Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 4:3

"For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the Gentiles, and to have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries:" — 1 Peter 4:3 (ASV)

For the time past of our life.—There are two words in the English here that do not stand in the true text and sadly impede the sense. They are “of our life” and “us.” The first is added by some scribe to point out the contrast with “the rest of his time.” The second—which should be “you,” if anything at all—is simply put to fill the gap after the word “suffice.” If “our life” and “us” were correct, we would have St. Peter, quite unlike his habit, identifying himself with the bad life described here, as if he himself had shared in it.

May suffice.—It is the same word as in Matthew 6:34 and Matthew 10:25, and would be, literally, For sufficient is the past. There is an irony in the word similar to that in 1 Peter 3:17, it is better.

To have wrought.—Rather, to have perpetrated. The Greek word denotes the accomplishment of a criminal purpose, as in Romans 2:9; 1 Corinthians 5:3; and one passage more horrid still.

The will of the Gentiles.—Just as, in 1 Peter 4:2, there was a contrast between man’s manifold and conflicting lusts and God’s unity of will, so there is a contrast now between God’s “will” and (for the Greek word is quite different) the heathen’s “wish.” “To have perpetrated the heathen’s wish” means to have done the bad things that the heathen wanted them to be guilty of. The heathen were eager to catch them at malpractices. (See Note on 1 Peter 2:12, and the word “speaking evil” below.)

When we walked.—A participle in Greek, which gives no support to the use of “we,” but means simply having proceeded. Thus it does not directly state that they had so proceeded, for the participle explains the preceding verb: “The past is sufficient to have done what the heathen want you to have done—namely, to have walked.”

Lasciviousness.—It should be plural, expressing the repeated acts of sin. The word in Greek means any outrageous debauchery, so that it may be said to include all the words that follow.

Excess of wine, similarly, should be plural. It is a contemptuous word (wine-swillings), and differs from the word translated “banquetings” below, because the latter is more refined and also implies company, which the first need not. The “revellings” might mean any rowdy parties, but contains more of the notion of making a pretext of a meal than “banquetings,” which consist solely of drinking.

Abominable idolatries.—It is not as idolatries that they are called abominable, but because of the abominable associated practices of the idol-festivals. This clause is the main support of those who think that the Letter was written to converts from heathenism and not from Judaism.

How, it is urged, could St. Peter have said to persons who had been brought up as Jews, “The time past is long enough for you to have proceeded in abominable idolatries”? The argument is most convincing as it stands. If they had been living in idolatry, it is incredible that they were of Hebrew race; if they were of Hebrew race, it is incredible that they should have lived in idolatry.

But, as a matter of fact, St. Peter does not say that they ever had lived in those sins. Quite on the contrary, he says in 1 Peter 4:4 that the heathen found, to their surprise, that the Christians would not go with them in these things. Finding it to be so, they “blasphemed” or slandered them in this very respect. It may, perhaps, be answered that the Apostle is alluding to a period long past, and contrasting it with the present that so puzzled the Gentiles. But there is no ground for taking “the time past” to mean the time up to the date of their conversion to Christianity. It is simply “your past time” (that is, the whole up to the date of the Letter), in contrast with “the rest of your time” (1 Peter 4:2, literally, your remaining time), that is, the whole subsequent to the date of the Letter.

Therefore, it cannot mean, “The heathen think it strange that you do not join their profligate courses as you used in old days.” If that were the case, we should naturally have expected him to say, “They think it strange that you no longer run with them.” Besides, it seems plain from 1 Peter 4:2 that, whatever may be meant by “perpetrating the wish of the Gentiles,” it was still a present danger when St. Peter wrote, or there would be little point in mentioning it at all.

But if he means that, up to the date of the Letter, some of its recipients had been living in “abominable idolatries,” how could he continue that the Gentiles were astonished that they did not do so? For if the idolatries meant were the heathen’s own idolatries, the heathen would have been aware of their joining them, and it would have been no “slander” to say so. The conclusion is that neither before nor after their conversion had they been really proceeding thus. St. Peter is, in fact, only putting in words the slander of the Gentiles, at which he had hinted in 1 Peter 2:12–15 and 1 Peter 3:16.

“For the future,” he says, “live to the will of God, not to the lusts of men. The past is long enough (without invading the future) to have perpetrated what the heathen want you to have perpetrated—namely, to have been proceeding in debaucheries and abominable idolatries—slandering you in that very point in which they are puzzled if you do not run with them to the same excess of riot.” As an historical fact, these are the very slanders that we find to have been brought against the early Christians—idolatries and all. The filthy idolatry ascribed to the Christians by the heathen may be found recorded in Tertullian’s Apology, and (so it is said) on the walls of Pompeii.

But what, then, does St. Peter mean when he says that the past is sufficient to have perpetrated what the heathen wanted? It certainly implies that some of them had, even since their conversion, been doing what the malicious heathen would be glad to see them do. But we have already noticed that he is speaking ironically in using the word “sufficient,” and the irony continues through the rest of the clause. “Some of you have been living, up to the present time, more or less to human lusts (1 Peter 4:2). You have done so quite long enough now. You have quite sufficiently gratified the Gentiles, who long to prove that you are no better than themselves.” The argument is like that which Nestor, in Homer, addresses to the quarreling Greek captains:—

“Sure Priam would rejoice, and Priam’s sons,
Could they but learn this feud between you two.”

We may observe, further, that all through the Epistle St. Peter appears to dread a doctrine that was fast beginning to rise among the Asiatic Christians—that such sins as fornication and idolatry, being but bodily, were venial, especially in time of persecution. (See 1 Peter 1:4; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 Peter 2:11; 1 Peter 5:8.) Such pernicious doctrine was probably founded on a wresting of St. Paul’s teaching (2 Peter 3:16) on eating things offered to idols, from which it was concluded that the accompanying impurities were innocent likewise.

This doctrine becomes very prominent in the Second Epistle; and in the Apocalypse there is even some reason to connect it specially with the Jewish element in the Church. (Compare 2 Peter 2:15; Revelation 2:6; Revelation 2:14–15, with Revelation 2:9.)