1"Arm yourselves with the same way of thinking." Peter gives soldiers' language to ordinary believers. The armor is a mindset, and it belongs to Jesus, who faced suffering without giving way to sin. The sentence that follows is debated, and one common reading takes it as a decisive break. A person who has chosen to suffer for doing right, instead of buying relief with wrong, has shown where the line between them and sin now runs.
Peter points to what his readers left behind, a calendar of Greco-Roman social life built around 3"sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry." Converts had stepped out of a whole world of friendship, and their old companions noticed. 4"They are surprised when you do not join them." The Greek verb for surprised, *xenizo*, comes from the word for stranger, and Peter uses it again in 4:12. The old friends are surprised at how you live, and he asks that you not be surprised at what it costs. The final verdict belongs to God, who is 5"ready to judge the living and the dead."
Then the tone changes from warning to work. 7"The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers." The nearness of the end produces clear heads and prayer, and it leaves no room for speculation. 8"Keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins." The Greek word for earnestly, *ektenes*, means stretched, like a muscle at its full extension. Covering means forbearance, the choice not to keep broadcasting a brother's failure, which is the mercy God showed in covering ours.
9"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." Peter's readers were themselves strangers and exiles, and he asks them to open their homes to each other. The word for hospitality means love of strangers, and a scattered people became a network of open doors.
Then comes the picture of a steward. 10"As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace." A steward, *oikonomos*, is a household manager who runs property that belongs to another. He owns none of it and answers for all of it. The gift was given to you for someone else's good. The word for varied is *poikilos*, and it has appeared before. In 1:6 Peter spoke of various trials, and here the same word describes grace. Whatever shape the trial takes, God has a matching grace, as varied as the hardships and delivered through the ordinary gifts of ordinary members.
Peter sorts gifts into speaking and serving. 11"Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies." The server leans on strength from outside. The purpose is that God be glorified in everything through Jesus Christ, and the passage ends in praise.
Ask what gift you have been treating as your own, and whose need is near you this week.
Prayer
Father, arm us with the mind of Christ, who suffered in the flesh and ceased from sin. Keep us sober-minded for the sake of our prayers, and stretch our love to its full extent. Open our homes without grumbling, and make us faithful stewards of your varied grace, so that in everything you are glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.