AAA

Scripture: 1^st Peter 4:1-6

Structure:

• Introduction
• Attitude
• Abstinence
• Accountability
• Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Some years ago, before the internet, each household with a landline phone was given a telephone book. This book was quite thick (thicker than it is today) and was divided into two sections, a white pages and a yellow pages.

Since the book was organized in alphabetical order, some tradesmen used to put three AAA’s in front of their name so they would be the first in the phone book. The three AAA’s did not stand for anything necessarily. The idea was that the triple AAA Plumbing company was going to get more business because it was easier for people to find their number.

The internet is not organized in the same way, so putting three AAA’s in front of your company’s name does not really work anymore.     

Today we continue our series in the New Testament letter of first Peter, focusing on chapter 4, verses 1-6. This is a kind of triple AAA passage, except these A’s do stand for something: Attitude, Abstinence and Accountability. From 1^st Peter 4, verses 1-6, we read…   

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. ² As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. ³ For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. ⁴ They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. ⁵ But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. ⁶ For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead,so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

In this reading Peter addresses the need for Christians to have the right attitude to suffering, to abstain from immoral behavior and he reminds us that everyone will be held accountable to God for the way they have behaved in this life. Let’s start with the first of Peter’s three A’s; Attitude.

Attitude:

If you are in the police force or the fire service or if you work in the emergency department of a hospital, then you know that in your line of work you are going to face some fairly confronting situations. Although you are there to help people and to do good, not everyone is going to cooperate with you or appreciate your presence. Therefore, in going to work, you prepare yourself mentally.

In the same way a police officer puts on a stab proof vest and a firefighter wears special protective clothing and a doctor or nurse puts on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) so too they arm themselves mentally with the right kind of attitude or mindset to cope with the unpredictable nature of their work.

In verse 1 of chapter 4 Peter writes: Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin.

Peter’s first century readers were (generally speaking) not understood and not liked by the wider society in which they lived. Earlier in the letter Peter had described the Christian community as aliens and strangers in this world.

With this in mind believers needed to have the right mental attitude to suffering. Like a police officer or a fire-fighter, they needed to go into the day with their eyes open, not expecting it to be easy but being prepared to suffer in some way.

It’s like when a rugby player places themselves to catch the high ball. They do so knowing they are likely to get pummeled in a running tackle. Or an opening batsman in a test match knows they have to stay sharp to avoid the bouncers and body blows coming their way from the fast bowlers fresh with the new ball.

When Peter, says whoever suffers in the body is done with sin, he does not mean that believers have attained sinless perfection. Rather he means those who commit themselves to suffer, who willingly endure scorn and mockery for their faith, show they have triumphed over sin. [1] They show that their commitment to a new way of life is greater than their commitment to their old way of life. They are not perfect yet, but they are on a completely different path.

Now in saying that Christians should be mentally prepared to suffer, we need to be careful not to misunderstand Peter’s intention. The suffering in view here is as representatives of Christ. While God does have ways of redeeming any kind of suffering, it does not automatically follow that all suffering is good. Sometimes suffering can cause us to walk in the way of righteousness and other times it actually makes us more vulnerable to sin.

For example, if you grew up with alcoholic parents and suffered as a child because of it, that suffering might motivate you to avoid the same mistakes that your parents made. But it might also make you more susceptible to following in their footsteps.

Or if you suffer from loneliness, then it could have the effect of softening your heart and making you more open, more kind, more available to those who don’t fit in easily. Then again it could drive you to drink or adultery.

Suffering, in the form of depression, can reduce your capacity to enjoy bodily pleasures (like eating and drinking and sex). But by the same token it can also rob you of hope and take away your ability to praise God. Losing all lust for life is not a good thing.

Suffering can take you down any number of paths. Suffering is not intrinsically virtuous. So we don’t want to go looking for suffering. There is enough suffering in this life without adding to it. The suffering of illness. The suffering of old age. The suffering of wars and pandemics and economic hardship. The list goes on. Better to try and enjoy life within God’s boundaries.

In any case, the kind of suffering Peter has in mind in these verses is not the random suffering anyone might experience in life. Rather it is suffering as a consequence of doing God’s will. Verse 2 of chapter 4 makes it clear that our attitude or mind set needs to be oriented towards God’s will, even if that means some discomfort for us in this life.

We won’t always get a hard time from non-Christians for being faithful to God. In fact, we may get respect. But Peter’s readers lived in a culture that earned them dishonor and disrespect for living a Christian lifestyle. Because the way of Jesus is foreign to the ways of the world, it is inevitable that Jesus’ followers will suffer through their association with Christ.    

Jesus certainly had a mindset, an attitude and an orientation of being obedient to his heavenly Father, even if that meant suffering. Jesus consciously and intentionally embraced his God given calling.

In Luke 9, we read that Jesus set his face like flint toward Jerusalem. Jesus knew it was God’s will for him to go to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die. Did he want to suffer like this? No, not really. But he set out resolutely – he steeled his mind, he armed himself with the right kind of mental attitude, to face the coming trial.

We see Jesus’ attitude to suffering for the will of God most clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prepared himself for the pain of the cross. In Luke 22:44 we read: And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Jesus armed himself with the right attitude through anguished prayer.

Now, while it is true that we need to be mentally prepared to suffer for doing God’s will, wisdom requires us to maintain a healthy balance in our attitude. No one can function at high alert all the time. No one can sustain Gethsemane level intensity for very long.

When a police officer or fire-fighter or ED worker finishes their shift, they need to take time off to relax and decompress. They need to find something else to think about so the job does not swallow them whole.

While we can never really switch off from being a Christian (because it’s a 24-7 gig) we still need to make sacred time and space to enjoy life in a healthy way. We need to stop sometimes and recognize the good news. If we go into every day thinking: ‘Here we go again, another round of suffering for Jesus’, then we run the risk of developing a siege mentality and always expecting the worst.

So there is a balance to find here in our attitude, between being ready to suffer for righteousness and ready to celebrate the good things.

Okay, so having the right attitude is Peter’s first A. The second A stands for abstinence.

Abstinence:

Getting baptized and becoming a Christian means abstaining from certain behaviours that do not characterize Christ. To abstain means to not do something.

A couple of months ago there was a short series on TV3 called Match Fit. Match Fit featured a number of ex-All Blacks, who Graham Henry & Buck Shelford brought out of retirement to play in a one off game against a Barbarians side.                     

Most of these players were out of shape. The programme showed some of the things they did to get ready to play at Eden Park. A big part of the preparation was having the right mental fitness, the right attitude. They had to get their head sorted at the same time they worked on their bodies.

Getting match fit also required the players to make a radical change to their lifestyle. They had to re-establish healthy routines of eating, training and resting. This meant a certain amount of abstinence. No more eating pies and chips and lollies.

One of the things their trainer said, which stuck with me, was that when you take something bad out of your diet, replace it with something good. So don’t just abstain from eating chocolate biscuits. Don’t just go hungry. Eat a carrot or an apple instead because your body still needs fuel to function.

In verses 2-3 of chapter 4, Peter writes:      

As a result, they [meaning those who have the same attitude as Christ] do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. ³ For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.

Peter is talking here about abstaining from self-indulgence and immoral behavior. He is saying, when you abstain from debauchery, drunkenness, orgies and idolatry, replace these things with the will of God. The will of God is healthy food for us. The will of God is like fruit and vegetables for our soul. It might not always be to our taste but it is good for us and it sustains us.

Now some of the words in Peter’s vice list are self-explanatory, like drunkenness, we all know what that looks like. But there are a couple of words there that you may not be familiar with like ‘carousing’ for instance. Carousing is another word for a loud drinking party. The sort that brings noise control out. Like ‘crate day’.  Debauchery refers to an over indulgence in bodily pleasures, particularly sexual pleasures. And idolatry is the worship of anything other than the one true God.

Eating and drinking and having sex with temple prostitutes was often part and parcel of the pagan religions of Peter’s day. The Romans and Greeks had made a religion out of debauchery and carousing. For them getting drunk and having orgies was not considered bad behavior. For them it went hand in hand with appeasing the gods and being a good citizen. 

In contrast to the paganism of the first century, a Christian lifestyle is not characterized by excess, but by moderation. Balance is important. It is usually better to avoid extremes because the pendulum of desire has a way of swinging back in the other direction.

In other words, it is okay to drink alcohol so long as you don’t get drunk. Of course, if you are not able to stop at one drink then you are best not to start drinking at all. It does not work to go out on a bender on Friday night and then sing worship songs in church on a Sunday as if Friday night did not happen.

Likewise, it is okay to celebrate with a party but the purpose of the party should not be to get intoxicated. The purpose should be to express thanksgiving and build healthy relationships with others.

And, for Christians, there is nothing wrong with enjoying sex, so long as it is within a loving marriage relationship.

Worship is good too, but only worship of the living God. We must not put anything else in the place of God Almighty.

The point is, we need to abstain from self-indulgent excesses and instead replace that behavior with doing God’s will. This is more sustaining to our soul and more consistent with the life Jesus lived.     

Jesus famously went without food in the wilderness for 40 days. The rest of the time though he was quite happy to enjoy people’s hospitality and go to parties. Jesus abstained from lots of things during his life. He abstained from bitterness and revenge. He abstained from hypocrisy and deceit. He abstained from sex and bad language. Jesus had perfect control over himself – both his mind and his body. And there is a certain peace and empowerment that comes with that.

How was Jesus able to do this? In John 4, after speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus’ disciples urged him to eat something. But the Lord said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

There is a fulfilment and meaning in doing what God wants us to do, which satisfies and sustains our soul, in a way that nothing else can.

Jesus was able to abstain from self-indulgent excess because he had the right attitude. His mind set was to obey the will of God for him, even when that meant suffering.

The other thing that helps us to do the will of God is accountability.

Accountability:

In the Match Fit TV series, the players underwent a special body scan at the beginning of their training to measure their body fat and metabolic age. Then at the end of the series, after they had trained for a couple of months, they had a second scan to see what difference the training had made. All of them improved to some degree or other. That second scan was their accountability.

They had another measure of accountability too; a fitness test known as the Bronco. With the Bronco players run shuttles of 20, 40 and then 60 meters. This set is repeated 5 times. The goal is to do this as quickly as possible.

If you are going to be on national TV, you don’t want to make a fool of yourself. When the day of accountability comes and they measure your visceral fat you want to have better stats than when you started. Same thing with the Bronco. When the day of accountability comes you want to have a faster time.

From verse 4 of chapter 4 we read:

They [that is, the pagans] think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. ⁵ But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

Notice the poetry in that phrase, flood of dissipation. It creates a connection with God’s judgement through the flood of Noah’s day.  

Many of Peter’s readers used to live a pagan lifestyle, complete with orgies and wild drinking parties. But when they were baptised and became Christians they stopped all that. As a consequence, they were ridiculed and verbally abused by their ex-drinking buddies.

As I said earlier, the pagan society of the first century had made a religion out of debauchery so, in their mind, Christians were bad citizens for not appeasing the gods and going along with their rituals. In fact, the pagans used to refer to Christians as ‘atheists’ because they refused to participate in the worship of the Roman & Greek gods.

Peter is saying that those who criticize and malign Christians will have to give account to the one who judges the living and the dead. In other words, everyone who has ever lived, past, present and future will be accountable to God Almighty for the way they have conducted themselves in this life.

Some will be vindicated by God (because of their loyalty to Jesus) and others will condemn themselves by the choices they have made.         

In verse 6 of chapter 4 Peter continues the theme of accountability where he writes: For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead,so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

This is one of those bird’s nest verses, if you remember last week’s sermon. People have got themselves into all sorts of tangles trying to unpick the meaning here.

Some think this verse is talking about Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead so they can be saved. While that idea is attractive in some ways, it is not consistent with the teaching of Jesus and it is not what Peter is getting at here.

Let me explain. The pagans of Peter’s day could dismiss the Christian faith by saying that Christian believers died in the same way as unbelievers. So if everyone succumbs to the same fate (of physical death) then what is the point of suffering and abstaining from bodily pleasure as Christians do?

Good question. What is the point? The point is, this life is not all there is. Physical death is a kind of judgment but it is not the final judgment. Those Christians who are now dead might be judged by non-Christians to have wasted their lives. But actually death is not the last word for believers. Those people who are now dead, but who put their faith in Jesus while they were still alive, will one day be acquitted at the final judgement and raised to eternal life with Christ.

This might seem like old hat to us but it was welcome news for Peter’s readers. We need to remember that the death of Christians created a problem for the church in the time of the apostles. It made some people think those who died before Jesus returned had missed out on their reward. But that is not the case at all. The dead in Christ will be raised to life also. 

Peter probably had in mind the Wisdom of Solomon when he wrote verse 6. From chapter 3 of the Wisdom of Solomon we read:

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself…” [2]

In basic terms both Peter and the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon are saying:

The wicked wrongly think the death of the righteous is a punishment and so the righteous are no better off. What the wicked do not understand is the difficulties of the present are only temporary. Believers have a future hope of eternal life. [3]

Conclusion:

Peter’s triple AAA gospel not only offers the promise of heaven. It stands for something in this life as well: Attitude, Abstinence and Accountability.

Let me leave you with a couple of questions:

Which of the three A’s is most difficult for you?

And what do you think Jesus would suggest you do about that? 

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

• What attitude or mind-set do you face the world with? Is this working for you? How is your attitude similar to (or different from) the attitude Peter recommends in 4:1?

• What examples do we see in the gospels of Jesus’ attitude to suffering and obedience to God?  How might we arm ourselves with the same attitude as Christ? How might we keep a healthy balance in our mind-set?

• Why did the pagans of the first century ‘heap abuse’ on Christians? Why do we need to abstain from the vices Peter lists in 4:3? Why is moderation helpful to aim for?

• In what sense is God’s judgement a source of hope for Christian believers?

• What does Peter mean in 4:6? What first century issues / questions was Peter addressing in this verse?

• Which of the three AAA’s (Attitude, Abstinence or Accountability) is most difficult for you? Why is this do you think? What little steps of improvement can you make in this area? 

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[1] Refer Thomas Schreiner’s commentary on 1^st Peter, page 201.

[2] Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-6.

[3] Refer Thomas Schreiner’s commentary on First Peter, page 209.