In 1 Peter 4 Christ is presented as the One whose sufferings we share.
First Peter 4:1 says, “Since Christ therefore has suffered in the flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same mind (because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin).” The word arm indicates that the Christian life is a life of battle. We need to arm ourselves, equip ourselves, with the mind of Christ. This indicates that the mind of Christ is a weapon, a part of the armor needed in fighting the battle for God’s kingdom.
In verse 1, Peter advises us to arm ourselves with the mind of Christ, who has suffered in the flesh, that we might cease from sin. When we are afraid of suffering, this fear may lead to sin. Hence, we should not be afraid of any kind of suffering; instead, we should arm ourselves with a strong mind, the mind of Christ, who Himself has suffered in the flesh. We need to be strong persons armed with the mind of Christ as a weapon so that we will cease from sin.
One main purpose of 1 Peter is to encourage and exhort the believers to follow the footsteps of Christ in their suffering of persecution (1:6-7; 2:18-25; 3:8-17; 4:12-19). They should have the same mind that Christ had in His suffering (3:18-22). The main function of our mind is to understand and realize. To live a life that follows the footsteps of Christ, we need a renewed mind (Rom. 12:2) to understand and realize the way Christ lived to fulfill God’s purpose.
In our practical daily life, the strongest part of our being is our mind. Whatever we do in our living is directed by our mind. It is not the will but the mind that directs our life. All our activities are under the direction of our mind.
Because the mind directs our living, the preaching of the Word must change a person’s thoughts. One goal of preaching and teaching is to change people’s mind. If we think in a certain way, we will be directed in that way, but if we change our mind and think in another way, our living will then have a different direction. What we think governs what we do, say, and practice. For this reason, Peter charges the believers in 1 Peter 4:1 to arm themselves with the mind of Christ.
To arm ourselves with the mind of Christ is to be armed with the thought and concept of Christ. This implies that we change our way of thinking. Many Christians think that as long as we love God and do His will, we will be under His blessing and will not suffer in any way. It is common for Christians to have the concept that those who love the Lord should not expect suffering. But consider the life of Christ. Christ loved God to the uttermost, and He did God’s will fully and absolutely. But what happened to Him in His living? It seems that throughout His life on earth there was not any blessing but only suffering. He was born into a poor family, a family not considered of a high class. Of course, that family was descended from David and thus was of royal lineage. But when the Lord Jesus was born, that royal family was very poor economically. Furthermore, this family did not live in Jerusalem but in the despised town of Nazareth in Galilee. The Lord Jesus lived in Nazareth for more than thirty years. At the beginning of His life, He was put into a manger, and at the end of His life, He was put on the cross. He endured suffering upon suffering. He did not have a good name, and He did not have a place to lay His head. This is the way the Lord Jesus lived when He was on earth. His life was a life of suffering.
If we have the mind of Christ, we will realize that we are living in a rebellious age and in a crooked, perverted generation. Because the age is rebellious and the generation is perverse, the more we love God and do His will, the more we will suffer. We will suffer because we cannot go along with the trend of this age. We care to do the will of God, but the will of God is absolutely contrary to the trend, or tide, of this age. We would love the Lord Jesus, but this is utterly against the trend of this corrupted world. Therefore, if we love the Lord and do God’s will, we are bound to suffer. This will be our outlook if we have the mind of Christ.
If we arm ourselves with the mind of Christ for suffering, we will be willing to endure suffering. We will praise the Lord that our suffering is part of our destiny, that God has appointed this for us, and that suffering is the portion of God’s children in this age. In 1 Thessalonians 3 Paul tells the believers that God has appointed us to suffering and persecution (v. 3). God has not appointed us to material blessing; He has appointed us to suffering. Therefore, knowing that Christ suffered in the flesh, we also need to arm ourselves with the same mind. We should not have the mind to pray for material blessing. That is to have the wrong kind of mind.
In 1 Peter 4:1 Peter points out that those who have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin. Pleasure heats up the lusts of our flesh (v. 2); suffering cools them down. The purpose of Christ’s redemption is to deliver us from our inherited vain manner of life (1:18-19). Suffering responds to Christ’s redemption in fulfilling this purpose, preserving us from a sinful manner of life, from the flood of dissoluteness (4:3-4). Such suffering, mainly from persecution, is God’s discipline in His governmental dealing. To undergo such suffering is to be judged, dealt with, and disciplined in the flesh by God (v. 6). Hence, we should arm ourselves with a sober mind to endure such suffering.
In God’s economy, suffering accomplishes a good work for God’s children. Suffering very much restricts our lusts. The more material enjoyment people have, the more they will exercise their lusts and indulge in them. But if we suffer poverty, persecution, or illness, this suffering will restrict the indulgence of lust. The devil uses riches to stir up lusts. God, however, uses suffering in the flesh to cause us to cease from sin.
The sufferings are used to arm the believers with a mind against the flesh, that they might not live in the lusts of men but in the will of God (vv. 1-2), that they might share the sufferings of Christ and rejoice at the unveiling of His glory (vv. 12-19), and that they might be witnesses of the sufferings of Christ (5:1).
In 2:11 Peter also speaks of war, the war between the fleshly lusts and the soul: “Beloved, I entreat you as strangers and sojourners to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” Both 2:11 and 4:1 refer to the same kind of fighting, to the warfare between the lusts and our soul. According to Peter’s word in 4:1, we need to arm ourselves with the mind of Christ in order to fight against the flesh with its lusts.
If we would arm ourselves with the mind of Christ, we must have Christ as our life. If we try to arm ourselves with the same mind without having Christ as our life, we will merely be imitating Christ in an outward way. If we have a strong mind to suffer, although we may suffer for the Lord’s interests, nothing of poverty or suffering will stumble us. We must arm ourselves with such a mind, but this should not be out of our natural boldness. This is to follow the Lord Jesus Christ who took this narrow way of a manger and a cross.