 3-6.
Peter contrasts the conduct that is becoming for a believer with the way the pagans live in verse 3. You have lived long enough like that he says. You are a Christian now, and this life is to be forever denied to you. There is no place in the Christian life for the kind of debauchery and sexual immorality, drunkenness and false worship that they do.
Its not that Peter simply wants to prohibit certain things, and say you are not allowed to do this or that. He is saying, this stuff just doesn't fit in a Christian's life, its like trying to bash a square peg into a round hole. You used to be like that, it all used to fit, but now, now you are united to Christ, now you have come to love and serve him and have been received into the number of God's covenant community, now these things are unthinkable. You cant make a butterfly munch leaves. It used to munch leaves, but that was when it was still a caterpillar. Now it has changed and there is no going back.
That's not to say that the world does not think you somewhat odd when you don't go to the nightclub or dress in the most provocative way possible or flirt and carouse at every opportunity. That you are never to be caught drunk and disorderly like your workmates, that when the work night out starts to get out of hand you quietly make your excuses and leave, that you are noticeably different, always provokes a response. Verse 8, "They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you." How contemporary and real is 1 Peter.
But I'm a Christian and I've never had anyone heap abuse on me. Well, fair enough. It may be that in your circumstances at the moment people are patient with your quirky little religion, after all they're happy that you've found something that works for you. But if you are at all serious about obeying Jesus Christ and bowing before His claims over your life, there will come a point where it will become quite plain to your non-Christian friends and family and colleagues and neighbors that your ‘quirky little religion' claims your whole life, and it claims theirs too. There will come a point where your moral purity will irritate their consciences and the truth claims of the gospel you quietly share will offend their sense of decency. And they will begin to heap insults on you. Behind your back at first but keep obeying and sooner or later someone's going to tlet you know what they think of your Christianity.
Boy. That's hard.... It is! And Peter feels it too, and that's why he reminds us in verse 5 and 6 about the coming day of Judgment at which we have all been indicted to appear. It seems strange comfort to suffering Christians to remind them that their persecutors will give an account, but when you are still smarting from the stinging mockery of colleagues it is hard to love them and be like Christ to them. But there are few things better designed to make you want to keep on living like Jesus and proclaiming Jesus in the company of people who reject him and you like knowing that soon, if they do not repent they will face the wrathful judgment of God.
Want a motivation for living a holy life when others mock you for it? Why speak about Christ and then live out what you say when all you get is abuse? Why? Because the day of their last opportunity to turn from their sin is rapidly approaching and you may be their last chance to hear the gospel and to see it lived out.
That's what Peter says in verse 6 isn't it? Since judgment day is coming, the gospel has been preached in every generation, even to the generations of those who are now long gone to their graves, because we want them to be able to live according to God in regard to the spirit, believing in the good news, Christ died to save sinners. That's why we keep on keeping on in a hostile world. Because the hostile world will be judged soon, and we want as many as possible to live according to God, by faith in the Jesus we proclaimed to them.
SO the Christian is not like the world.
But then positively in verses 7-11 Peter tells us what a Christian is like.
And since he's been thinking about the last day in verses 5 and 6 that theme becomes the motivator for all the positive graces and duties Peter enjoins. Peter is living in the shadow of Christ's immanent return and he wants us to do that too. To remind ourselves, the end of all things is near, and I am to live in a way that is fitting for meeting Jesus face to face.
But what does that life look like?
Well Peter emphasizes prayer in verse7, love in verse 8, hospitality in verse 9 and the proper use of our gifts in verses 10-11, and I just want to make three general observations about that list.
My first observation relates to a note that seems to come out one way or another in all that Peter reminds these believers of here. Love each other with a love that covers over a multitude of sins, not your own sins of course, other peoples! When you offer hospitality, stop grumbling. Use your gifts not to gain recognition for yourself but use them to serve others. Gifts are not opportunities to climb God's corporate ladder, they are resources with which to serve others for Jesus' sake. There is an overriding concern that Christians should take greater care in the way they treat each other.
Recently a new phrase, "blue on blue", was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It's a term that came to prominence recently in the Iraqi war, and it refers to so called ‘friendly fire' (an astonishing misnomer as far as I can see since there is very little that's friendly about being shot at!). One set of allied troops mistakenly fired on another set.
There is too much blue on blue activity going on in the church. That is Peter's point. Whether it's your prayers, your hospitality, your use of gifts, love one another. Stop grousing and complaining, and start serving.
And my second general observation about this list is that it is corporate. Peter has set out to describe the life that fits the believer in Jesus, and he has told us that, negatively, its not like the world in all its debauchery. The believer doesn't join in the flood of dissipation. But when he comes to describe what the Christian life is positively his whole emphasis is on the life of the people of God together. The Christian life is not like the dissipation of the pagans, it is like church!
Praying together, loving each other, showing hospitality, serving one another with our gifts..its all focused on the church. And I simply want to drive home the point that the church as the assembly of the redeemed is the new context for your life. Here is where you belong, here is where an imperfect foretaste of eternal paradise can be savored, here is where the eternal home for which we are being remade can be experienced ahead of time, however imperfectly, its all here in the fellowship of the church.
So how central is the church to your Christian life? It is absolutely central to the vision of the Christian life Peter sets out here.
Then my third observation relates to the use of our gifts. Look at verse 10-11. Now I want you to see four simple things about how we are to use our gifts in this passage, very briefly.
And the first we have already noted. We are called, verse 10, to use our gifts to serve others.
Then secondly notice Peter's description of what is going on when Christians use their gifts. He says when we serve others with the gifts we have been given we administer the grace of God in its various forms. Perhaps you feel that your gifts are superfluous, they are surplus to requirements. Perhaps you feel that you have little to offer. No, using your gifts to serve others, however slight they may be is to administer the varied grace of God.
And then thirdly, in verse 11 Peter gives two examples. The first relates to preaching. If anyone speaks he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. The second is service in the strength God provides. In Both cases the use of gifts depends entirely on the resources God gives. The preacher depends on the very words of God. He is authorized to speak no others. The servant serves resting on the strength God alone gives them for the thankless task.
And fourthly, use your gifts so that in all things God might be praised through Jesus Christ.
Use your gifts:
- for the service of others.
- knowing you administer the very grace of God to his people.
- resting on the gracious resources of God alone.
- in such a way that your service fuels the church's worship.
The Christian life imitates Christ, who suffered for us to deal decisively with our sin. When we suffer for His sake, let our suffering galvanize us to break with sin decisively.
The Christian life does not live for evil human desires, following the pagans in the flood of dissipation.
And the Christian life is lived in the community of believers, for each other, administering God's varied grace, and fueling our worship as we find in each other the answer to our prayers.
Amen. |
