NOTES for Pe1 4:15

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.