Arm Yourselves (1 Peter 4:1-6)
Sometimes, the way we divide our Bibles can blur what is being said. The chapter and verse divisions we’re so used to were added about 800 years ago, and they have served us well for navigation, but we need to remember that they don’t drive the meaning of the text. This is one of those places.
The thought that begins in 4:1 flows directly out of what Peter has just declared in 3:18–22. Now, Peter turns that truth outward and applies it. Because Christ has suffered for you, arm yourselves with His mind and live for the will of God with hope.
This section is the hinge between Christ’s finished work and the exiles’ present calling, and Peter makes this connection with three imperatives: adopt the mind of Christ (v.1), abandon the former life (vv.2–4), and anticipate your hope (vv.5–6).
Adopt the Mind of Christ (v.1)
“Christ, having suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.”
Notice again where Peter begins, not with your suffering, but with Christ’s. This should pull us back to 3:18–22, where we understood that Christ’s suffering had a goal (to bring us to God), it had an end (resurrection), and it had a result (ascension and reign).
That pattern of suffering, then glory, is the framework for the believer’s life, and what Luther called the theology of the cross. Life here is marked by suffering; life there will be marked by glory.
Peter says, arm yourselves with this mind. The word he uses is not advice but a deliberate call to action, a response that flows directly out of the gospel truth he has just declared.
He says this because you don’t stumble into this mindset by accident. Left to ourselves, we slip back into a “theology of glory,” measuring strength by our own abilities and turning our gaze inward. But Peter’s readers, exiles in the Roman world surrounded by hostility and suffering, knew they had no such luxury. For them, arming themselves with Christ’s mind was not optional.
Peter begins by explaining that part of this arming is a right view of sin. Peter adds: “for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.” Edmund Clowney explains that this phrase doesn’t mean Christians become sinless in experience, but that sin’s decisive hold has been broken. The “he” is Christ, and Peter adds that “hath ceased from sin,” he does not mean Christ became sinless only after death. Rather, he means that in His death, Christ decisively broke the power of sin.
The penalty was paid, the dominion shattered, and that same reality now defines those united to Him. To arm ourselves with Christ’s mind, then, is to remember that sin no longer reigns.
Paul expands on the same truth in Romans 6 when he writes that “He that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom. 6:7). Christ died once unto (or for) sin; believers then, united to Him, share in that reality. Sin is no longer our master, so we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.
Let’s not forget what has just been said, because this is not disconnected from Peter’s previous mention of baptism (3:21). Baptism seals this truth to us: we’ve been buried with Christ, raised with Christ, and declared free from sin’s dominion. So arming ourselves with the mind of Christ means remembering who we are. We don’t live in a suffering world grasping for gratification in sin; we live as those set free, anticipating the glory that is to come.
And let’s be clear, Christ did not suffer to give us a better moral example. He suffered to free us from sin’s authority, and the example flows from the reality of deliverance. We arm ourselves with His mind because His death has already broken sin’s grip.
Abandon the Former Life (vv.2–4)
“That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”
If baptism is the marker of our new identity, then what does this baptized life look like?
Peter explains that it’s a life divided from sin’s will and reoriented to God’s will, and verse 2 highlights the contrast between former passions and the will of God.
Before Christ, our life was driven by selfish desires, and these desires reigned supreme. However, after being placed in Christ by faith, our lives are reshaped by responsive obedience. Peter has already made this point in 1:14-16, where he wrote that believers are called to live “as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts… but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy.”
Now he drives that home. The Christian’s life is no longer fueled by old desires but directed by a new Father. It is union with Christ that reorients our wills, and we live not as slaves to desires but as sons and daughters reflecting the holiness of the God who redeemed us.
Verse 3 underscores the break when it says that “the time past of our life may suffice.” Basically, Peter is saying, “Enough of that life”. Enough living as if our passions and desires were the ones that ruled. Peter lists the vices of pagan culture: lasciviousness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, banquets, idolatries. These weren’t shocking to his audience; they were the normal social life of Greco-Roman society, and refusing to participate marked Christians as strange, even subversive.
Peter Davids notes that Peter here divides life into three parts: before baptism, after baptism, and the resurrection. Baptism marked the decisive break, and the believer no longer belongs to this former way.
Clowney adds that this separation isn’t just moral. The moralist might also avoid drunkenness or licentiousness, but the Christian abandons the former life not out of moral duty but out of freedom. Grace doesn’t merely restrain; it liberates.
If verse 2 highlights the contrast, and verse 3 underscores the break, then verse 4 describes the cost.
“They think it strange that ye run not with them to the same flood of debauchery.”
Notice that the language of “flood” is used here to explain the current of sin that others are in. Just as Peter spoke of salvation through water in 3:20–21, here he depicts sin as a destructive flood sweeping others away to judgment. However, believers don’t get caught away or drown in that flood; they’ve been carried through the flood in the ark of Christ.
Peter warns that those still caught in the flood of debauchery cannot understand why believers refuse to be swept along. From their perspective, it seems strange that anyone would step out of the current of sin and worse, that confusion often hardens into hostility.
But Peter doesn’t leave the exile with the problem alone; he gives a response as well. Believers are not to cave to the pressure, nor to return insult for insult. Instead, they entrust themselves to God.
Anticipate Your Hope (vv.5–6)
Peter lifts their eyes again:
“Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.”
The slander of neighbors is real, but it is not final, and those who malign the people of God are, in truth, maligning God Himself. As Clowney observes, the insult isn’t finally against you but against your Lord, and God is not passive. He is the righteous Judge, ready to call all to account for all that comes against Him.
This gives exiles a solid footing: others may judge you, but God’s judgment is ultimate, and He will judge all. The good news, even in this, is that for believers, judgment has already fallen at the cross. Your Baptism proves that your judgment is past, and that you have been buried and raised safely with Christ.
Verse 6 adds a further word of hope. “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead…”
This can be a difficult line, but if we stay with the context, we can see how it serves as comfort for the suffering believers. Peter is not suggesting a second chance after death. Rather, he is assuring the exiles that those who heard and believed the gospel, but have since died, are not lost. From the world’s perspective, death looked like defeat, but from God’s perspective, their spirits live to Him.
Whether Peter has in view the martyrs who laid down their lives under persecution or all Christians who die before Christ’s return, the point is the same. Death does not erase the gospel’s power.
So while the world may sneer at Christians as if death proved their faith meaningless, Peter declares the opposite: that death itself has been reframed as the doorway into life with God.
This is the heart of the theology of the cross. The Christian’s hope is not that suffering will be avoided, but that suffering will be transformed not in escape, but in resurrection. Christ’s path was suffering first, glory after, and the same pattern holds for His people. So the hope is not that you will sidestep suffering, but that Christ will raise you with Himself. You may be maligned now, but you will be vindicated then. You may be killed here, but they will be raised then.
Peter has in this text directly connected Christ’s suffering (3:18–22) to our calling (4:1–6).
Because Christ has suffered for you, arm yourselves with His mind.
Because you are baptized into His death and resurrection, abandon the former life.
Because He is the Judge who has already borne your judgment, anticipate the hope of resurrection life.
The Christian life is not escaping suffering but enduring it with hope, and that hope is not in us, but in Christ.
Crucified, risen, reigning, and returning for His people.