I Peter 4

I Peter 4:1-6:
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, so as to live for the rest of the time int he flew no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, fries, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this thy are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 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 sprit the way God does. 

1 Peter 4:1 records the only command in this passage: “arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.” The rest of the passage explains why we should obey this command. This call to arms pictures the Christian as a soldier ready for battle. Victory requires weapons. An unarmed soldier will suffer defeat. He must be dressed for battle with armor to fight. The language assumes conflict. Christianity is a battleground, not a playground. We are at war against the flesh, the world, and the devil. 
​                               --H.B. Charles Jr

​The Holy Spirit gives me the strength to remain hanging on the cross – to keep saying “No!” to the demands of my flesh – until the lusts die. Then I truly become free from sin.
As a human being, my flesh is full of selfishness. That is why Jesus says that I have to deny myself and take up my cross every day, all my life. As I use this cross day by day, bit by bit, I am overcoming sin and becoming more like Jesus. Life gets better and better when I’m no longer bound to reacting the way I used to, and it also gets better for others to be around me! -Active Christian

I Peter 4:12: 
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:

​ Let not the unlearned Christian be alarmed, “as though some strange thing had happened to him,” and modern philosophy had discovered arguments to demolish religion, never heard of before. The old ornaments of deism have been “broken off” upon this occasion, “and cast into the fire, and there came out this calf.” These same difficulties have been again and again urged and discussed in public; again and again weighed and considered by learned and sensible men, of the laity as well as the clergy, who have by no means been induced by them to renounce their faith. Indeed, why should they? For is any man surprised that difficulties should occur in the books of Scripture, those more particularly of the Old Testament? Let him reflect upon the variety of matter on which they treat; the distance of the times to which they refer; the wide difierence of ancient manners and customs, from those of the age in which we live; the very imperfect knowledge we have of these, as well as of the language in which they are described; the conciseness of the narratives, sufficient for the purpose intended, but not for gratifying a restless curiosity; above all, the errors and defects of translations. Many and painful are the researches sometimes necessary to be made, for settling points of that kind. Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.—Be it so. George Horne, Letters on Infidelity, in W. R. Whittingham, ed., Standard Works Adapted to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, vol. 5 (New York: The New-York Protestant Episcopal Press, 1831), letter 8, pp. 271-72.