Verse 1 --

• The word Forasmuch reminds us that Christ also hath once suffered for sins (1 Pt. 3:18). Peter instructs his followers to arm yourselves mentally for the same kind of suffering.

  • The phrase he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, has perplexed many due to two reasons:

    • Incorrect understanding of the pronoun he“anyone," when the context is only about the suffering of Christ (both here and in the antecedent, 1 Pt. 3:18).

    • Incorrect interpretation of the word sin. In Greek, the word sin“concerning sin." Thus, “concerning sin, he who suffered in the flesh finished it." This would align the thought with Hebrews 9:28.

      
      

  • The typical misunderstanding gives some impression that anyone who suffers from sin has overcome it. Note, for example, the English Standard Version, which translates the pronoun as whoever, and says, *whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh not longer for human passions but for the will of God *(1 Pt. 4:1-2, ESV).

    
    

• Verse 2 --

  • “new life in the Spirit" (as per Bullinger, who takes the standard interpretation of verse 1). Notice that the insertion of the word his to modify time is not needed with my interpretation. Jesus lives the rest of...time without living to the lusts of men (i.e.: the desires of men), but to the will of God.

  • One should note that there is a general truth that when one is willing to suffer for that which is right, sin often loses its appeal, and he is able to live free from the desires of other men on his life. Two examples highlight this fact.

    • “Eighty-six years have I served Him, how can I now deny my Lord?"

    • The Catholic Monk Savonarola (heretical in many ways) was a reformer of Catholicism going against the Medici power-family. When they threatened to cast him out of Florence, he noted that such would be fearful for a man with a wife and kids and possessions, but he had none of the above.

      
      

  • While these two examples could be joined with hundreds more, one still could not build a valid interpretation of verses 1-2 that suffering leads to life-long holiness.

  1 Peter 4:3-6 | Living Like Christ in Days of Suffering

  
  

Verse 3 --

• Peter now speaks of the Jewish nation, undergoing suffering, and notes that if the Jews were ever able to have wrought the will of the Gentiles to their satisfaction, the past gave them sufficient time, and the nation gave them sufficient behavior.

  
  

Verse 4 --

• The Gentiles now think it strange that ye run not with them*. *The verb run is in the present, active, participle, meaning currently running.

  • “on the run" from persecution. The secondary application is the same nation in the future tribulation. A distance third application is that whenever you don't run with the world, the world will be speaking evil of you*.*

    
    

• Verse 5 --

  • Peter encourages the Jewish nation, spoken evil by the world, but the judge of the quick and the dead.

  • Note that the word quick is a verb (present, active, participle, as run in v. 4), thus those living. The word dead is an adjective.

    
    

• Verse 6 --

  • The truth of verse 5 was the cause for which the Gospel had been preached also to them that are dead.

  • There are two very important matters in this concept:

    • The cause is judgment of personal activity (v. 5). This doesn't really fit with our salvation not of works.

    • The people are now dead. We can assume that this Gospel of which Peter speaks is the one that had been preached to the Jewish nation for generations, and thus was the Gospel of the Kingdom. Unless Peter is only speaking of those who died in the last 15-20 years, then he cannot be talking about the Gospel of grace.

    • The above to points agree with a position that the Gospel of which Peter speaks is not the Pauline Gospel, but the Kingdom Gospel.