This morning Peter lays out a bottom-line for his audience. For those who are chosen but living as exiles (1Pet. 1:1), it’s sin or suffering.

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same understanding ​— ​because the one who suffers in the flesh is finished with sin ​— ​in order to live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.

(1Peter 4:1-2 CSB)

What that “therefore” is there for encompasses a pretty big ask. While the immediate reference is to Christ’s suffering in the flesh, I think that’s but the illustration to contextualize the exhortation that Peter makes of his “dear friends.” “As strangers and exiles,” he urges, “abstain from sinful desires. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles” (1Pet. 2:11-12).

And since chapter 2, Peter’s been laying out what honorable living looks like. It will mean everyone submitting to human authority, even bad human authority. It will mean slaves submitting to masters, even cruel masters. It will mean wives submitting to husbands, even unbelieving husbands. It will mean husbands living with, and loving their wives according to understanding, even when they’re struggling to understand. And it will mean living together as a community of believers, even when the family tends to be dysfunctional at times. You’d like to think that living honorably comes with reward. And it will “on the day He visits.” But until then? Don’t count on it. Because the world doesn’t get honorable living.

Honorable living — living according to God’s will, living for Christ — also means a high likelihood that the culture about them would respond to their “good conduct” with slander and accusation, disparaging their good as evil (2:12b,3:16b). So much so that their sanctified living would bear the fruit of unjust suffering. Just like Jesus.

Therefore, says Peter, since Jesus suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same understanding . . . live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.

And that choice to suffer as followers of Christ reveals another choice, “I’m done with the ways of this world — I’m done with sin.”

Not that I’m perfect, not that I don’t sin or won’t sin, but that I’m finished with living for sin. Finished with “carrying on in unrestrained behavior, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry” (1Pet. 4:3). Finished with being like the world around me pursuing “the same flood of wild living” (1Pet. 4:4). Finished with the ways of this world being my ways.

Instead, I choose to follow Jesus. And so, even if it means suffering like Jesus, I’m finished with sin.

That’s the holy determination of a holy people who view themselves as wholly in exile. That’s the desire of disciples wanting to walk in the way of their Master. That’s the aspiration of those who count themselves dead to this world and alive to a better kingdom.

Finished with sin.

Only by His grace. Only for His glory.