Armed with the Mind of Christ: A Break with the Former Life

Because Christ suffered, believers are to arm themselves with the same resolve and no longer organize life around human desires but God’s will. Peter describes a decisive break with a former Gentile pattern of sensuality, drunkenness, revelry, drinking parties, and idolatry. Old companions find the change strange and respond with slander, but they will answer to the Judge of the living and the dead. Verse 6 then raises a difficult question about the gospel being preached to “the dead.” Whatever view is taken, Peter’s pastoral point remains judgment and life before God, not speculative geography of the afterlife.