…With the Same Attitude

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“Is my mind right? Is my heart right? Am I paying attention to Your will?”

Download discussion questions:  1 Peter 3:17-4:6 (continued)
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I encourage you to look at the passage in 1 Peter before you read this Blog entry.  What do you see in the text yourself?  What questions come to your mind?  How would you interpret what the writer says?  After even a few minutes examining and thinking about the text you will be much better prepared to evaluate the comments in the Blog.

Words like “therefore” or “so that” or “because” or “in order that” should get our attention.  Those kinds of words are markers or signals that the writer is giving us an extra bit of insight into what he is thinking and why he is saying what he has just said or what he is about to say.  Those words or phrases connect the author’s ideas, and he wants to make sure we see the connections.

This passage uses two of those words nearly together at the beginning of 1 Peter 4: “Therefore” points back to what he has just said.  “Because” points forward to what is coming next.

When we left last week…

Last week we spent most of our time together working through four startling statements scattered through the passage.  Peter makes those statements around a single command: “Arm yourselves.” And that command comes between the “therefore” and the “because,” almost like a pivot point of the passage.

Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because … (1 Peter 4:1a, emphasis added)

Last week we gained some understanding of the four unfamiliar phrases.  This week we went back to the passage to see more of how to arm ourselves from Peter’s instructions.

The Same Purpose

We talked about the words Peter uses to explain.  “arm yourselves also with the same purpose” (NASB).  Other translations[1] use similar words: “same mind” (KJV), “same understanding” (CSB), “same attitude” (NIV, NLT), “same way of thinking” (ESV).

The purpose or attitude or way of thinking is defined in that verse using another word that explains what the writer means: “since Christ suffered in the flesh….”  Of course, Peter has already had a lot to say about Christ’s suffering and His attitude or way of thinking during that suffering.

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;
(1 Peter 2:21-23)

Someone suggested that the attitude of Jesus, the way of thinking that marked His purpose, was a willingness to endure suffering.  As someone commented, “He was ready to suffer.”  The garden of Gethsemane demonstrates that His endurance was not easy.  Like us, He desired a way out of the suffering.  Unlike us, He rejected anything other than the will of His Father.

We talked about how suffering or even discomfort tempts us to seek relief.  Peter’s audience was enduring rejection and ridicule.  Jewish converts were no longer considered part of their family. Pagan converts were mocked for missing out on the libertine lifestyle.  A member of our group commented that it would have been tempting to go back to the Jewish Law or the pagan parties to eliminate the pain.  Avoiding the pain of being cancelled or ignored in a “woke” culture can be just as tempting in our day.  That temptation prompts Peter’s single command: “Arm yourselves.”  Without arming ourselves, it is too easy to justify or rationalize just a “little” compromise, like a character in a C. S. Lewis novel:

He had also a perfectly clear conscience and had played no tricks with his mind. He had never slandered another man except to get his job, never cheated except because he wanted money, never really disliked people unless they bored him.[2]

Our self-justification may not be as transparent as Lord Feverstone’s in the novel, but the danger is that we can be even more subtle.

An Appeal to God

One person in our group pointed back to Peter’s words about baptism as “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (3:21b).  Someone else shared how self-examination of our motives can spiral into an endless loop of guilt and doubt.  Another quotation from the same Lewis novel powerfully illustrates this tendency.

A Christian professor, Dr. Dimble, has left a conversation with a possible spy for the spiritual enemies headquartered at Belbury.

Dr. Dimble was dissatisfied with himself, haunted with the suspicion that if he had been wiser, or more perfectly in charity with this very miserable young man, he might have done something for him. “Did I give way to my temper? Was I self-righteous? Did I tell him as much as I dared?” he thought. Then came the deeper self-distrust that was habitual with him. “Did you fail to make things clear because you really wanted not to? Just wanted to hurt and humiliate? To enjoy your own self-righteousness? Is there a whole Belbury inside you too?” The sadness that came over him had novelty in it. “And thus,” he quoted from Brother Lawrence, “thus I shall always do, whenever You leave me to myself.”[3]

Lewis’s reference to Brother Lawrence is another perspective on Peter’s “appeal to God” mentioned in our group.

I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself; it is You who must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss.[4]

Even the self-examination of our motives cannot be left to ourselves.  We must appeal to God, for Him to show us if there is sin in how we relate to another person or how we respond to uncomfortable circumstances or suffering.  Left to ourselves, we will rationalize away actual sin, or we will spiral into deepening self-condemnation. A sincere appeal to God to show us our heart will enable us to confess and repent where needed or to experience the “clear conscience” that Peter describes.  “Is my mind right? Is my heart right? Am I paying attention to Your will?”  The appeal to God is a key part of arming ourselves.

Friendly Fire

We also discussed the very real problem of criticism and judgment from other Christians.  As one person put it, criticism from unbelievers about the Christian lifestyle is “like water off of a duck’s back.”  But mocking or intimidation from other believers is a different matter.  As another person phrased it, “motivational guidance” is often readily available.

Certainly, we are accountable to our brothers and sisters.  They (and we) are responsible to help each other along the narrow way.

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.  (James 5:19-20)

But as we discussed, criticism (spoken or implied) often comes over matters of conscience, such as abstinence from alcohol, the choice of movies, political views, etc.  Here again an appeal to God in our self-examination is critical.  Should I defend my choices?  Is that just excusing what I want to do?  Or do I mainly want to please others by conforming?  Am I motivated by the need to prove my point or by my need for approval?  Are those needs driving my behavior?

Here again, we need to know how to arm ourselves to withstand even the “friendly fire” of criticism from Christians.  What is the “same attitude” modeled by Christ that is key to arming ourselves?  Clearly, that attitude is marked by the readiness to suffer for righteousness discussed earlier.  Is there more to that attitude?  What way of thinking enables endurance and makes us willing to face difficult circumstances?

Armed with an Attitude

The four “startling statements” discussed last week may be the highlights of that attitude. Other statements in the passage suggest significant conclusions.

Consider the attitudes that are interwoven through this portion of Peter’s letter to a church facing a hostile world.  With what confident convictions are we to “arm ourselves” as we face a hostile world?

    • Christ is victorious over a hostile world.
      in which He also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison (3:19),

      • at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him. (3:22)
      • but they will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. (4:5)
    • Like Noah, we have deliverance from the lifestyle of the hostile world.
      baptism now saves you (3:21a)

      • the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water (3:20)
      • appeal to God for a good conscience (3:21)
      • so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human lusts, but for the will of God. (4:2)
      • For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of indecent behavior, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and wanton idolatries. 4 In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them in the same excesses of debauchery (4:3)
    • Suffering in a hostile world is evidence of our progress against sin.
      the one who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin (4:1b)

      • For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. (3:17)
      • they are surprised that you do not run with them in the same excesses of debauchery, and they slander you (4:4)
      • that though they are judged in the flesh as people (4:6b)
    • We have eternal hope during our “temporary residence” in a hostile world.
      gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead (4:6a)

      • so that He might bring us to God (3:18)
      • they may live in the spirit according to the will of God (4:6c)

Those statements of victory, deliverance, progress, and hope are themes entwined throughout 1 Peter.  May we arm ourselves with that way of thinking as we face a hostile world.

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Peter%204%3A1

[2] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (HarperCollins e-books. Kindle edition, 1945), 367; location 6161.

[3] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (HarperCollins e-books. Kindle edition, 1945), 230, location 3828.

[4] Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Old Tappan, New Jersey:  Fleming H. Revell Company, 1974), 16.

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