Arm Yourself With the Attitude of Christ--1 Peter 4:1-6 (1 Peter Series)

            There’s an old cliché which says, “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight!” When you’re in a conflict – be it a sensitive conversation or battle against temptation – you want to make sure you’re well-equipped to win the victory.

            The Apostle Peter has been calling us to be willing to do good even if we will suffer for it. Today, in the first part of chapter 4, Peter will tell us what a powerful weapon Christ’s attitude is for us as we stare down our own sinful passions and face peer pressure from others to do what is sinful. We’ll look at his teaching today in 4:1-6, and then we’ll wrap up our time talking in slightly more general terms about the important role that thinking has to play in our spiritual growth. Make sure you grab hold of this thought:

When you face suffering for doing good, arm yourself with the attitude of Christ.

1. Christ’s attitude pushes us toward obedience rather than sin (vv. 1-2)

            Peter has just shown us how Jesus was willing to do good even if it led to suffering, and now he’s going to challenge us to embrace that same attitude by showing us what a powerful weapon it is against our sinful passions and temptations [READ 4:1-2].

            When you embrace this attitude of being willing to do good even if it means suffering or discomfort, spiritually speaking it’s like you’ve traveled over a railway switch that moves you off of one path and onto a very different path. It moves you from simply pursuing your own sinful desires – which is what we all do naturally – to pursuing the will of God no matter what.

            Notice how Peter said we should “arm ourselves” with this attitude. It truly is a powerful defensive tool against temptation, because the threat of suffering is one of Satan’s last resorts when we are about to take a step of obedience. In my mind this week, I pictured it as a little glass box inside of Satan’s bag of tricks, and on the box it says, “Break glass in case of emergency!” When Satan sees you about to take a step of obedience, he breaks that glass and he pulls out the threat of suffering. He throws a temptation at you that says, “You know, your friends might make fun of you if you don’t go along with this! They may not talk to you anymore after this!” Or it says, “You know, you’re going to keep feeling pretty tense if you don’t just let all of that anger out. You could really blow off all that steam if you just punch that guy or run your mouth with those things you’d like to say. Or it might say, “You’re going to lose your job if you don’t go along with what the boss wants you to do!”

            If you can stare suffering like that in the face and say, “I don’t care; I’m still going to do what God wants me to do,” then you have turned a major corner on the path toward spiritual maturity. You have clearly shifted from having sinful desires as the driving force of your life to having godliness as the driving force of your life. Clearly then, this attitude is a powerful weapon.

We must also remember that…

2. Any time spent in sinful living is too much time! (v. 3)

            [READ v. 3] Does this sound like any culture you know? It should, because you’re living in it! Peter’s list essentially revolves around two sins that are literally celebrated in our society: sexual sins and drunkenness. Since at least the 1960’s our country has declared that libido is lord. One by one, we have thrown off every restraint that might hinder us from expressing our romantic urges in any way that we might choose. Today, our government promotes policies that are based on the idea that your romantic desires are more fundamental than even biological facts about you. Sexuality is rapidly becoming the primary way in which people identify themselves in our culture.

            And if you want to know what kind of an impact the celebration of drunkenness has in our culture, just look at the defining cultural event in our country – the Super Bowl. Every year, the commercials that air during the Super Bowl set records for how expensive they are to purchase. They cost gobs of money, and yet almost every other commercial you see during the game is from a brewery. And of course, the commercials themselves are very telling. Good times are waiting for you, they say; just add booze, and everything will be great.

Since these sins are so celebrated in our culture, we face a lot of pressure to conform to our society’s way of thinking. We may be insulted if we don’t, as Peter points out next, but we must remember this observation…

3. Sinful living is silly foolishness and it will be judged by God

            [READ v. 4] Let’s make sure we don’t miss the humor in Peter’s metaphor of a “flood of debauchery,” or sinfulness. When actual floodwaters rise, no clear-thinking person runs toward the flood – everyone runs away from it! They see the raging, dangerous waters and they move to safety.

            But with respect to sin, these people see a flood rising and they say, “Let’s dive in!” And then they look at you and say, “Aren’t you coming, too?” When you have the audacity to say, “Wait a minute – do you really think this is a good idea? This is a raging, deadly flood!” they start to make fun of you!

            Peter wants to make sure we see the foolishness of all this so that the pain for many insults we receive will lose its edge. When we remember how foolish people are to rush carelessly into some of these sins, their opinion of us becomes a little less significant. If they don’t have better discernment than that, their evaluation of us becomes very insignificant.

            This is a lesson that I really want all of you teenagers to remember, because you are right at the beginning or even in the middle of a phase of life in which you may have lots of people make fun of you if you avoid sexual sins and drunkenness. Remember this – people who live for such things and pursue them are not thinking clearly, so if they make fun of you remember that their viewpoint is not correct. If they say you’re a loser, they’re wrong! Don’t let their insults pressure you into doing what you know is wrong.

            And don’t feel like you have to get even with them or treat them the same way, because they will have to answer to God for the way that they treat you. Look at verse five [READ v. 5]. Now lest we think this is cause for celebration, let’s remember that this is really cause for compassion. These people who make fun of us need the gospel, and as Peter told us in chapter 3, we need to be ready to share it with them. It is the only hope that any of us have for eternal life after we die. Peter reminds us of this in verse six. [READ v. 6]

            Don’t get the wrong idea from this statement. Peter is not saying that people will hear the gospel after death in some kind of a moment that would offer a second chance to receive it. Notice that he says the gospel was preached (past tense) even to those who are dead (present tense). He means that the gospel offers us the promise of eternal life even though we still have to go through physical death.

The Importance of Thinking for Spiritual Growth

            In the rest of our time, I’d like to take a bit of a step back and show you how this passage picks up on a very important New Testament theme. In these verses, Peter states that in order for us to stop pursuing sin and grow spiritually, our thinking must rule over our feelings and our passions. We must be led through life by careful thinking, not by the whims of our feelings or our passions.

            Several New Testament passages emphasize the importance of careful thinking for our spiritual growth, but probably none says it better than Romans 12:2—“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

            According to that verse, the process of transformation that takes us away from worldliness occurs as our minds are renewed – that is as we learn to think about everything from a biblical perspective. Notice that finding the will of God is also described here as a mental process, one that involves testing and discernment.

            In light of this verse and Peter’s declaration that we must arm ourselves with a certain way of thinking, it is vital that we realize that spiritually mature people must be thoughtful people – people who think clearly, frequently, and deeply about the issues of life, and learn to think about them from a biblical perspective.

            I’m concerned today, my friends, that many Christians seem to have flabby minds – minds that are rarely exercised on anything of great significance. I’m concerned that we may not be pushing back hard enough against two significant trends in our culture.

1. The trend to emphasize feelings over thinking

            Our culture tells us today to follow our hearts and listen to our hearts. We have enthroned our feelings as an infallible guide for our choices. I know this song is a little dated these days, but Sheryl Crow once sang, “If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.” We have minimized and rationalized all kinds of sins because the people doing them seem to feel good about what they’re doing.

            We can also spot this trend in the way that we talk. When people share their opinions today, frequently you will hear them say, “I feel that…” rather than, “I think that…” This isn’t just an innocent or meaningless change in the way we speak. It reflects and then feeds into this trend to marginalize thinking in favor of feeling.

            I fear that we have baptized these ideas and brought them into the church. Many Christians will judge a worship service based on how they feel afterward, or how they felt during the music. If they get to their “happy place” emotionally, then they decide that they truly worshipped, but if they didn’t find that “happy place,” then the service wasn’t very good, or they didn’t worship.

            Also, when faced with a very important life decision, many Christians will spend very little time studying the Bible for guidance and large blocks of time trying to sort out what they think the Holy Spirit might be telling them through their feelings.

2. The trend toward excess in entertainment

            I have a serious concern, my friends, that we as a culture are amusing ourselves into stupidity. Let’s just talk about one form of entertainment – consuming media, like television or the radio. About two months ago, the Nielsen Company released a study on the viewing and listening habits of adults in the United States. They found that the average adult in the United States today spends five hours a day watching TV, nearly 2 hours listening to the radio, and about an hour and a half surfing the web or using other apps on our smart phones. When you add in a couple of other things like watching DVDs or playing video games, the average adult today spends 10 ½ hours consuming media every day. Now I can only hope that those devices were on in the background during some of that time and that we’re not actually giving our full attention to media for 10 ½ hours every day.

            Consider those statistics and ask yourself, “How different am I than the average American?” How much time do you spend trying to improve your mind? How much time do you spend trying to learn how to think about all of life from a biblical perspective? How much time do you spend reading the Bible?

            Or consider this: when is the last time that you read anything longer than a blog post that was meant to challenge your thinking and help you have a biblical perspective on life? I’m not trying to put down blog posts, but honestly, how much do we really think about them after we read them? Not very much I imagine. Now contrast that with reading a book that might take you seven or eight hours to read altogether spread out over the course of three weeks. That process gives your mind much more time to reflect on what you are reading and actually take it in and allow it to shape the way that you think.

            Or consider this question: when is the last time that you intentionally did something in silence, just to be alone with your thoughts? No TV on in the background, no radio playing – just total silence from all media? It’s great to listen to Christian radio or to listen to sermons or to read good blogs or good books, but time spent without any media input at all is necessary time to allow our minds to digest everything that we are feeding them. In the same way that your stomach needs time to digest what you put in it, your mind also needs time to digest what you put in it.

            Think once more about the message of Romans 12:2. If we are going to be transformed out of a worldly way of living, that process begins with our minds being renewed into a biblical way of thinking. That means we must be people who have our minds turned on. We must be thinking carefully, frequently, and deeply about the issues of life. Otherwise, we will find ourselves with worldly attitudes and opinions, and the worst part is that we won’t even realize it.

            And as Peter challenged us today, victory over our sinful passions and desires begins with embracing a certain way of thinking – in this case, it’s the mindset that doing what is good is always worth it, even if I have to suffer for it. Let us be people who buck the trend of our society toward flabby thinking. Let us allow God to change us through a renewal of our minds.