Miles and the Pond…I thought he had decided to jump, it was not until he was faced with a cold pond that I realized he was still deciding if he would jump.
I tell, or retell that story because it illustrates the difference between living decided and living deciding.
It’s hard to tell which way you or someone else is living until it’s time to actually jump in the pond.
Today, we are in 1 Peter chapter 4.
One way of describing Peter’s intent in his letter is to say he is a casting vision for being a faithful witness in all of the various circumstances of our lives.
Another way of describing it, especially in his attention to being faithful in the face of difficulty and suffering is that he is casting vision for living a finally decided, not a perpetually deciding life.
By living “decided” I don’t mean there is no struggle to obey.
I don’t mean a trajectory that is a straight, vertical line to heaven.
I mean that while we will struggle…we don’t get up day after day and decide “if” Jesus is Lord, boss…we get up and seek HOW to live faithful to him in what the day brings.
When we mess up, we fess up and move on…but we do not accept anything other than faithfulness as acceptable…we have already decided what our lives are going to be about.
Now, we live the decided life.
4 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.
In chapter 3 the impact of the decided life was that it empowers being a faithful witness.
Others can see your response to suffering and challenges and see the power of the gospel.
Here the impact of the decided life is that it gives power over the bondage of sin.
Sin is not freedom; it is the absence of freedom.
Faithfulness to God’s will and ways…that is freedom.
Since Christ suffered in his physical life…we are to arm ourselves with his way of thinking.
The phrase “arm yourself” means that you have to possess and be ready to use a weapon whereby you can defend yourself.
Some people, eager to arm themselves with a sidearm in the case of physical attack…live perpetually unarmed and unable to deal with spiritual attack…which, is much more dangerous.
What is the weapon we are to arm ourselves with? The mind of Christ.
We are to think about life the way he did in regards to obedience, suffering, life purpose.
The phrase “way of thinking” is not such much a general attitude as it is about the Lord Jesus having insight about who God is and his purposes.
It is having a Big R.
Remember last week: The four types of leaders, only one type is effective.
This Big R (having the mind of Christ), empowers a Big A(Taking right action)
Arm yourselves with the mind of Christ (big R)…seeing obedience to the Father as the greatest good and goal.
So as to live the rest of your time in the flesh (your earthly life), no longer for human passions but for the will of God. (big A)
Let’s be clear…when Peter talks about “human passion” he is not talking about being passionate as is often used today…he is not talking about being full of life and zest.
He is not talking about having energetic interests…”She is passionate about soccer”
He is talking about things that destroy and degrade.
He is talking about passions as our sinful desires being the boss of us…rather than Jesus.
He will elaborate on this fact in detail in the next couple of verses.
Look at the motivation for having this big R/A
for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,
You hear that and say, “Really, Peter?”
“I’ve suffered before and it certainly didn’t make me sin-free”
That, of course, is not what he means.
He is not saying that physical suffering somehow magically purifies and strengthens people.
It does positively change some people, but others become more hardened towards God.
Suffering is not the key, responding to God in suffering is.
Peter’s context here is verse 3:17, “Better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, then for doing wrong.”
So, here’s the fuller picture, “If you suffer for doing right…and you keep on trusting God…this signifies you have made a break with sin’s chains…this is the decided life.”
“Ceased from sin” doesn’t mean “no longer sin at all”, scripture is clear on that…and any honest person would concur, no one is sin free in this life.
What Peter means is that for the person who lives this decided life…sin has lost its ruling dominance in their life.
They will still sin, but sin is not their boss…Jesus decidedly is.
Suffering for righteousness…and trusting God through it…makes a person more immune to the deceitful allure of sin.
Sin is losing or has lost its appeal.
In June, I have the privilege of spending time with some of our college students for Summer Challenge.
We are looking in depth at increasing capacity for the life that is in front of them.
There is no better time to grow their capacity than right now…this stage of their lives.
One aspect of growing capacity we have discussed is learning to be the “boss of their passions”
If they (we) remain under control of our physical passions (bossed around by them)…we will not be free…the opposite will be true.
When we are faced with suffering, when things get hard.
Sometimes we just want a break…maybe just a way to anesthetize the pain…you know, indulge, just to feel better.
When things get hard, we find it easy to retreat back to old, habits and patterns to get this “break”
Ask Israel…they were in slavery in Egypt…it was bad…the path forward to freedom was good but hard…and they found themselves reframing the bad old days into the good old days.
Longing for the slavery of Egpyt.
For Peter, living decided prepares us for what life will bring…it is key to increasing capacity.
Suffering by itself does not automatically grow us…responding in faith through suffering does.
It’s important that we think of “suffering” in broad terms here.
In principle what Peter is saying here holds true for Christians living under hostile governments where the suffering can be terrible.
But it also holds true for any follower of Christ who is choosing to embrace any manner of physical weariness, discomfort, or pain…for obedience.
This is about taking the path of faithfulness as opposed to the path of least resistance.
The shortcut may look and be easier than the long uphill climb…but the shortcut, if it is not the will of God for you…is going to be a short fall with lasting negative life impact.
If I live a deciding life…I will determine, case by case, day by day, mood by mood….will I obey or not?
You put your toe in the water to decide whether you feel like jumping or not…obeying or not.
The Decided life is…God, the answer is “yes”…if you ask it, I will do it.
A Decided life is not perfection in every action…it is a settled life direction.
Peter is saying…that the way to get to this kind of life is by making the choice to embrace difficulty and suffering and challenges for the sake faithfulness…to remain faithful through challenges.
Everything we do is training us…all of our consistent choices are forming our reflexes.
This is true for golf swings, responses to spouses and faithful obedience to Christ.
This isn’t magic…this is good theology and good anthropology…who is God and how has he designed humans.
Arm yourself with the mind of Christ.
If you say “yes” to God at a personal cost you are training yourself to live in the freedom of obedience, rather than chaining yourself to the bondage of sin.
**In case you are unclear…Peter is not talking about justification (becoming a Christian), he is talking about sanctification (Becoming more like Christ)
What this looks like, most often…isn’t some catastrophic decision that takes people off a cliff or some epic single decision that shoots us towards heaven.
It most often looks like a thousand little internal choices that ever so slowly shape us…into the image of Christ, or misshape us into people who are ruled by our own passions.
That little choice to say or do what is right…or not…that is where this shows up in our lives.
Remember Jeremiah…complaining about how difficult his calling was…God said,
“If you can’t run with men, how will you run with horses?”
In other words, embrace training now…things are going to become harder not easier.
Peter is reframing suffering, difficulty, challenges.
A Christlike response to difficulties brings increasing freedom.
To bring this point home…he reminds them of what they have left behind…how they have already experienced freedom…now they must move further and further into that freedom.
They must not go backward.
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.
Gentiles simply means “non-Christian”
Peter says, you are past all that…why would you want to go back?
Back to being bossed around by your physical impulses. (living in sensuality and passions)
Back to giving control of yourself over to substances (drunkenness)
Back to more and more, never being enough…always thirsty, never satisfied.
Back to idols that promise you everything and take everything valuable from you.
Jeremiah spoke for God about this, “My people have committed two sins, they have forsaken the well of living water, and they have dug for themselves broken wells, that cannot hold water.”
In this passage Peter portrays a frenetic…out of control pace.
Someone devouring without pleasure or enjoyment…turning from God’s offer of living water, and digging holes…to quench their thirst…getting no water, just gagging on dirt.
It’s a terrible picture.
So, pay attention to what you have in Christ…and remember what it is you actually left behind.
Harbor no nostalgia for the bad old days.
Then, a warning…
4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;
The people around you, who are still living in slavery to sin are of course going to want you to join them.
Misery loves company.
This is true for several reasons.
-Your freedom highlights their bondage…they refuse to be free so they don’t want anyone to be free.
-Your freedom demonstrates that their bondage is their ongoing choice. You were, like they are. They could be, like you are.
-Their bondage is also their blindness…they don’t know that letting their passions boss them around is what is making them so miserable…and they have the choice to turn to Christ from it.
They simply can’t imagine how anyone could live without their controlling passions, because they can’t image themselves being free…they think your freedom is illusion, and their bondage is the only reality.
NPR had a story last week called: “Anti-dopamine parenting’ can curb a kid’s craving for screens or sweets.”
Turns out, smartphones and sugary foods do have something in common with drugs: They trigger surges of a neurotransmitter deep inside your brain called dopamine.
Although drugs cause much bigger spikes of dopamine than, say, social media or an ice cream cone, these smaller spikes still influence our behavior, especially in the long run.
They shape our habits, our diets, our mental health and how we spend our free time. They can also cause much conflict between parents and children.
Older studies said dopamine causes us to feel pleasure, it is the feel-good molecule.
Newer studies show that dopamine primarily generates the feeling of desire.
“Dopamine makes you want things,” A surge of dopamine in your brain makes you seek out something, Or continue doing what you’re doing. It’s all about motivation.
I’ve seen this…an iPad can be like crack to my grandkids…to get them away from those things is like taking the ring from Gollum
“My precious!”
Here’s the rub…
Studies show that over time, people can end up not liking the things that trigger big surges in dopamine.
“If you talk to people who spend a lot of time shopping online or, going through social media, they don’t necessarily feel good after doing it,”
“In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that it’s quite the opposite, that you end up feeling worse after than before.”
God knows how we are wired, he designed us.
We are spiritual/physical hybrids…the choices we make with our bodies…shapes us, good or bad.
You can train yourself to want what you should want…or to want what you should not want.
To want what you should want (train for godliness)leads you towards freedom…to train yourself to want what you should not want…takes away your freedom.
Peter writes…you do not want to back; the time is past for all that.
*I had a friend who had lived an immoral life as a younger man…he had deep regrets and scars from his old lifestyle
He had come to Christ and had enjoyed tremendous freedom and power in ministry and in his life for many years.
One brief period of time, just a few days…he went back to his old way of life…whole scale.
-It was terrible and the consequences of his short retreat back to bondage were long lasting.
Of course, since he had tasted freedom, the old life was not what he remembered it to be.
It never was good but he had nothing to compare it to back then.
The time to live that way of life was past…but he went back to it…it was terrible, for him and those around him.
He did return to his freedom…but his foray back into the old life was empty and costly.
But it is not, of course, just in this life that living apart from the will of God is costly.
The next verse is sobering.
5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
Non-believers, Peter writes, may malign you…they may want you to come back to join their slavery…but they will be held accountabile for their lives.
God’s judgement is already on this kind of life…now and in the final accounting.
Let’s go on to verse 6
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.
Some of Peter’s readers had lost christian friends and family to persecution…how were they to make sense of that?
It looks like they were judged, just like those who are not faithful to Christ.
Those who died in faith, Peter writes…were judged in the flesh (bodies) just like all people now are…everyone up to the second coming will suffer the judgment of physical death equally…the righteous and the unrighteous.
But because of the gospel, though they have died physically…they are saved from final judgement.
They will live in God’s eternal life.
So, Peter concludes this section…live now with the end in mind.
What matters most at the end matters most now…what will matter most at the end will be relationship with God and others.
7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
“The end of all things is near” means that all the major events in God’s redemptive plan have happened.
Peter, reads history through the lens of what God is doing and so he acts in line with the will of God.
Big R, Big A.
We tend to measure history by key events: wars, founding of nations, disasters
Or by key personalities: Presidents, kings, philosophers
Peter thinks in terms of redemptive history:
-Creation/Fall/Call of Abraham/Exodus from Egypt/ Birth, death, resurrection of Christ/Birth of the church.
All this has happened…so the end of all things is near
Seeing life this way has practical implications…Ps 90
“Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom”
Peter writes…Be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers…your relationship with God.
Self-control gets at what Peter has been writing about…Jesus is the boss of you, you are the boss of your passions.
If your body, your feelings, your passions, boss you around…you live in a tyranny…you will not live the decided life.
If Jesus is your Lord, boss…you live in a benevolent kingdom…a place of freedom…you have decided.
Sober-minded means we do not let our thoughts become drunk with foolish, empty things
We do not let them run, like untrained dogs after whatever smells attract their attention.
Our minds are leashed to the truth of God’s word…sober minded.
No stinking thinking…our minds align with the mind of Christ.
Then…love for God shows up in love for one another.
Earnest love means an ungrudging love…we do not resent the time or expense involved.
We may struggle with it…so our perspective must be continually reframed by the gospel
I spent a few of nights with my Dad in the hospital last week…as did my brother and sister.
I was glad to be able to be there but I was praying…asking God to give me his perspective.
Not that I did or would resent serving my dad…he has spent his life serving us…but that I would have earnest love.
I felt just like you would expect to feel with furry teeth and a foggy mind sitting in a chair in the middle of the night.
I asked God to help me see his truth, and to choose in line with his truth…not in line with my physical feelings.
Doing what is right isn’t going to feel fun, easy…your mind and emotions may be in the ditch…your body in discomfort…or pain…that is why it is so important to live decided not deciding.
Then we are to show hospitality…serve one another in practical ways without grumbling.
No complaining, no griping…we love because we are loved.
People are inconvenient (which means, we are inconvenient)
Showing hospitability doesn’t mean we let others demand how and when we serve them.
We decide what faithfulness to God and others looks like…not guilt, or the demands of others.
But, again…loving others is often difficult and inconvenient.
When Peter writes that love covers a multitude of sins, he is not referring to our salvation, our relationship with God…that is not what he means by covering sin.
He is speaking of our relationship with one another.
Then is no margin of error when there is no love between people.
Every mistake and misstep is held against us…there is no room to fail and so relationships cannot thrive, or even survive because we are not going to be perfect.
Love, provides the margin.
We give each other room and grace…and in this room of grace…we can grow…because failure is not fatal in this place.
So, in summary: The end is near…love God, love people.
What will matter most at the end, matters most now…and in a real sense…it is the end now.
What matters is relationship with God and others.
Live the decided not the perpetually deciding life…so you can love God and others.
By the way, in case you are wondering…”Why do you say the same things over and over?
- They are true
- The Bible says the same things over and over
- The more we say them, believe them, the more they will shape us.
For verses 10, 11, I’m going to use the NIV instead of the ESV translation.
Next Peter gives a very practical and power application of love for God manifest in love for others.
God’s grace in us, manifest through us…in words and actions.
Here’s how the decided life shows up in our lives.
10 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.
We have been gifted by God to serve others.
Gift is “charisma”, grace is “charis”
As we use what he has given us to faithfully serve others…we are revealing God’s grace in its various forms.
The word “various” means “multicolored”
The idea is like put white light refracted through a prism scattering into its many component colors
We together, as we serve each other with the grace gifts God has given…reveal the grace of God in its manifold beauty.
I’m sure you have seen it, experienced God’s people using their gifts to serve you…or you to serve others…when you do it is beautiful thing.
As ugly and dull as selfishness is, so common, so deary, so boring and so tiresome…both for the selfish person and those around them.
This manifold beauty of God, manifest in serving others is beautiful, multi-colored, uncommon, life-giving.
Two things:
First, If you think these are just flowery words, sermonizing…that I’m throwing around…you don’t know me, I’m not fan of symbolism without substance…these words communicate experiential reality.
Then, second, if you think I’ve mastered any of this, you don’t know me.
My prevailing thought as I sat in the hospital room, praying to have perspective…was how selfish I really am at my core.
But, will we let our selfishness(our own passions)…be the boss, or Christ?
Now to one of my favorite verses…both encouraging and challenging.
11 If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
This is our great privilege: We get to speak as representatives of God, we get to serve with his strength…we get to offer God praise through our words and lives.
This is great responsibility: We are representing God…we are to speak as if he were speaking through us and serve with his strength…all for his glory not our own.
This doesn’t mean our words equal scripture…or that we are to go around in some weird, pseudo-spiritual way saying…”God has given me a word for you.”
I know, it’s called the Bible.
Unless we are literally speaking Scripture to people, Peter isn’t saying our words equal God’s words.
He is casting vision for taking what we say and do with others very seriously.
He knows we fall short of this earnest love…but never the less…we are to love this way.
You may feel selfish, you may be selfish…but again, feelings are not our boss…Jesus is.
We are to, in our imperfect selves…
Speak “as ones speaking the very Words of God.”
Serve others with the strength that God provides (even when we feel selfish or tired in ourselves)
We should have a sense of purpose in our words and actions that are in line with the reality of Christ and his eternal glory.
We must be growing our R…see the world as it is.
We must be growing our A…act in the world in line with the glory of God.
Speak and Serve for the good of others and the glory of God.
This is our great privilege and our great responsibility.
This is the decided life.
One big decision…Yes
Million little decisions…still, yes