First Peter chapter four, verse number one. For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of man, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. When we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excessive wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excessive riot, speaking evil of you. who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. Ask him, Father, your direction as we consider very briefly some of the highlights of this scripture. May our Savior be glorified in our study. May our Savior be glorified in us as we apply what we see in your word to our lives. Direct us for your sake, for your glory, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Before the 19th century and sometime into the 9th century, there were two ways to get from New York City to Sydney, Australia. Usually those old sailing vessels went under the Cape of Good Hope, that is around the south end of Africa and then into the Indian Ocean and that way to get around to the other side of Australia. But there was another route, sailing by way of the Drake Passage or through the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. For a couple of reasons, the South American course was far more dangerous than to go the Cape of Good Hope route. One of the problems was that it was 1,500 miles further south than the end of Africa. It was only within a few hundred miles of Antarctica. The other danger included the extremely perilous currents, narrow passages, and terrible storms which faced those wooden ships, particularly as they headed west into the Strait of Magellan and on into the Pacific. Even today, the Strait of Magellan is so difficult that the Chilean government requires that the ships going through there have to have government pilots to lead them. They're not left to their own devices. In our current study, I feel like we have entered the Strait of St. Peter. with doctrinal narrows, with contrary winds, and possible disastrous heresies. For example, Christ preached to the unbelievers just prior to the flood, but it was through Noah. There are people who say that Christ actually went to hell and preached there a second gospel to those unbelievers so that they could be delivered from their torment. No. And then there's a statement, baptism doth also now save us. Ooh, we can run with that. Let's baptize everybody and take everybody to heaven. It saves us by way of illustration and example. Also, the verses that we've just read, particularly verses one and two, have a potential heresy in there. That is, we can make ourselves sinless in this world through the suffering that we enjoy. That is not right. Admittedly, these two verses are complicated and confusing. As someone who stands before others with a message to share one, two, three, four times a week, I know how easy it is to make simple things sound more complicated than they should. I have done that a time or two. It is common paradigm among politicians and heretics to obfuscate their proclivities, their rationale, and their biases. Did you get that? But for the rest of us, sometimes it just happens. I may use a word which I think is appropriate and I have a definition in my mind and you've never heard that word or rarely heard that word and your definition just doesn't match mine and so we're not communicating very well. Something like that. Or sometimes the words in our sentences are put together in such a fashion This never happens at home between my wife and I, but it happens in other families, that the words just get mixed up. And there's a lack of communication there for one reason or another. That may be the case in these two sentences. We have sentence one, verses one and two, and then the second sentence. And perhaps that's the same sort of thing. These words are not too difficult, but we need to sit down and think about them slowly. Simply put, and generally speaking, what is it that Peter is saying? Let's go to verse number three and work our way backward. It helps us this way. Verse number three declares the obvious. We were once reckless, thoughtless, hopeless sinners. There were days, there were times, there were periods in our past as unsaved Gentiles that we lived in lasciviousness. and lusts, loose, open, ungoverned, uncontrollable greed and immorality. It's just a part of us for so long. There were days when wine and revelings and banquetings were a part of our life. Parties, which may have included alcohol or drugs, and we went from there into more wretched things. And then we were filled with abominable idolatries, love for things in, what shall we say, which rivaled God himself. Idolatries. Now, those people that we used to sin with in our teenage years, our old cohorts, our old accomplices in sin, think it's strange that we no longer join them in the same riotous living that we did 20 years ago. or 50 years ago or whenever it was. Not only do they think it's strange, they actually in some cases go to the other extreme and speak evil of us for our morality and our attempt at godly living. Sometimes they accuse us of living with the attitude of being holier than thou. They accuse us of hypocrisy, of belittling them by simply saying, No thank you, I don't do that anymore. I'm a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So they throw these accusations at us. They're totally untrue. We are simply trying to serve the Lord. We're trying to live the new life which we have in Christ. We're trying to live the life that our baptism illustrated from chapter three. I now am a new creature in Christ. With this as the background, verse number one says to us, you should strive to live above all of those old sins that you had. It's not saying that Christians are sinless. It is not saying that if you sin, you are not a Christian. Peter is laying out before us the Christian ideal. And while he does, he gives us a weapon to use in pursuit of that plan. He says, when people die, they're no longer able to do those things that they used to do in the flesh, because they're dead. And specifically, dead people cannot sin. Peter is saying essentially what Paul tells us in Romans chapter six. Maybe Paul is a little more clear. He has a little more clarity in his vocabulary than what Peter has right here, but they're essentially saying the same thing. And for that reason, I'd like you to turn to Romans chapter six. We're going to read the entire chapter. Romans chapter six, verse number one. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein. We're dead to sin. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death. The like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, We shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Do you see how Peter and Paul are walking down the same trail? Peter's already been talking about this baptism. Paul goes on, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died once, but in that he liveth, he liveth forever, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Rather, yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members, your tongue, your hands, your feet, as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey his servants ye are, to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked that we were the servants of sin. Ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you, the gospel. Being then made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members servants to unrighteousness and iniquity to iniquity in the past, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness and to holiness, or as Peter says, to the will of God. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were freed from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin and become servants of righteousness, you have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the light of Romans 6, let's go back to 1 Peter chapter 4. Consider just a little more deeply what it is that Peter tells us. For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, Peter referred to Christ's sufferings in chapter three. In verse number 18, he clarifies that he is not pointing to the pain that Jesus endured, but to the blood that he shed on Calvary when he died. The suffering to which Peter refers is not Jesus' pain, but his death. We were not redeemed by Jesus' pain. But by the blood he shed on us as he died. So Peter could very well have said, and perhaps if I was paraphrasing, I would say it this way, for as much then as Christ died for us in the flesh, then let's move on. Peter didn't use that word, but clearly that's what he meant, because the last clause of this verse says, For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. The suffering to which he referred stopped sin forever. But the only thing which can really stop sin in the flesh is death. As long as I remain in the flesh Sin is potentially there. If I don't struggle against it, if I don't fight against it, if the Holy Spirit doesn't bless me in my struggle against sin, I will sin. It's just the way it is. Pain is not the solution to sin. I forget how old I was. I was run over by a car once. I broke my femur. And it hurt. I suffered for a while. Not only did I suffer, I made sure the rest of my family suffered with me. I was pretty young. Even when the cast was taken off, I suffered for a while. But you know, that suffering that I endured, maybe it was the fifth grade, didn't keep me from sinning later on. I continued to sin and continued to cause my family suffering. The only suffering in the flesh which completely ends sin is the suffering which we generally call death. By the way, as far as I know, only our Bibles, only the King James Bible says in verse number one that Christ suffered for us. I don't have all the modern versions. I'm trying to save some shelf space in my library. I have a few. I have a lot. I didn't consult every one of those modern versions that I have, but the most popular and most common modern translations omit the words for us. For as much then as Christ hath suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise. That may not be the end of the world. That's not the end of Christianity if those words are left off. But to my feeble brain, it's a huge omission. Verse number one might make sense without for us, but it means so much more when those words are there. So the ESV and the ASV and the NIV and the RSV are not improvements on the KJV by leaving off those two words. I'll just throw that in for nothing. Christ died for us in his flesh to deliver us from the penalty of our sins and also from the enslavement of sin. Peter then tells us, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind as Christ. Some people say that the exhortation is to think about suffering in the same sort of way that Jesus thought about suffering. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. They suggest that if we apply Jesus' approach to suffering, I will go through it for the glory of God, then that somehow causes us to cease from sin. No, that's not Bible doctrine. Again, I point out that Peter was not talking about suffering persecution. He's not talking about suffering pain. He was talking about death. And as far as I know, you correct me if I'm wrong here, none of you have ever died and come back to life, and none of you are claiming to be sinless, are you? Raise your hand, please. We'll have a little conversation when I'm done here. Okay. What Peter is saying is also what Paul told us in Romans 6. Arm yourselves. Pick up that weapon that the Lord has given to you. Pick up as a weapon against sin and temptation the fact that Jesus died in your place. The word arm means equip yourself with this as a weapon. Make it your sword. When the temptation for sin rears up and begins to attack, let this mind be in you. You're dead to sin. You do not have to bow to this temptation. You're dead to sin in Christ Jesus. You can have victory here. This suffering and this death were not felt in your flesh. They were felt by your Savior on your behalf. You died in Christ. Now, do you believe it? Pick up that sword. Arm yourself. Romans 6, 6. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, that our body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if you be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should abate in the lusts thereof. You do not have to let sin reign in your mortal body. Arm yourself with Christ. Verse number two. As a dead person, sin has no more power over your flesh to fulfill its lusts in you. If you choose to sin, it is because you have not put on the whole armor of God and you've not drawn the sword of the Word or the Spirit to fight against this enemy. Christian, as dead to sin but alive unto God, you have a new life to spend in carrying out the will of God, he says. Romans 611, likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it unless thereof. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh of the lusts of men, but to live the rest of his time in the will of God. Peter says, now you have a new life in Christ. Don't waste the rest of your life in the flesh, fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the lusts of other men. Spend your few remaining days fulfilling the will of God. This is not just the ideal Christian life. This is the way the Savior expects us to live.