Christ, then, having suffered for us in [the] flesh, do *ye* also arm yourselves with the same mind; for he that has suffered in [the] flesh has done with sin,
Peter points back to Christ suffering in the flesh, and turns it into a command: take up the same mind as a weapon. Two questions follow. Which of Christ's sufferings are we meant to share? And how does suffering in the flesh make a person cease from sin?
The verse looks back to the cross. Not every part of the cross can be copied. Commentators mark carefully which sufferings we are to imitate.
Christ's suffering in the flesh is held up to us as an example. Not His sufferings for us in atonement, which were His alone, but His sufferings in a world set against Him, in precious, lowly grace. We are to arm ourselves with the same mind. That means at least a careful, settled readiness to suffer wrong willingly. To suffer in the flesh means refusing what sin offers, and so ceasing from sin. It is the heart's decision to live no longer under natural desires, but under the will of God. This is normal Christianity.
Christ's sufferings do more than one thing. Here Peter has one of them in view.
The results of His suffering are great, varied and endless. Yet here the apostle is not speaking of it as the effective means of bringing us to God, as blameless and spotless as Himself. He is speaking of its practical power against sin, day by day.
Peter's first readers had been taught to read hardship as a verdict from God.
They were Jews, and they had been taught that blessings in this life were the only marks of God's favour. Trials, sufferings and persecutions, in Jewish thinking, were signs of His disfavour. So they lost heart and were badly confused when persecution came and they had to suffer. But these sufferings were the evidence that they followed Him who also suffered in the flesh.
To arm yourself implies an enemy. It also implies a decision made before the pressure arrives.
The enemy's constant great effort is to trap believers into sin by tempting us to gratify the flesh in some form or other. He knows the particular kind of pleasure that will appeal to each one, and tempts each person there. To meet his temptations we are told to arm ourselves against sin by having the same mind as Christ — the mind to suffer rather than yield to sin. If we yield, the flesh does not suffer; it is gratified instead: but we sin… If we refuse to yield to sin, the flesh suffers, but we cease from sin, and live to the will of God, and enjoy the blessedness of doing so.
The phrase is not about pain in general. It describes what happens when you refuse your own will instead of feeding it.
The will of the flesh is the practical principle of all sin. Self-will is not obedience to God, so in its very principle it is sin; and because it is the will of the flesh, it shows itself in the flesh's desires. It does not turn towards God, but towards what the flesh wants. It is a nature at work that is hostile to God's nature. Suffering in the flesh is the opposite of this will, this working of the nature. It applies both to Christ and to us; but in Christ's case it applies to His death.
Read this way, the second half of the verse is no longer a puzzle. It offers a simple choice.
If you yield to nature, you gratify it. But if you suffer by refusing what it wants, then "whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin." It is practical, and holiness costs suffering in this world. Suffering is the way we find practical power against the flesh.
Paul writes about the same truth in different words. One commentator sets the two side by side.
It is similar in 1 Peter 4:1, "whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin," while with Paul it is "one who has died". It is the same truth. One gives the principle, and the other the outward, practical working out of it.
The same writer draws the conclusion for daily life:
Peter's side is the practical, lived-out reckoning of self as dead. There I arm myself with the same mind. If I always reckoned myself completely dead, Satan could do nothing with me at all.
- The mind — copy Christ's sufferings in a hostile world. His atoning sufferings were His alone.
- The armour — arm yourself by deciding in advance to suffer rather than yield. The enemy knows which pleasure appeals to you.
- The suffering — to suffer in the flesh is to refuse your own will. That will is the practical principle of all sin.
- The ceasing — yield, and the flesh is gratified. Refuse, and it suffers, and sin stops. Holiness costs suffering.
- The result — you live no longer under natural desires but under the will of God. Grant calls this normal Christianity, not a higher level.
no longer to live the rest of [his] time in [the] flesh to men's lusts, but to God's will.
Peter has just pointed to Christ suffering in the flesh, and now draws the conclusion for those who follow Him. Two forces can rule the time a believer has left — human desires, or the will of God — and this verse asks which one will fill it.
The phrase "the rest of the time" only makes sense if something has already ended.
Before we were converted, we lived to satisfy our natural desires, with no thought of the will of God. Now we are on exactly opposite lines, as verse 2 shows. We do well to remember that God divides our lives into two parts: "the time that is past" and "the rest of the time in the flesh." The hour of conversion is the boundary between them. In the earlier part we carried out the will of the nations who never were put under the law of God. Now we are to carry out the will of God, which has been made known to us not merely in the law but in Christ.
The New Testament uses the word "flesh" in several ways. Here it means life in the body on earth, not the evil nature inside us.
The human race is called "all flesh"… someone living in the body on earth is in the flesh (1 Peter 4:2), and earthly relations are called relatives according to the flesh… Besides all this, we meet the term flesh in a moral sense, describing the evil nature within us.
The verse hangs on the clause before it: the one who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. The link between them is what suffering costs the will.
It is the same with us in daily life. If I suffer in the flesh, the will of the flesh is surely not in action. In that I suffer, the flesh is dead in practice — I have nothing more to do with sins. We then are freed from it, have done with it, and are at rest. If we are content to suffer, the will does not act, and sin is not there as a fact. To suffer is not will. It is grace acting in keeping with the image and the mind of Christ in the new man.
The reverse also holds. Gratifying the old nature costs nothing; the suffering starts when you refuse.
If the Christian gratifies the old nature and yields to it, this will not involve any suffering. But if the believer lives as "dead to sin," and walks in separation from this evil age, the result will be that he has to suffer in some way.
If suffering keeps sin out, sin gets in when the heart looks away.
If by grace our mind is set on God's will at all cost, sin does not enter. It is suffering in flesh, and in that is separation from sin. This is the simple, normal state of the Christian: the heart rests on Him who went down below all depths for him. When the heart loses sight of Him, one avoids suffering. Then the will asserts the activity of the flesh, and actual sin follows.
Peter does not stop at a prohibition. The second half of the verse gives something to live for, and you reach it by deciding in advance.
To cease from sin, however right, is only a negative virtue: the Apostle therefore goes on to speak of the positive side of Christian life… We arm ourselves against Satan by making up our minds to suffer rather than sin, and by setting our faces toward God with the desire to do His will.
Living to God's will has another name: being set apart, or consecrated, to Him.
He is to know not only that he is cleansed by that blood, but set apart for God by it… He is now to be fully awake to this: he is consecrated to the service of God. The ear is to listen to His word, the hand to serve Him, and the foot to walk in His ways.
No one knows how much of that time is left.
How long it may be, none can say. It may be years, or months, or weeks or days. The coming of the Lord may end it suddenly any day, and that is our blessed hope. But whether long or short, this is all the time we shall have in which to live either in the lusts of men, or in the will of God.
- Divided. God cuts a life in two — the time past and the rest of the time — with conversion as the boundary.
- Decided. You arm yourself in advance by making up your mind to suffer rather than sin.
- Costly. Yielding to the old nature costs nothing. Refusing it brings suffering, and that refusal is where sin stops.
- Guarded. Sin returns the moment the heart loses sight of Christ, and the will starts acting again.
- Consecrated. The time left is not merely emptied of lusts but given away — ear, hand and foot set apart for the will of God.