What does it mean that he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin (1 Peter 4:1)?

(1 Peter 4:1). In order that the Christian may be strengthened to have done with sin, or the gratification of the will of the flesh, the Apostle sets Christ before us as our perfect Example. Christ came into the world to do the will of God; and though He never had to meet sin within, as we have, yet He was tempted to the utmost by sin without: every conceivable adverse power was arrayed against Him, the contradiction of sinners, the power of the devil, the claims of natural relationships, the ignorance of disciples, and at last the power of death, all brought to bear upon Christ in the endeavour to move Him from the path of perfect obedience to the will of the Father. He resisted every temptation, and chose death rather than disobedience, and that too when, as it has been said, “death had the character of wrath against sin and judgment. Bitter as the cup was, He drank it rather than not fulfil to the uttermost His Father's will and glorify Him”. Suffering death rather than yielding to the principle of sin, He has by dying done with sin for ever.

It is ever the great effort of the enemy to entrap believers into sin by tempting us to gratify the flesh in some form or other. He knows the particular form of gratification that will appeal to each one, and tempts us accordingly. To meet his temptations we are instructed 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; on the contrary it is gratified: but we sin, and in due course suffer the governmental consequences of sinning. If we refuse to yield to sin, the flesh suffers, but we cease from sin, and live to the will of God, enjoying the blessedness of so doing.

(V. 2). To cease from sin, however right, is only a negative virtue: the Apostle therefore passes on to speak of the positive side of Christian life. Conversion divides the life here into two distinct periods: first, “the time past of our life”; secondly, “the rest of his time in the flesh”. As to the time that is left, it is only consistent, as the Apostle says, that we should no longer live to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. 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.

"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." In this chapter (1 Peter 4) we come to the divine government in dealing with nature opposing itself to the will of God. "For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." If you yield to nature, you gratify it; but if you suffer in refusing its wishes, then "he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." It is practical; and holiness costs suffering in this world. Suffering is the way in which power in practice is found against the flesh; so that "he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God." The time past might well suffice for the wretched gratification of self. Do men wonder at one's abstaining? They are going to be judged. "For for this cause was the gospel preached to the dead also, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." Thus he shows that even if you look at those that are dead, there was no difference. They too, those who had been before them, had been put to the proof in this way. He is keeping up the link with saints of old by a general principle. Whatever the form, God never gives up His righteous government, though there is His grace also. Hence, if any received the gospel, they were delivered from judgment, and lived according to God in the Spirit. If they despised it, they none the less suffered the consequences.

Great, and varied, and infinite are the results of His suffering; yet here the apostle speaks, not of its being the efficacious means of bringing us to God as blameless and spotless as Himself, but of its practical power against sin day by day. "Since Christ then suffered in flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind." Christ never yielded, but suffered being tempted; holy Himself, He kept sin outside. He had no sin in the human nature which He took. But how were we to be met who had it within and were guilty without? He died for us, yea for our sins; He was forsaken of God that this judgment might be complete; and in this judgment the apostle Paul adds that God condemned the root of all, sin in the flesh, in Him a sacrifice for sin, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.

Peter here draws from Christ for the Christian the great abstract principle, "because he that suffered in flesh hath ceased from sin, no longer to live the rest of time in flesh to men's lusts but to God's will." Allowing all the difference between the Saviour and the saved, this truly applies to His followers. When we sin, it is our own will that is active to His dishonour. One suffers in refusing to sin; one judges and hates and thwarts the will of flesh, and suffers, but does not sin. If by grace our mind is set on God's will at all cost, sin does not enter. It is suffering in flesh, and therein is separation from sin. And this is the simple normal state of the Christian with the heart resting on Him that went down below all depths for him. When the heart loses sight of Him, one shirks suffering, and the will asserts fleshly activity, and actual sin follows. But we are sanctified by the Spirit to the obedience of Jesus, no less than to the sprinkling of His blood. We are left here to do the will of God, now that we are Christ's.

That suffering must be expected by the Christian is very clear. His life is to be one of well doing, but he may suffer for doing well (1 Peter 2:20). It is to be a life of righteousness, but he may suffer for righteousness' sake (1 Peter 3:14). The first verse of chapter 4 reverts to this matter, and instructs us that we are to be armed for the conflict with the mind to suffer. It was the mind that animated Christ. He suffered for us in the flesh, and that even to death (3:18). There is, of course, a difference. He suffered for us in atonement, and this we can never do. He "suffered being tempted" (Heb. 2:18), because being perfectly holy, the very thought of sin was abhorrent to Him. We suffer in refusing temptation and in ceasing from sin, because, alas! sin is alluring to the flesh within us. If we gratify the flesh we do not suffer, but we sin. If we refuse temptation and have done with sin, the flesh suffers instead of being gratified. But it is just that suffering that is incumbent upon us.

Christ's suffering in the flesh is set before us then as an example; not His sufferings for us in atonement, which were His alone, but His sufferings in a contrary world, in precious, lowly grace. We are to arm ourselves with the same mind, which at least means a studious, decisive preparedness to willingly suffer wrong. To suffer in the flesh involves the refusal of sin's enticements, and hence ceasing from sin, the decision of heart to no longer live as subject to natural lusts, but rather as subject to the will of God. This is normal Christianity.

A. — To the believer who, refusing to yield to the solicitations of sin, suffers thereby instead of gratifying the flesh. As Christ once suffered for sins not His own Himself the ever sinless One but ours, so are we called to let this suffice, as well as "the time past of our life," and if now we suffer from without it should be not for sins but for righteousness (1 Peter 3:14), or as a Christian (1 Peter 4:14-16). Arming ourselves "with the same mind" we refuse the evil at whatever cost, that we may live to the will of God.

Peter speaks of both. He says, "He that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin" (1 Peter 4:1). That means that when the enticement to sin assails the Christian, instead of gratifying the desire within that answers to the temptation without, he resists it, and suffers in the flesh. He says, No, Christ suffered for my sins. I will not allow and gratify that which caused Him to suffer, the Just for the unjust to bring me to God. But in chapter 1:6-7, he speaks of "manifold temptations;" these are not enticements to do evil, but the trial of the Christian's faith. They are tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, pain, bereavement, tears and other burdens and vicissitudes of life (Rom. 8:35), by which Christians are tested, and which discover whether God is greater to them than their sorrows and adversities, and nearer to them than their circumstances, and whether they can wholly trust in Him at all times. Plainly then, temptation is often used in Scripture when enticement to do evil is not the subject at all. Enticement, if yielded to, betrays the bad that is in us, but this other kind of temptation tests us and brings out the good if we really rely upon God, or it may reveal to us our self-confidence and folly, as it did in Peter's case.

Peter speaks of both. He says, “He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin” (1 Pet. 4:1). That means that when the enticement to sin assails the Christian, instead of gratifying the desire within that answers to the temptation without, he resists it, and suffers in the flesh. He says, No, Christ suffered for my sins. I will not allow and gratify that which caused Him to suffer, the Just for the unjust to bring me to God. But in chapter 1:6-7, he speaks of “manifold temptations;” these are not enticements to do evil, but the trial of the Christian's faith. They are tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, pain, bereavement, tears and other burdens and vicissitudes of life (Rom. 8:35), by which Christians are tested, and which discover whether God is greater to them than their sorrows and adversities, and nearer to them than their circumstances, and whether they can wholly trust in Him at all times. Plainly then, temptation is often used in Scripture when enticement to do evil is not the subject at all. Enticement, if yielded to, betrays the bad that is in us, but this other kind of temptation tests us and brings out the good if we really rely upon God, or it may reveal to us our self-confidence and folly, as it did in Peter's case.

The flesh must suffer to do it. You do not gratify the flesh. You suffer; the sin is stopped. If you gratify the flesh you commit a sin.

Now it is the same thing with respect to ourselves in daily life. If I suffer in the flesh, the will of the flesh is assuredly not in action; and the flesh, in that I suffer, is practically dead — 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; sin is not there, as to fact; for to suffer is not will, it is grace acting in accordance with the image and the mind of Christ in the new man; and we are freed from the action of the old man. It does not act; we rest from it; we have done with it, no longer to live, for the remainder of our life here below in the flesh, according to the lusts of man, but according to the will of God, which the new man follows.