WEDNESDAY October 11th
1 Peter 4:3–5
‘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. With respect to this they 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.’
Following from our previous devotion, and Peter’s continuing message, we need to also remind ourselves of what he has already written in chapter 1 ‘As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”’
If we have chosen to live for Jesus, then there are no if’s and no but’s in regard to living differently to how we once lived as unbelievers, Peter says ‘With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery’. Now please forgive me for asking here, but when it comes to our lifestyles are those who we consider as unbelievers that we have relationship in different ways ‘surprised when we do not join in them’ or is there no surprise because we do join in with them?
It is a serious question, because I believe the subject of holiness and separation is serious. I am going to quote not word for word but something that the preacher said in the sermon I mention previously, ‘as Christians we live with different rules to the world’, and even if we think that some of the rules are tough or difficult, as our heavenly Father he knows what is best for us and he knows what is good for us.
The latter sentence is a warning in two ways, a warning to those who are unbelievers that one day they will have to give an account to God for the ways in which they have lived, living in ways that showed total disregard and a total rejection of God. They are also written to warn us as believers, if unbelievers are going to be judged, how much more will be judged if having come to repentance and salvation we have continued to walk and live in ways that are the same as those who reject God and show disregard to who he is and that which he has commanded. That is why Peter says in verse 2 that we should ‘no longer live for human passions but for the will of God’.