1 Peter 4:1-6

Our voluntary suffering in the way of righteousness denotes our fellowship with Christ, and our breaking with sin. Let there be therefore no return, on the part of converts, to the evil life of paganism, even when urged to it by old comrades. They too must face the Divine judgment, which is the same for all, and rules throughout the universe, so that none, alive or dead, can escape this standard, or find any way of salvation save through obedience.

1 Peter 4:1. mind: better, thought (mg.).

1 Peter 4:6. This verse has been termed the hardest to explain in the NT. In the light of our explanation of 1 Peter 3:19 it need not be so, for this is a natural sequence to that passage. These to whom Enoch preached also served their term of punishment. Justice was meted out to them in a way to which no human system of law could take exception, and yet God might have mercy upon them and upon all who turned to Him in true repentance. The reality of judgment is as necessary for men to recognise, as the reality of mercy.

[Possibly the meaning is: Christ preached to the dead that the sinful principle (the flesh) might be destroyed, and that they might be spiritually quickened. The order of the words favours this; and since it is a Pauline common-place that the believer, while still in the body, is no longer in the flesh, the converse that the sinner is still in the flesh when he is no longer in the body is not intrinsically more paradoxical, but strange because unfamiliar. A. S. P.]