THURSDAY October 12th
1 Peter 4:7
‘The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.’
Well, if Peter thought that the end of all things was at hand when he wrote this epistle, how much closer to the end must we be today, some 2000 years later! The fact is that none of us know when the end of time will specifically be, but what we do know is that we are living in the last days. Because of this it is all the more important that we live in a way that today could actually be the last! No one knows the day in which Christ will return, only the Father who is in heaven, he is the one who has set the times for all that has and will yet happen. Our responsibility is to live in expectancy, live with expediency and live with excitement in our hearts that Jesus could come at any moment.
So, we should live in such a way that we would not be found ashamed at his coming. Peter wanted his readers to understand this, and tells them to live lives that are self-controlled, if we take this back to what he has just written, it is to live with self-control towards the manner of life that we are living and he says to also be sober-minded. Peter has already given this instruction back in chapter 1 and verses 13-14 ‘Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ’ and he followed this up with the call to holiness, ‘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.”’ Somehow, no matter how much we may want to get away from it, we can’t!
Imagine signing a contract and a little while later you want to get out of it or at least make some adjustments and you are directed to the small print and you think to yourself, ‘I wish I had read that before I signed’. Well, when we come to accept Jesus, there is no small print, no hidden instructions or commands, it is plain to see in the word of God, that accepting Jesus requires us to consider first, counting the cost and then to being willing to forsake the sinful pleasures and desires of the world, those things that are not beneficial to our Christian testimony and to follow him. Jesus would say to us these things are non-negotiable.
Now Peter links the need to be sober-minded and self-controlled to our prayers, the ESV links this back to Matthew 26:41 ‘Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ This was at the time when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and the disciples fell asleep! See the crucial hour had come in the ministry of Jesus, he was about to go to Calvary to lay down his life for the sins of the world. And the hour we live in is critical and crucial for us as believers, so much is being raised up that is anti-God and anti-Christian, we need to be sober-minded so that in the urgency of the hour we stay awake, and become prayerful so that we do not fall into temptation.