1 Peter 4:2

1 Peter 4:2. to the end, no longer according to men's lasts but according to God's will, to live the remaining time in the flesh. Two connections are possible, between which it is difficult to decide. The verse may be attached to the immediately preceding clause, in which case it must be translated, as in the A. V. and the margin of the R. V., ‘that he should no longer live the rest of his time,' etc. In this case it becomes part of the genera proposition as to the end put to one's relation to sin by the suffering of death, explaining the moral intention of the change of relation. Or it may be joined with the counsel ‘arm yourselves,' the intervening clause being then regarded as a parenthesis. In this case it expresses the practical object they are to have in view in facing their sufferings with the purpose which distinguished Christ; while at the same time it indicates how the general proposition is to be applied to their own case. The ‘lusts of men' and the ‘will of God' are contrasted as two opposite services to which one's life may be dedicated (as in 1 Peter 2:24. Peter has spoken of living ‘ unto righteousness'); or as two opposite patterns or standards to which one's life may be conformed. The latter idea is more consistent with the longer formula, ‘live the remaining time in the flesh;' with which compare 1 Peter 1:17. Analogous phrases occur in Acts 15:1, ‘circumcised after the manner of Moses,' and Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:25, ‘Walk in the Spirit,' ‘live in (i.e according to) the Spirit.' This also makes it probable that the ‘lusts of men' here are not the lusts of human nature in the readers themselves (or in the man described as suffering), but the lusts indulged by the heathen around the readers. These are an objective standard of life to which they are not to conform. Their standard is to be God's will. Bengel notices the contrast between the ‘lusts' which are various, and the ‘will of God' which is one. Compare Paul's contrast between the ‘ works of the flesh' which are discordant and make life itself a discord, and the ‘ fruit' of the Spirit which is a unity, and makes life a unity (Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:22). Neither of these words here rendered ‘remaining' and ‘live' occurs elsewhere in the New Testament. The latter, too, is never applied to any order of life lower than the intelligent life of man. The phrase ‘in the flesh' means simply ‘in the mortal, bodily life.' Peter never uses the word ‘flesh' (at least in this Epistle), in the ethical sense which it often has in Paul, as denoting the sinful nature of man or the ‘principle and realm of earthliness.'