John Calvin 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 may suffice. Peter does not mean that we should be weary of pleasures, as those tend to be who are filled with them to satiety; but that, on the contrary, the memory of our past life ought to stimulate us to repentance.

And doubtless it ought to be the sharpest goad to make us continue well, when we recollect that we have been wandering from the right way for the greater part of our life. And Peter reminds us that it would be most unreasonable if we did not change the course of our life after being enlightened by Christ.

For he makes a distinction here between the time of ignorance and the time of faith, as if he had said that it was only right that they should become new and different men from the time Christ called them. But instead of the lusts or cravings of men, he now mentions the will of the Gentiles, by which he reproves the Jews for having mixed with the Gentiles in all their pollutions, although the Lord had separated them from the Gentiles.

In what follows he shows that those vices ought to be put off which prove men to be blind and ignorant of God. And there is a peculiar emphasis in the words, the time past of our life, for he intimates that we ought to persevere to the end, as when Paul says that Christ was raised from the dead, to die no more (Romans 6:6). For we have been redeemed by the Lord for this purpose, that we may serve him all the days of our life.

In lasciviousness. He does not give the whole catalogue of sins, but only mentions some of them, from which we may briefly learn what those things are that men, not renewed by God’s Spirit, desire and seek, and to which they are inclined. And he names the grosser vices, as is usually done when examples are given. I will not stop to explain the words, for there is no difficulty in them.

But here a question arises: Peter seems to have wronged many by making all men guilty of lasciviousness, dissipation, lusts, drunkenness, and revellings; for it is certain that all were not involved in these vices. Indeed, we know that some among the Gentiles lived honorably and without a spot of infamy.

To this I reply that Peter does not ascribe these vices to the Gentiles in such a way, as if he charged every individual with all of them, but rather that we are by nature inclined to all these evils. Not only that, but we are so much under the power of depravity that these fruits he mentions necessarily proceed from it as from an evil root.

Indeed, there is no one who does not have within himself the seed of all vices, but these seeds do not all germinate and grow in every individual. Yet the contagion is so spread and diffused throughout the whole human race that the whole community appears infected with innumerable evils, and no member is free or pure from the common corruption.

The last clause may also suggest another question, for Peter addressed the Jews, and yet he says that they had been immersed in abominable idolatries; but the Jews then living in every part of the world carefully abstained from idols. A twofold answer may be offered here: either that, by mentioning the whole for a part, he ascribes to all what belonged to only a few (for there is no doubt that the Churches to which he wrote were made up of Gentiles as well as Jews), or that he calls the superstitions in which the Jews were then involved idolatries. For although they professed to worship the God of Israel, yet we know that no part of divine worship was genuine among them.

And how great must the confusion have been in uncivilized countries and among a scattered people, when Jerusalem itself, from whose rays they borrowed their light, had fallen into extreme impiety! For we know that foolish notions of every kind prevailed with impunity, so that the high-priesthood, and the whole government of the Church, were in the power of the Sadducees.