1 Peter 4:1

Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered … in the flesh The thoughts of the Apostle go back, somewhat after the manner of St Paul after a dogmatic digression, to the point from which he had started. Christ had suffered in the flesh. If those who had been baptized in His name were called so to suffer, they, looking to the glory that had followed on His sufferings, were to follow His example. They were, it might be, engaged in a tremendous conflict, but they needed no other armour than "the mind of Christ," the temper of patient submission and unwavering trust in the wisdom and love of the Father.

for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin If this had been the close of the sentence we might have looked on the "suffering" of which the Apostle speaks, as including death, as it had included it in the case of Christ. So taken, the words might seem to express the familiar thought that "Death only can from sin release," as in the Rabbinic maxim "He that is dead is freed from sin" (Romans 6:7), that men were to welcome the sufferings that brought death near to them, as working out their complete emancipation. The words that follow, however, make this interpretation impossible, and the "ceasing from sin" must therefore be understood of that "deadness to sin," "sin no longer having dominion over us," of which St Paul speaks in Romans 6:7-11. That Apostle, it may be noted, though he quotes the Rabbinic proverb, transfers its application from literal to spiritual death, and St Peter, following a like train of thought, affirms as a general law of the spiritual life that the very act of suffering in the mind of Christ and for Him so strengthens the powers of will and faith that the sufferer is ipso factodelivered from the life in which sin is dominant. It is hard to think of a martyr in the hour of death, or of a confessor patiently bearing his cross, as malignant or fraudulent or impure.