Objection: Bodily Suffering Helps You Avoid Sin (1 Peter 4:1)

1 Peter 4:1-2:
Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;
That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

(The verse the objector cited reads substantially the same in all translations, so there is no language misunderstanding issue here.)

The point made in this verse does not negate divine healing.  Peter, whose shadow fell on people and healed them in Jerusalem (Acts 5:12-16), who said himself that by Jesus’ stripes you WERE healed earlier in this same letter (1 Peter 2:24), certainly did not negate the doctrine of divine healing by saying that you should be sick because it’s good for you because it’ll help you not sin.  Trivially that’s true; if you’re laid up in bed with a 103-degree fever, it will be harder for you to visit the bar, the brothel, the “mature” video store (which actually caters solely to the immature) or even a chain carnality café that tempts carnal men to stare at the girls’ figures rather than the food (or their wives, which is where their eyes belong).

No, you should go through the entire book of First Peter and notice that the theme throughout the book is suffering for the sake of the gospel, not suffering because you got some “bug” that used to be in a bird or a pig somewhere.  There is no reason to believe that Peter has changed gears here.  Thus, the suffering in the flesh that he is describing must be persecution-related, not illness-related.

I have not been beaten at this writing for preaching the gospel; I’ve only been threatened.  (Talk is cheap and the devil knows it.  If he can run you off the street with mere words; he’s won.  His cheap threats never stopped me.)  But it stands to reason that if you ARE beaten up for the gospel, your flesh has endured pain for Jesus’ sake, and you have proven your choice to deny what makes the flesh comfortable for Jesus’ sake.  Sin needs your flesh’s cooperation because it will NEVER get your born- again spirit’s cooperation.  If your flesh is “under,” you won’t sin.  I believe that Peter was making that point.

So the objection at the head of this discussion is completely true; it is the implication made by the objector that is false, namely that sickness is somehow good for you because it helps you sin less.

Are we not all called to walk as the Bible says, with our flesh crucified (Galatians 5:24)?  If that is our goal, and the objector is correct that sickness is the secret to being done with sin, we should all find the sickest person we know, ask him to cough and sneeze all over our hands, and then put our hands in our mouths and lick them profusely.  After all, don’t we want to get sick because it’s such a great shortcut to mortifying the flesh?  Why don’t the objectors do that if that’s really what they believe?  (Maybe you can ask them if they come to you with this objection.)

If you’d like to do something that really DOES help mortify the flesh, try fasting.  That is a kind of “suffering in the flesh” that DOES help you stay out of sin by helping keep your flesh under.  I neither recommend nor do long fasts, but I’ve found it doesn’t take too long before my flesh quiets down.

Fortunately, Peter never mentioned sickness in conjunction with bodily suffering in this context.  Instead, he told us to be minded as Jesus was.  Did Jesus get sick all the time?  No, He got sick ONCE when he atoned for our sins to spare us having to be sick.  He was willing to suffer physically because that was what it took to fulfill God’s will.  We also need to be willing to suffer physical pain, if need be, to fulfill God’s will.  The reason that the devil couldn’t stop me on the street is that I had already made up my mind that I was dead with Christ and that my life wasn’t my own.  If I had to join Paul and the apostles in being physically assaulted for the gospel’s sake, I would sooner endure that than back away from preaching to people who were headed for ETERNAL physical agony in hell.  I had a street evangelist friend who actually was beaten repeatedly and lost most of his teeth and CONTINUED going out on the street to reach “the worst of the worst” – drug dealers, prostitutes, gang members, and so on.  I used to go out with him in my earliest days as a Christian.  A fellow preacher and I were robbed at knifepoint on an overseas trip once, but I wasn’t hurt, and the thief unknowingly got a camera that didn’t work right and was probably going to have to be thrown out anyway.  But showing people the way out of eternal suffering is worth some physical peril.

And in agreement with Peter’s words, my friend who got beaten didn’t seem to have much time for the works of the flesh!  But that had nothing to do with sickness.

As far as suffering to avoid sin, the Bible talks about other ways to avoid sin.  Walk after the Spirit and fear God!

Galatians 5:16:
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

Romans 8:13:
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Exodus 20:20:
And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.