The End of All Things Is at Hand
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Read 1 Peter 4:1–19 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
— 1 Peter 4:7
Arm Yourselves
Chapter four opens with an image from war. Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. The military image is deliberate. Peter is addressing Christians who face ongoing spiritual combat. Their enemies include the world that rejects them, the flesh that wars against their souls, and the devil who will be named directly in the next chapter. And Peter’s counsel is that they arm themselves — not with physical weapons, but with a particular way of thinking, the same way of thinking Christ had when He suffered in the flesh.
What is this way of thinking? It is the mind that is willing to suffer for the sake of what is right. It is the mind that has counted the cost of faithful discipleship and has decided the cost is worth paying. It is the mind that refuses to compromise with sin in order to escape pain. It is, in short, the mind of the crucified Christ, applied by the baptized to their own lives. When Christians have armed themselves with this mindset, they have a defense against the constant pressure to take the easier path of accommodation to the world’s patterns.
The reasoning Peter gives in the next phrase is striking. For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. The interpretation here requires care. Peter is not saying that physical suffering automatically produces moral purity. He is saying something deeper. The Christian who has been willing to suffer for Christ, who has passed through the cost and remained faithful, has made a decisive break with the patterns of his former life. The suffering is, in the Lord’s purpose, a line of demarcation. On one side of it lies the old life of compromise. On the other side lies the new life of single-hearted devotion. Those who have been through the fire of faithful endurance have ceased — in the sense of having made their decisive turn — from the patterns of sin that once defined them.
In this session we will walk through a substantial and demanding passage. We will see Peter’s call to live no longer for human passions but for the will of God. We will examine his brief but important statement about the Gospel being preached even to the dead. We will reach his famous declaration that the end of all things is at hand, with the sober counsel that follows. We will look at his teaching on the use of spiritual gifts in the congregation. And we will close with his striking treatment of suffering as sharing in the sufferings of Christ, with the fiery trial not something strange but something expected, even to be rejoiced in.
No Longer for Human Passions
Peter continues, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. The language is decisive. The Christian’s remaining time in this age is not to be spent pursuing the passions that occupied the old life. It is to be spent for the will of God. These are the two alternatives for any human life — either we live for our own desires, or we live for the will of the One who made us. Peter does not propose a middle path. In Baptism God has made a decisive break with the old life, joining the Christian to Christ and setting the direction of the new life: no longer for human passions, but for the will of God.
What follows is a vivid description of the life the Christian has left behind. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. This list is not hypothetical. Peter is describing the actual patterns of life many of his readers had come from. The ancient Greco-Roman world was marked by excess — by the kind of revelry, sexual looseness, heavy drinking, and idolatrous worship that Peter names here. His readers, before their conversion, had participated in some measure of these things. Now, Peter says, the time has been enough. What was before, was before. What is now is different.
The Surprised Reaction
Peter then describes the reaction of the former companions of his readers. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you. The Greek word for surprised is strong — it suggests being shocked, astonished, unable to understand. The former friends of the new Christians cannot make sense of what has happened. These people who used to run with them in the old patterns now hold back. They no longer show up to the parties. They no longer participate in the drinking bouts. They no longer engage in the loose sexual culture. And the former friends, who have not had the same transformation, find this bewildering.
And the bewilderment turns, Peter says, into malice. They malign you. They slander. They mock. They accuse. They cannot understand why the Christians have turned away from the old patterns, and they resent the implicit judgment they feel in the Christians’ withdrawal. This is a familiar pattern. When one member of a social group changes, the members who remain often feel judged by the change, even when no judgment has been spoken. The Christian who lives differently from her former friends may find, as a result, that those former friends become hostile — not because she has done anything to them, but because her change is a standing rebuke to their continued way of life.
They Will Give an Account
Peter’s response to this hostility is striking. But they will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. The Christian does not need to vindicate herself before her former friends. She does not need to defend her change. She does not need to quarrel with their mockery. She knows that her former companions, like all people, will give account to the Lord who judges. This does not mean the Christian takes pleasure in this coming judgment; Peter has made clear elsewhere that Christians pray for those who persecute them. It means that the Christian’s own response is not retaliation but trust in the God who will eventually set all things right.
This is deeply consistent with what Peter has been teaching throughout the letter. The Christian bears misunderstanding, mockery, and malice without retaliating, because the judgment is not his to execute. The Lord sees. The Lord will judge. The Christian’s job in the meantime is to live faithfully, bear the hostility with patience, and entrust the ultimate outcome to the one who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
The Gospel Preached to the Dead
Peter adds a brief but important note. For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
This is another of the passages in the letter that has puzzled interpreters. The language of the Gospel being preached to the dead is unusual, and it is not entirely clear what Peter has in mind. The two most common interpretations are, first, that Peter is referring to Christians who had heard the Gospel while alive and have since died, whose physical death does not nullify the Gospel preached to them — they continue to live in the spirit the way God does; and second, that Peter is referring to some preaching of the Gospel to the dead in a more direct sense, connecting perhaps to the spirits-in-prison passage of the previous chapter.
The first interpretation seems most consistent with the passage’s purpose in Peter’s argument. He has just mentioned the judgment that applies to the living and the dead. He now notes that the Gospel reached even those who have died. For Christians who have died in the faith, the judgment according to the flesh does not have the final word. They live in the spirit according to God. The Gospel they received during their lives continues to be effective in them even in death. This is the hope Paul also speaks of in 1 Thessalonians 4 — that those who have died in Christ are not lost to us, that their death does not cancel the Gospel they received.
The End of All Things Is at Hand
Peter now makes one of the most important statements in the letter. The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
The statement is eschatological — concerning the last things. Peter announces that the end of all things is at hand. What does he mean? The New Testament writers consistently held that the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment could occur at any moment. They lived in what theologians call the last days — the era between Christ’s first coming and His second, which is also the final era of this age. From the perspective of the New Testament, this era is marked by a pervasive sense of impending consummation. The end could come tomorrow. The end could come in a century. The end could come at any moment the Lord chooses. What Christians know for certain is that the end is coming, and that they live with that reality always in view.
For modern Christians, two thousand years after Peter wrote, this language can be puzzling. How can the end of all things be at hand when two millennia have passed and it has still not arrived? The answer the Church has consistently given is that the last days began with Christ’s first coming and continue until His return. The intervening time — however long it lasts — is all part of the last days. The end has been near, in this sense, since the resurrection. And the urgency Peter calls for is not dependent on a date; it is the urgency appropriate to those who know the consummation could come at any time.
Self-Controlled and Sober-Minded
The ethical response Peter calls for is striking. Be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. The first-century world was full of approaches to eschatology that led people into frenzy — intense ecstatic experiences, apocalyptic withdrawal from ordinary life, feverish date-setting. Peter does none of this. He calls his readers to the opposite. Be self-controlled. Be sober-minded. The end is at hand, and the proper response is not frenzy but steadiness.
For the sake of your prayers, Peter adds. The self-controlled and sober-minded Christian is the one whose prayer life is sustained. The Christian whose inner life is disordered cannot pray well. The Christian whose thinking is unstable cannot intercede for the needs of his brothers and sisters. The Christian whose passions are unchecked finds that the spiritual disciplines of a life oriented toward God get pushed aside by whatever is currently consuming him. Peter wants his readers to be the kind of Christians who can pray through the last days — who have the inner composure, the stable mind, the ordered life that allows them to engage in the quiet work of intercession and communion with God.
Earnest Love
Peter then names the second mark of the community that is ready for the end. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. The word earnestly here is the same word Peter used earlier in the letter — it suggests intensity, real effort, serious engagement. Christians in the last days are called to love each other with this kind of intensity, not casually, not superficially, but really.
And Peter gives a specific reason. Love covers a multitude of sins. The phrase is drawn from Proverbs 10:12. In a community where Christians love each other earnestly, many small sins are covered — not in the sense of being ignored or excused, but in the sense of being held within a larger frame of ongoing mutual grace. When love is weak, every offense is magnified. When love is strong, many offenses are absorbed without destroying the relationship. This is why love is so essential to the life of the congregation — not because it creates a perfect community, but because it creates a community able to absorb the inevitable failures of its members without fragmenting.
Hospitality without Grumbling
Peter then adds a specific application. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. In the first-century world, Christian hospitality was essential. Traveling Christians depended on the homes of fellow believers for shelter. House churches met in the homes of members. The ordinary work of gathering to worship and to fellowship was made possible by the willingness of Christians to open their homes to each other. Peter urges his readers to do this, and to do it without grumbling.
The addition of without grumbling is realistic. Hospitality is costly. It takes time. It takes resources. It takes patience. It can be inconvenient. And the natural human response to this cost is to complain about it — to feel put-upon, to resent the demands, to count the cost against what one would rather be doing. Peter names this temptation and rejects it. Open your home. Share your food. Do it freely, without complaint. This is what Christian community looks like in its ordinary, practical shape — and it remains true today. The willingness to welcome, to feed, to shelter, to make room, is one of the quiet marks of a congregation in which the Spirit is at work.
As Each Has Received a Gift
Peter now gives a brief but important teaching on the use of spiritual gifts. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Every Christian has received a gift. The plural — varied grace — is important. The Christian community is not uniform in its gifts. Different believers have been given different capacities by the Spirit, for the building up of the whole body. Peter does not give an extensive list, as Paul does in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. He gives a compact typology — speaking gifts and serving gifts. These are the two broad categories into which most spiritual gifts fall.
Speaking and Serving
For those with speaking gifts — preachers, teachers, catechists, counselors — Peter’s counsel is that they speak as if they are speaking oracles of God. The word oracle suggests the weightiness of divine revelation. The Christian who teaches is not giving his own opinion; he is handling the Word of God, and he should speak with the seriousness that befits what he is handling. This is a word against casualness in Christian teaching, and it applies equally to pastors and to Sunday school teachers and to parents catechizing their children. The Word is sacred. Those who speak it should speak with the gravity the Word itself deserves.
For those with serving gifts — those who cook meals, set up for worship, visit the sick, care for the elderly, maintain the building — Peter’s counsel is that they serve by the strength that God supplies. The serving Christian is not drawing on his own resources; he is drawing on the strength God gives him for the service God has called him to. This is important because serving in the Church can be exhausting, and the server who tries to sustain his work from his own strength will burn out. The one who serves by the strength God supplies finds that God renews his strength for each day’s work. The service is done in the power of the Spirit, not in the power of the flesh.
That God May Be Glorified
The purpose of all of this is clear. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. The Christian’s use of his gifts is not about the Christian. It is about God. The speaker’s teaching is for God’s glory. The server’s serving is for God’s glory. The varied grace that has been distributed across the body is, in its deepest purpose, for the glorifying of the God who gave it all. This is the corrective for every form of self-promotion in Christian ministry. The gift was not given to us for our glory. It was given for the glory of the One who gave it.
Peter closes this brief section with a doxology. To Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. This is a small liturgical moment embedded in the letter — the kind of spontaneous worship that arose naturally in the apostles when they contemplated the goodness of God. For Peter’s readers, such doxologies would have been familiar from the worship of the early Church. They are an appropriate response when the truth of who God is and what He has done becomes vivid to us. Some truths are too big to be discussed. They can only be worshiped.
The Fiery Trial
Peter now turns to one of the most important passages in the letter on the theology of Christian suffering. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed.
The address is warm. Beloved. Peter is writing to people he cares about, who are facing hard things. And he gives them counsel that runs contrary to every natural instinct. Do not be surprised. Do not treat it as strange. Do not wonder what has gone wrong. Rejoice, insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings.
Not Strange
The counsel to not be surprised is important. Christians across history have often reacted to suffering as if it indicated something had gone wrong — as if faithful living should produce exemption from hardship, and the arrival of hardship must mean failure somewhere. Peter directly rejects this framing. Suffering, for the Christian, is not strange. It is not a surprise. It is not a sign of abandonment. It is what happens when those who belong to a crucified Lord live in a world that has not yet acknowledged Him.
The image of fiery trial echoes back to chapter one’s teaching on faith tested like gold by fire. Peter has been preparing his readers for this theme throughout the letter. Now he states it most directly. The fiery trial is coming — or is already here. And when it comes, it is not because something has gone wrong but because the pattern of the Christian life in this age is precisely the pattern of the Master who walked through suffering before us.
Sharing Christ’s Sufferings
The reason Peter gives for rejoicing is extraordinary. Insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings. The Christian who suffers for Christ is not suffering alone. He is not suffering in a random and meaningless way. He is sharing — participating in, being united with — the sufferings of Christ Himself. The pattern that Christ walked from the garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha is the pattern that His followers walk after Him. And the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings is a real fellowship, not a metaphor. When the Christian suffers for Christ’s sake, Christ is with him in that suffering. The suffering is an occasion of deepening communion with the Savior who went before us through the same kind of darkness.
And Peter gives a future-oriented ground for rejoicing. That you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. The suffering now will be followed by glory later. The pattern that runs through the cross and resurrection runs also through the Christian life. Suffering comes first, glory comes after. The Christian who endures faithfully in the time of suffering will also share in the joy when Christ’s glory is revealed at His return. This is not a deferred happiness to compensate for present misery; it is the organic outcome of a life that has been united to Christ’s by Baptism and sustained by Word and Sacrament. The sharer in the sufferings is also the sharer in the glory.
If You Are Insulted for the Name of Christ
Peter specifies what kind of suffering he has in view. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. The suffering that Peter is talking about is suffering specifically for being a Christian — for bearing the name of Christ in the world. Being insulted for Christ’s sake is itself a sign that the Spirit rests on the one being insulted. The world’s hostility to a believer is the world recognizing, in the believer, the presence of the one the world also rejected. When the world attacks a Christian for being a Christian, the Spirit is glorified in that attack, because the attack confirms the reality of the Spirit’s presence.
This is not a warrant for manufacturing persecution or seeking out hostility. Peter is addressing suffering that comes unbidden, because of faithful living. When such suffering comes, the Christian is not to interpret it as failure but as participation in the pattern of Christ. Something bigger is happening than the visible mistreatment. The Spirit of God rests on the one being insulted, and the Spirit’s glory is displayed precisely in the believer’s faithful endurance.
Not Suffering as a Wrongdoer
Peter is careful to distinguish the suffering he is commending from other kinds of suffering. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. This distinction matters. The Christian who is suffering consequences for his own wrongdoing is not experiencing the blessed suffering Peter has been describing. He is experiencing ordinary consequences for bad behavior. There is no glory in that kind of suffering, only correction. The Christian should avoid it by not being a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a meddler in the first place.
The inclusion of meddler in this list is interesting. Peter groups it with the serious crimes — murder and theft — suggesting that the Christian who becomes a busybody in other people’s affairs is engaging in something that shares a category with clear wrongdoing. This is a sobering word for Christians who, sometimes under the cover of spiritual concern, insert themselves into situations that are not theirs to enter. The Christian is called to mind her own vocation, serve her own neighbors, bear her own cross. Meddling in what is not hers is not Christian love; it is a kind of presumption that Peter names alongside other clear sins.
Suffering as a Christian
The positive side is stated plainly. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in that name. Peter uses the word Christian here — one of only three occurrences in the New Testament of a word that would become the standard designation for believers. The term was apparently first used by outsiders, perhaps mockingly, and the early believers had taken it up for themselves. Peter treats it without self-consciousness. If you suffer as a Christian — as one who bears the name of Christ — do not be ashamed. Glorify God in that name.
The charge to not be ashamed is important. Christians who are mocked, marginalized, or persecuted sometimes feel ashamed — as if there is something embarrassing about being associated with Christ, as if their suffering reflects poorly on them. Peter says no. The name of Christian, especially when borne in suffering, is a name to glorify God by, not a name to hide from. The Christian stands in the name she has been given, and she does so without shame, because the name is the name of the Savior who has already gone before her through every form of rejection the world can offer.
Judgment Begins at the House of God
Peter now gives a sobering observation. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?
The language is drawn from the prophets, who often spoke of judgment beginning with God’s own people before extending to the nations. Peter applies this to the suffering of Christians. The trials that his readers are undergoing are, in a sense, a form of judgment — not condemnation, but refinement. God is at work among His people, purifying them through their sufferings, preparing them for the age that is coming. If the refinement of God’s people requires this much fire, Peter asks, what will the actual judgment of the unbelieving world look like?
This is not a triumphalist prediction of doom for outsiders. It is a sober awareness that the sufferings Christians endure in this age, painful as they are, are small compared to the judgment that awaits those who have rejected the Gospel. Peter is not expressing satisfaction at this prospect. He is drawing a comparison to help his readers understand the scale of what is happening. The present suffering is difficult. But it is not the worst thing. It is the refining fire for God’s own people. The fire that comes upon the unbelieving world will be something far more severe.
The Righteous Scarcely Saved
The observation that the righteous is scarcely saved is worth pausing over. Peter is drawing on Proverbs 11:31 in the Septuagint. The word scarcely does not mean that the righteous are barely saved in terms of God’s power — God’s power is fully sufficient. The word suggests that salvation is costly, difficult, marked by narrow escape. The Christian life is not easy; it is a narrow way, as Jesus described it, walked by those who have been given the grace to walk it but who must still walk it with all seriousness. The salvation of the righteous is secure in Christ, but it is not cheap. It cost the Savior His life, and it requires the baptized to keep walking the narrow path, through trials and fires, until they reach the end.
Entrust Your Souls
Peter closes the chapter with a direct pastoral word. Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
Three things in this closing verse deserve attention. First, Peter names the suffering as according to God’s will. Not every Christian suffering is equally God’s will, but the suffering that comes from faithful Christian living falls within God’s will for His people. This is the suffering Peter has been discussing throughout the letter — the suffering that comes from being a Christian in a world that does not welcome Christ. And this suffering, though painful, is not outside God’s purposes. It is within them.
Second, the response Peter calls for is entrustment. Entrust your souls to a faithful Creator. The Christian does not hold onto her own soul by her own power. She entrusts it — hands it over — to the God who made her. And the God she hands it to is a faithful Creator. Both words matter. Faithful — He keeps His promises. Creator — He has the power to keep what He has promised, because He is the one who made everything in the first place. The Christian’s security is not in her own grip on her soul; it is in the Creator’s faithful grip on what she has entrusted to Him.
Third, the entrustment is paired with continued faithful living. While doing good. The Christian does not entrust her soul and then lapse into passivity, waiting for the Lord to rescue her. She entrusts and keeps on doing good. The two go together. The continued faithful living is itself an expression of the entrustment, and the entrustment is what gives her the confidence to keep doing good despite the cost. This is the shape of the Christian life in the age of suffering — entrust and do good, hand over and keep walking, give yourself to the Lord and keep serving the neighbors He has given you.
Gathering the Threads
Peter has given his readers, in this single long chapter, a theology of Christian life in the last days. Arm yourselves with the mind of the suffering Christ. Live no longer for human passions but for the will of God. Do not be surprised when former companions malign you. Know that the end of all things is at hand, and live accordingly — self-controlled, sober-minded, earnest in love, hospitable, faithful in the use of your gifts. Do not be surprised at the fiery trial. Rejoice in sharing Christ’s sufferings. Do not be ashamed of the name of Christian. Entrust your soul to a faithful Creator while continuing to do good.
This is a portrait of Christian life as it actually takes shape in the age between the cross and the consummation. It is not easy. It is not safe. It is not triumphant in the sense the world would recognize. But it is faithful, and it is grounded in what Christ has already done and in what He has yet to do. The Christian who has armed himself with the same mind Christ had, who lives for the will of God rather than the passions of the flesh, who knows the end is at hand and lives with the urgency appropriate to the last days, has what he needs to walk through whatever comes.
For the Lutheran Christian, this chapter is particularly important because of its union of eschatology with ordinary life. Peter does not treat the end times as a distant speculation or a code to be cracked; he treats them as the present reality in which the Church lives. The last days began with Christ’s first coming and continue until His return. In those days — which are our days — the Christian lives with both urgency and patience, ready for the consummation and faithful in the meantime. The Christian cooks meals, visits the sick, teaches children, prays for enemies, uses his gifts, bears hardship, waits for glory. This is what it looks like to live as a Christian when the end of all things is at hand.
For Discussion
The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.
Peter calls Christians to arm themselves with the same way of thinking Christ had. What specifically does it mean for you to have the mind of Christ in a situation where you are tempted to take an easier path?
The former friends of new Christians are surprised when the Christians do not join them in their old patterns, and sometimes turn hostile. Have you experienced this? How did you respond?
The end of all things is at hand. How does this affect how you order your life? If you really believed this, what would you do differently this week?
Peter calls for earnest love that covers a multitude of sins. In your congregation and in your family, where is this kind of covering love most needed? Where have you experienced it?
Every Christian has received a gift for the service of others. What do you believe your gift is? How are you using it — or where might you be underusing it?
Do not be surprised at the fiery trial. Does suffering feel strange to you, or has this teaching begun to reshape how you read the hard things in your life? What difference does it make to see your sufferings as sharing in Christ’s?
Looking Ahead
Next week we move into chapter five, where Peter turns to the specific calling of elders in the congregation. His teaching to the elders — to shepherd the flock of God willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly — will lead into his broader counsel to the younger, his call to humility, his warning about the devil prowling like a roaring lion, and the closing reassurance that the God of all grace will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us.
Before next session, read 1 Peter 5:1–11 at least twice. Pay attention to the shepherding language Peter uses, and to the connection between the human shepherds of the congregation and the Chief Shepherd to whom they will give account. This is a classic biblical text on the pastoral office, and it connects directly to the priesthood of all the baptized that we covered in Session Four. The two fit together as the Church lives under the Chief Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep.
Closing Prayer
Faithful Creator, who have called us to live no longer for human passions but for Your will, arm us with the same way of thinking Christ had when He suffered in the flesh. In the last days in which we live, grant us the self-control and sober-mindedness that sustains prayer. Teach us to love one another earnestly, to show hospitality without grumbling, and to use the varied gifts You have given for the service of Your people. When fiery trials come, keep us from treating them as strange, and grant us to rejoice in sharing Christ*’*s sufferings. And when we are called to entrust our souls to You, give us the confidence to do so while continuing to do good. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.