Introduction

If you remember the days of film cameras, you probably know Kodak film well. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I saw Kodak everywhere. I don’t have Canadian figures, but In the US, they held about 80% of the film and developing supplies market. Kodak seemed like a company that would last. But then things changed.

Interestingly, it was a Kodak engineer who invented the first digital camera back in 1975. But Kodak ignored this new technology because it threatened their business. By 2004, digital cameras outsold film cameras around the world. The writing was on the wall, but still, Kodak didn’t change. By 2012, digital photography had shaken their business so much that Kodak had to file for bankruptcy protection. A new era in photography had begun, and Kodak paid the price for trying to live in the old era.

While digital photography changed our culture in big ways, it’s nothing compared to what Jesus did: His death, resurrection, ascension and glorification inaugurated a new age in human-divine relations. But just like Kodak tried to keep living in the old age, so people today try to live their lives as if the new age of God’s kingdom hasn’t come. Just as it hurt Kodak when they refused to get with the program, so it hurts us when we do the same thing spiritually.

Today, I want to look at what Peter says about living in this new age. He shows us how this new life changes what we avoid, what we do, and how we face challenges. He lays this all out in chapter 4. But before we get there, it helps to have some background.

I. A Tale of Two Ages

Most Jews in Jesus’ day believed that the present age was evil. The unjust ‘got away’ with things. and the righteous often struggled. But they believed that a day was coming when God would powerfully intervene in the world to reward the righteous and punish the wicked. And not just the ones alive at the time. Those who had died would be raised so they could be judged, too. So this great event, called ‘The Day of the Lord,’ would mark the end of the old age, and the dawn of a new age.

While this was the expectation, Jesus challenged the conventional wisdom about how things would develop The Day of the Lord wasn’t an event that brought a sudden transition from the old age to a new one. Instead, he talked about a kingdom that grew up almost unnoticed, alongside the present evil age. In Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds he explains it. In that parable, a farmer plants his field with wheat seed, but an enemy secretly plants weeds with his wheat. Because pulling up the weeds would risk the wheat, the farmer says he will wait for the harvest time before he separates the two.

What Jesus is saying is that God will allow a time of overlap, where the two ages grow beside one another. And for the time being, although we don’t know for how long, people can leave the present age to become a part of the age to come.

II. The Life of the New Age

Now, being part of God’s new age isn’t just about saying a prayer that one time. It’s about who we are becoming. While there are no prerequisites to enter this new life, it is marked by a new way of living, shown by what we avoid, what we do, and how we respond to difficulties. Let’s start by looking at what we should avoid. We’ll begin at the start of the chapter.

¹ So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. ² You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. ³ You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols. 

⁴ Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. ⁵ But remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead. ⁶ That is why the Good News was preached to those who are now dead—so although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the Spirit (1 Peter 4:1–6, NLT)

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A. Keeping Away From Sin

First, Peter says that if we have suffered, we are done with sin. Most of us try to avoid suffering, but we accept it when we know it has a greater purpose. We have children, even though it costs us time, control, and sleep, but we do it because we love them. We go to the gym and push through discomfort because we want to be healthy.

In the same way, when we choose to suffer for Jesus, it shows that we see the value of the new life of the kingdom. This doesn’t mean we’ll never sin again (if only!), but if our faith matters enough that we’re willing to suffer for it, it shows it has become a top priority. Living in God’s new age means we are willing to accept suffering, when most people seek pleasure.

One point of clarification: Peter talks about feasting as a sign of the old life. He’s not talking about all feasting. After all, feasting has its place in celebrating what God has done. He’s talking about pagan feasts that often involved idol worship, drunkenness, and carousing.

Some of Peter’s readers had previously lived this way, but had made the choice to leave this lifestyle behind. But they found that their old friends resented them for it. This is another cost of following Jesus. People whose lives are centred on their own pleasure often can’t understand others who are motivated by something greater than themselves. God’s will only fully makes sense when our minds have been transformed by the Spirit. As Paul says,

² Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect (Romans 12:2, NLT).

When we focus on God and others, it means we strive to live a life of holiness

Many people get uncomfortable when we talk about holiness. This seems like code for legalism. Blindly following rules does lead us to legalism, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have expectations of behaviour for one another. There are things we need to avoid—not to earn salvation, but to protect ourselves and others. Holiness comes from love. God isn’t against fun, but if something hurts us or others, his love says, “No.” For example,  People who chase wild parties often end up regretting their actions. People who treat others as objects dehumanize themselves and those they use. When we avoid these behaviours, we stop adding to the problem and can start being part of the solution.

Another reason to avoid these things is that when we stop living for ourselves, we can focus on God and others.

B. Saying Yes to Righteousness

After talking about what to avoid, Peter explains how living in the new age expresses itself in what we do.

⁷ The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. ⁸ Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. ⁹ Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. ¹⁰ God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. ¹¹ Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen (1 Peter 4:7–11, NLT).

i. The End is Coming Soon

Before we look at Peter’s instructions, I feel I need to address an elephant in the room. Peter wrote almost 2000 years ago that the end of the world was coming ‘soon.’ Did he mean ‘soon-ish?’. Many of the first-generation Christians thought Jesus would return in their lifetime. But Jesus said even he didn’t know when it would happen (see Matthew 24:36). The main point is that Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension made his return possible at any time.

Even though almost two thousand years have passed, his return could happen at any moment. But the wait doesn’t mean God has failed in his promise. Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 3:8-9.

⁸ But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. ⁹ The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent (2 Peter 3:8–9, NLT).

Since we don’t know when will return, we should live as if he might come back today. What does that look like? Peter gives us some practical advice:

ii. Prayer

The first thing Peter tells us not to neglect is prayer. The New Testament says a lot about prayer, so here’s a quick summary of the most important points.

First, the Lord’s Prayer. We pray this because Jesus told us to. We pray it together. Even when we pray it alone, we say ‘our father’ instead of ‘my father.’ Whenever you say it, you’re joining millions of Christians who are saying it at the same time as you. The Lord’s prayer reminds us of our main goals: seeing God’s kingdom come on earth, learning to depend on God, being generous, forgiving, and living holy lives.

Second, we should pray for personal transformation. Sometimes our prayers become just a list of things we want from God, but real change happens when we make the new life of the Kingdom our top priority. Then my prayers aren’t just, “Give me what we want,” but, “Your will be done in me.” These are the tough prayers where we ask God for strength to love someone who’s hard to love, for peace to forgive what feels unforgivable, for humility to accept a lower place, or for patience in a situation we want to escape. These prayers help us submit to God’s will, even when his will feels unnatural to us. This is what Jesus showed us in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Luke 22:42, NLT).

Third, we need to pray for others—for our community, our nation, and our world. God has commissioned us as priests who represent our world before him. This means praying for leaders, even if we don’t agree with them. Praying for people in need around us, and, of course, this means keeping our ears open in case God asks us to be a part of practically answering those prayers. We pray for peace, justice, reconciliation, and healing. For reasons we don’t fully understand, God often limits Himself to cooperating with human wills, so our prayers help release God’s power to redeem, renew, and restore.

Fourth, pray for forgiveness. When we honestly examine ourselves with the Spirit’s help, we see our faults and ask for forgiveness. This changes how we treat others, reminding us that we all stand together in need of God’s mercy. Imagine if the Pharisees hadn’t lost sight of that. Maybe they would have been more open to Jesus’ message.

Finally, we should pray for our needs. We’re invited to give our worries to Jesus and to pray about anything. Just remember, God will answer, but not always in the way we hope for or the timing we expect. He wants to bless us, but the best blessings aren’t always the ones we want most, because we often focus on the short term and don’t see the long-term results of getting what we think we want.

iii. Practical Love

The second way we live as if the end is coming is by loving others. We can talk about love in abstract ways, but here, Peter makes love practical: generous hospitality and using our God-given gifts to serve each other.

In Peter’s day, hospitality among Christians was essential. Early churches didn’t have buildings to meet in, so they relied on Christians opening their homes for gatherings. By welcoming people of different social status, they showed that in Christ, the usual divisions—male and female, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, slave and free—no longer mattered. Hospitality was also key for missionaries, who needed a place to stay when they travelled to new places.

Peter also says we should see our abilities as gifts from God, meant to build up the church. If you can encourage, correct, or help others, doing so is what Christian love looks like. For us, this means we shouldn’t settle for just talking about ‘love.’ Love involves action. But the actions don’t have to be heroic. Love is often expressed in the mundane

When I first met Carolyn’s family, it was a difficult time. We had just gotten engaged, her father passed away a week later, and Christmas was coming up. Her family are all tradespeople with practical skills. I feared I was in the way. I didn’t have much to offer. I was trained as a photographer and was working as a graphic designer. But it turned out that at that moment those skills had uses: practical love meant offering my gifts to lay out a funeral program, and edit photos for a slide-show of my father-in-law’s life. It seems there truly is a time for everything under the sun. Cooking, sewing, bookkeeping, proofreading, welding— if God has given you a gift, there’s probably a time or place you can use it to love others in practical ways. The goal of a life of faith is to turn away from just focusing on what brings us pleasure and instead focus on what helps others. We do this by offering whatever we have.

III. The Place of Suffering

So the life of the new age helps us to say no to some things and yes to others, but it also helps us respond to difficulties. We can know that God loves us, but the example of Jesus reminds us that God’s love doesn’t immunize us from suffering. Many people expect righteousness to keep them safe and comfortable, but Peter points to the example of Jesus. He suffered for doing what was right. But in the end, God rewarded him for his faithfulness.

A. A Simplistic Theology of Suffering

There are times when life is so hard for someone that it only feels natural to assume their suffering must be a consequence of their foolish or sinful choices. We think it must be the chickens coming home to roost. But sometimes God allows us to suffer here and now for the sake of others. When that happens, it is easily misunderstood. Writing about the suffering servant (Jesus) hundreds of years in advance, the prophet Isaiah recognized this mistake.

we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! ⁵ But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed (Isaiah 53:4-5, NLT, emphasis mine).

Jesus didn’t suffer because of his own sin, but because of ours. In the same way, sometimes God allows us to suffer for the sake of others.

B. A Christ-Centred Theology of Suffering

Not all suffering happens because we do wrong, and not all suffering happens because we follow Christ. Peter helps us understand that it can happen for different reasons, and the importance of experiencing it for the right reasons.

¹⁴ If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you. ¹⁵ If you suffer, however, it must not be for murder, stealing, making trouble, or prying into other people’s affairs. ¹⁶ But it is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name! ¹⁷ For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News? ¹⁸ And also, 

“If the righteous are barely saved,
what will happen to godless sinners?” 

¹⁹ So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you (1 Peter 4:14–19, NLT).

While the culture may see suffering as a shameful thing to downplay, Peter gives Christians permission to embrace suffering for Jesus. But he also points out that it’s not proof of our righteousness, because we can still suffer for sin and foolishness. So don’t accept difficulty is a sign of God’s disapproval. But also don’t assume that because you suffer, God is pleased. Some Christians are reviled not for their faith, but because they make themselves obnoxious in unhelpful ways.

We should live consciously of the fact that we will be judged. For some Christians, the idea that we will be judged is a surprise. While there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rm. 8:1), we are not immune from judgment. For example, Peter experienced judgment when he denied Jesus, God laid bare what was in his heart, and he discovered his faith was weaker than he thought. This was bitterly painful at the time, but it led to Peter’s restoration and prepared him for a fruitful future in ministry. So, because we belong to the new age of God’s kingdom, we can face suffering with perseverance. And we can know that while judgment may be unpleasant, we ultimately have nothing to fear.

Conclusion

Let’s return to the story of Kodak. They struggled because they refused to adapt to a changing world. Even when they saw change coming, they acted as if things would stay the same. Peter’s message in 1 Peter 4 is that we shouldn’t make the same mistake in our spiritual lives. Jesus has risen, and because of that, the new age God promised is already breaking into our world.

The kingdom isn’t just something we wait for—we’re invited to join in now. When we say no to sin, we show we belong to this new age. When we choose love over self-interest, we let God’s life show in our world. When we pray, we open ourselves to God’s rule. When we face suffering with humility and hope instead of bitterness, we show that our future is secure because Jesus has already won.

Peter’s commands aren’t just a list of religious rules; They are an invitation into God’s own life. When we live in holiness, we reflect God’s holiness. When we love, we reflect God’s love. Prayer brings us closer to God. Enduring suffering with hope follows the pattern of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Eternal life isn’t just about living forever after we die—it’s about starting to share in God’s life now.

One day, the old age of sin, death, injustice, and suffering will end. But we should learn from Kodak: We must adapt now, and not wait. We’ve been invited now into the world that will be. So we can have tomorrow’s life, today. We have the privilege of living as citizens of the world that is coming. When people meet us, they should get a glimpse of the coming kingdom.

Don’t hold on to the old way of life that is passing away. Live the new life that has already started in Christ. Turn from sin. Commit to prayer. Love others in real and sometimes costly ways. If you suffer because you belong to Jesus, don’t lose heart. You are sharing in Christ’s life and victory. The future has already begun, so let’s live like it.