For the time past [is] sufficient [for us] to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, walking in lasciviousness, lusts, wine-drinking, revels, drinkings, and unhallowed idolatries.
Peter draws a line across his readers' lives. Everything before their conversion goes in one column, and over it he writes "enough." The verse then names what that old life held. The shock is that these readers had known God's name all along.
One writer contrasts the two halves of a believer's life, split by a single moment.
In our unconverted days we lived to satisfy our natural desires, with no thought of the will of God. We do well to remember that God divides our lives into two parts. There is "the time that is past," and there is "the rest of the time in the flesh." The hour of conversion is the boundary between them. In the earlier part we did the will of the nations, who never came under the law of God. Now we are to carry out the will of God. God has made that will known to us not only in the law but in Christ.
One writer hears urgency in that verdict.
There is no time to lose. The end is at hand, judgment is at the doors, and it begins with us who belong to the house of God. "Holiness befits your house, O LORD, forevermore." Living for the lusts of men ought to be utterly hateful to us. We have travelled that fearful road long enough. Giving in to our own will is lust. Lust comes from the flesh, so it is flesh. The will of the flesh is the will of the Gentiles; how can we run "with them"?
Another writer applies it to the days you have left.
Let this expression, "the rest of the time," come home to every one of us in its full force. How long it may be, none can say. It may be years, or months, or weeks or days. The coming of the Lord may bring it to a sudden close any day, and that coming is our blessed hope. Whether it is long or short, this is all the time we will ever have to live either in the lusts of men or in the will of God.
The list runs from sensuality to idolatry. One commentator explains how Jews living far from home picked up these habits.
There is no doubt that these wicked ways belonged to the Gentiles, not to the Jews. But the Jews scattered abroad lived among the nations, and were likely to be corrupted by their surroundings. Like their fathers of old, these descendants were drawn too easily into gross lusts and passions, especially when far from the sharp watch of eyes back home in Palestine. From there, with a bad conscience shutting out God and His judgment, they adopted unholy idolatries, such as amulets and charms. This is what the apostle charges as a fact in former days, on those who now bore the Lord's name. It was natural for the nations to live that way. It was shocking that people who owned the Lord as their God had walked in it. They now knew that they were no better than anyone else.
The phrase "what the Gentiles want to do" is not first about nationality. It is about whose will was in charge.
In the time that is past, our life was marked by doing our own will, and our walk showed what that will was like. These Jewish believers had walked according to the will of the Gentiles and committed the same excesses. That shows that the will of an unconverted Jew is the same as the will of an unconverted Gentile.
Commentators here read the letter as written to believing Jews scattered among the nations, and they note that this verse describes how far those readers had sunk.
The exhortation is similar to 1 Peter 4:3 — "The time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles" — only there the apostle of the circumcision was writing to believing Jews, who had in their former days sunk to the level of the Gentiles around them.
Kelly notes that some scholars read this verse the other way — as evidence that Peter was writing to converted heathen — and he answers that the language points instead to Jews who had lived like the nations around them.
One writer sets the two ways of living side by side. Only one of them costs anything.
That is the contrast between the lusts of men and the will of God. If I give way to the lusts of men, I do not suffer — not in the sense in which Christ suffered, doing God's will.
- Divided. Conversion cuts life into "the time that is past" and "the rest of the time in the flesh" — one boundary, two columns.
- Enough. One word closes the past column: it has had all the time it will ever get.
- Exposed. The list of sins shows what your own will produces when it rules. An unconverted Jew's will proved the same as an unconverted Gentile's.
- Shameful. Idolatry was expected from those who never knew God; it was shocking in people who bore His name.
- Remaining. Whatever time is left — years or days — is all you will ever have for living to the will of God.
Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with [them] to the same sink of corruption, speaking injuriously [of you];
When someone stops joining in, the old crowd is first puzzled, then hostile. Peter names both reactions — surprise and abuse — then points to the One who will settle the account.
The world cannot see what has replaced the pleasures it treats as normal. So it looks for a hidden motive.
The men of the world wonder that believers hold back from the indulgences of the flesh. Believers refuse to join them in pouring their life into the sink of corruption, which is what the world without God has become. These men know nothing of God. They know nothing of the desires and affections of the new nature, which make the lusts of the flesh repellent to the believer. So they can only assume that some evil motive is driving those who refuse to join their life of self-indulgence. The devil could not appreciate goodness either. He suggested to God that Job's piety was not real. Job held back from evil, he said, not because he hated evil or loved God, but because he found that holding back from excess paid.
Set this verse beside the chapter before it and a pattern appears.
In the previous chapter we learnt that the world falsely charges the believer with evil, and then condemns him for doing evil. Here the world condemns the believer because he refuses to do evil. So whatever the believer does or does not do, the fallen nature of man stands convicted: it opposes everything that is of God.
The attack also went after the name Christians carried.
Christians bore the name of God. The mind of men, hostile to His name, tried to bring disgrace on it. They blamed Christians for the evil conduct which they themselves practised without remorse. At the same time they complained (1 Peter 4:4) that Christians would not go along with them in the same excesses and disorder.
"Run with them" is how older translations read it. The picture is a crowd all moving the same way, and Peter's readers had stepped out of it.
The apostle urges the saints to live in a way that matches that holy name. He reminds them that their non-Jewish neighbours counted it strange that they do not run the same common race of impure and selfish indulgence. That race was so often tied to the worship of idols. Instead of approving the change, they threw out damaging accusations, as the world still does today in its Christian form. In this they only follow the prince of the world, who is a liar and a murderer.
The believer has lost the appetite for the old life. One writer pictures a pig that receives the life of a lamb.
Now the pig loathes and hates the filth and the mud. The other pigs think it strange that this pig does not run with them to enjoy the mud and filth (compare 1 Peter 4:4). They speak evil of it. They say, This is not a true pig; it does not have the nature of a pig. They speak rightly, for this pig has a new nature. The spotless lamb is its life. It delights to be clean, and to keep away from filth of every kind. That is the nature of the lamb.
This is also why the misunderstanding is so complete. What marks the believer out is exactly what the onlooker cannot read.
The world cannot understand the secret of our joy, of our strength, of our growth, of our separation; for we are sealed, marked as belonging in a special way to our blessed God, and understood by Him.
Peter does not tell his readers to defend themselves. He tells them who is listening.
Here he is giving them comfort. The Gentiles say you are strange; never mind, the apostle says. Suppose you did go along with them — they would think you inconsistent; and now that you do not, they think it strange. But, says Peter, we are walking not to please them, but to please the Lord. And we must remember this: God is ready to judge the living and the dead. They will have to give an account to Him.
The refusal carries a price.
If the Christian gratifies the old nature and gives in to it, it will not bring any suffering. But suppose the believer lives as "dead to sin" and walks in separation from this evil age. Then he has to suffer in some way. The life he now lives is no longer lived for human passions, but for the will of God. Such a walk brings the opposition of sinners and the hatred of the world — the very sufferings Christ Himself passed through.
- Strange — The world cannot understand a believer who stops joining its excess. It knows nothing of the new nature that makes those things repellent.
- Suspected — The world cannot see the real motive, so it invents a false one. The devil did the same with Job: he claimed that Job's piety just paid.
- Slandered — Surprise hardens into abuse. The world blames the believer for doing evil and for refusing evil, so the charge was never about his conduct.
- Separated — The refusal is not effort but appetite. A new life inside loathes what it once loved, and that walk will cost something.
- Settled — The accusers, not the accused, will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. So the believer walks to please the Lord, not them.