NOTES for Pe1 4:1-19

Here several of the most important truths about Christian life are contained in one sentence, truths that we must spend years coming to understand through our own experience. We do not realize right away that the fullness of Christian life is revealed not in satisfying our growing needs, whether material or spiritual, but precisely in serving others, in helping satisfy their needs.

Then a good deal of time goes into finding our own path of service. We try different versions of what we have seen in others, become disappointed, and lose heart, until we discover what was always right under our nose: the very thing Peter writes about, serve with the gift you have. Then we begin to "bother" everyone around us with this gift of ours, forgetting that it is not ours but given to us, and not for our self-realization but for service. And when we realize that the gift is from God, we begin to judge everyone from the point of view of whether they have been endowed with this gift or not.

Only after we have done a great deal of harm and lost many people who were once close to us do we come to a humble recognition of the manifold grace of God and become able to accept a small part in God's stewardship: the building of the Church, the one Body of Christ, out of unique "stones" that are unlike one another.

Today the Apostle Peter calls us to accept persecution, slander, and abuse because in this way we follow our Teacher and Lord. Only let none of you suffer for an actual crime, the apostle says. But if you suffer as Christians, you are blessed. What do his words mean for us today, when there is no visible persecution?

First, let us not forget that our brothers and sisters in a number of countries are subjected to persecution and restrictions. Even if they are “separated” brethren and we have no ecclesial communion with them, their suffering is nevertheless the suffering of the whole Church. Prayer and support for our suffering non-Orthodox brothers and sisters would therefore be so important. All through those dark years of Bolshevism, others prayed for us! And today, before any debate, we can pray for the Christians of China and Taiwan, Iran, Sudan, and Indonesia, despite the fact that they are not Orthodox.

Second, anyone who has ever refused to take part in “drinking bouts, revelries, and carousings” (these are the Apostle Peter’s words; the Synodal text smooths them over and says “drunkenness and excess in food and drink”), anyone who has avoided this even once can testify that people look at you as if you were abnormal. “Life is passing you by!” the pagans tell you. And when Christians testify that one must not kill, lie, or steal, that these things are wrong, it provokes undisguised irritation in any society. If our life causes no surprise by its moral character, that is most likely a reason for confession.

Peter speaks of hardships and persecutions as something practically inevitable for a Christian. And the matter is not even what exactly a Christian does, or how and what he believes, but how and by what he lives. The life of the Kingdom that a Christian carries within himself is unacceptable to the world; from this comes the inevitability of conflict.

Former friends and acquaintances usually become especially aggressive in such cases: they see that the person has changed, has become different and alien, but they cannot understand what has happened, because the changes are connected with something completely incomprehensible, ephemeral, and even fantastic to them. The first reaction in such a situation is the desire to return the old acquaintance to his former life immediately and by any means. But in a broader context as well, the life of a Christian turns out to be something incomprehensible, unnecessary, and even dangerous to the world: it becomes an alternative to the existing order of things, and to a person of this world such an alternative always appears destructive.

But the apostle calls us not to pay attention to this reaction from the world, but to live our own life and do our own work. And the main thing here is to do everything one says and does in the fullness of God’s presence. If you speak, speak as if you stand before God Himself, for a Christian by definition is called to live in His presence. Whatever you do, whatever you are occupied with, always check: is this God’s work that you are doing, does His power accompany you in your labors, does He need what you are occupied with? Let it be so that not only words sound in God’s presence, but every deed is done with His participation. Then everything will be both said and done rightly.

And persecutions and hardships in this case mean nothing: what matters is not what is done to a person, but what he himself does. If the commandment has not been broken, if the person has robbed no one, killed no one, stolen from no one, then no punishments will make him worse. The main thing is what the person himself chooses.

Speaking about persecutions and harassments, Peter distinguishes clearly and absolutely the harassment according to the law for faith and the same harassment according to the law for criminal offenses. There is nothing surprising here: indeed, the way of the Christian is the way of the righteous, conscious sin and Christianity are incompatible things. But why it was necessary for the apostle to speak about things it would seem completely obvious? It was maybe the fact that in this time in the Jewish environment, the relation towards the laws of the Roman Empire, quite as in the heathen laws, was with discretion (and sometimes very violently) negative. Militants messianists like the "zealots" mentioned in the Gospel, for example, denied in general all heathen laws, being sure that a Jew can and should be guided only with one law: the law of the Torah. Perhaps there were among Christians people who found that life in the Kingdom if it is compatible with any law, then would be with the laws given by God, and not written by men for the governments of this world.

Peter, as seen, does not reject totally the laws written by men, but limits their action with defined frames. Such an approach, obviously, is connected to the Christian representations of the Kingdom, which, on one hand, lives according to the laws distinguishing itself from the laws of the non-transformed world, and on the other hand - is called to transform the same not yet transformed world. Certainly, the non transformed world lies in evil and does not accept the Kingdom, but, if all the same it still had in him something good, it is necessary to accept that good. The same goes for the earthly laws written by people: all which in them corresponds to the Torah, Peter, as seen, accepts: because all these crimes, that he writes, are also such from the point of view of the Torah, those who commit them, violate the commandments of the Decalogue, and if the ground law punishes them for such a violation, it does not manage to condemn the representatives of this ground law.

It is another thing, if a Christian suffers as Christian, for faithfulness to Christ or for righteousness in its traditional understanding, as faithfulness to God and to the Torah. If the human law punishes the Christians for something like that, such a punishment should not disturb: because it is the manifestation of this evil, in which the world lies. So the apostle solves the question about human laws and about the power of earthly governments. He solves from the view of the Kingdom and the way of righteousness.