John Calvin Commentary 1 Peter 4:4

"wherein they think strange that ye run not with [them] into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of [of]:" — 1 Peter 4:4 (ASV)

Wherein they think it strange—the words of Peter literally are these: In which they are strangers, you not running with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming. But the word, to be strangers, means to stop at a thing as new and unusual. This is a way of speaking that the Latins also sometimes use, as when Cicero says that he was a stranger in the city because he did not know what was carried on there. But in this place, Peter fortifies the faithful, so that they would not allow themselves to be disturbed or corrupted by the perverse judgments or words of the ungodly. For it is no light temptation when those among whom we live charge us that our life is different from that of mankind in general. “These,” they say, “must form for themselves a new world, for they differ from all mankind.” Thus they accuse the children of God, as though they attempted a separation from the whole world.

Then the Apostle anticipated this and forbade the faithful to be discouraged by such reproaches and calumnies; and he proposed to them, as a support, the judgment of God: for this is what can sustain us against all assaults—that is, when we patiently wait for that day in which Christ will punish all those who now presumptuously condemn us and will show that we and our cause are approved by Him. And he expressly mentions the living and the dead, so that we would not think that we will suffer any loss if they remain alive when we are dead; for they will not, for this reason, escape the hand of God. And in what sense he calls them the living and the dead, we may learn from 1 Corinthians 15.