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1 PETER CHAPTER 4
1Pe_4:1-6 The apostle exhorteth to cease from sin, in regard of
Christ’s having suffered for it, and of a future judgment.
1Pe_4:7 From the approaching end of all things, he urgeth to
sobriety, watchfulness, a prayer,
1Pe_4:8 to charity,
1Pe_4:9 hospitality,
1Pe_4:10,11 and a right use of spiritual gifts.
1Pe_4:12-19 Sundry motives of comfort under persecution.
The apostle having in the former chapter exhorted believers to patient bearing of afflictions by the example of Christ, 1Pe_4:18, proceeds in this to persuade them to improve the crosses they bore outwardly to inward mortification. Christ’s death is proposed to us in Scripture as an exemplar both of external mortification in bearing reproaches, persecutions, &c., (this the apostle prosecutes in the former chapter), and of internal, in the destroying the body of sin; this he exhorts to in this chapter, and indeed draws his argument from Christ’s death, not only as the exemplary, but efficient and meritorious, cause of our mortification, and which hath a real influence upon it, in that Christ by his death did not only merit the pardon of sin, but the giving the Spirit, whereby corruption might be destroyed, and our natures renewed.
Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us; viz. not only as an exemplar of patience and submission to the will of God, but for the taking away of sin, both in the guilt and power of it, and that he might be the procurer as well as pattern of our mortification.
In the flesh; in his human nature, as 1Pe_3:18.
Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind; strengthen and fortify yourselves against all temptations, and unto the mortification of your lusts, with the consideration of these ends, and the mighty efficacy of Christ’s death, he suffering in his flesh, i.e. in his human nature, that you might suffer in your flesh, i.e. in your sinful, corrupt nature; or, (which comes to the same), with the same mind which Christ had, who, in his death, aimed not only at the pardon of your sin, but the destruction of it, and the renovation of your natures: or, arm yourselves with the same mind, viz. a purpose of suffering in the flesh, i.e. of dying spiritually with Christ in the mortification of your flesh, Rom_6:6,7; as Christ died, and suffered in the flesh, so reckon that you, by the virtue of his death, must die to sin. and crucify your flesh, with its affections and lusts, Gal_5:24: or else, what the same mind is, he declares in the following clause.
For; or rather, that, the Greek word here seems rather to be explicative than causal.
He that hath suffered in the flesh; i.e. the old man, his corrupt flesh, (flesh being taken here in a different sense from what it was in the former part of the verse), he that is spiritually dead with Christ, whose old man is crucified with him.
Hath ceased from sin; from sinning willingly and delightfully, and yielding himself up to the power of sin; compare Rom_6:1-23, which explains this: what Peter here calls suffering in the flesh, Paul there calls a being dead to sin, Rom_6:2,11; and what Peter calls a ceasing from sin, Paul calls a living no longer in sin, Rom_6:2, and a being freed from it, Rom_6:7. And this may be the mind, or thought, with which they were to be armed, that they being dead with Christ to sin, should not live any longer in it; having their flesh crucified, should not indulge its affections and lusts.