Spending Your Time
30 Days in 1st Peter - day 22
This passage of Scripture has some intriguing elements to it. Christ preaching to spirits in prison who had some connection to Noah is a fascinating idea to explore, but one that would take up more time a space than this devotional format would allow. I only bring it up to say that I’m not avoiding it because it is difficult or divisive, but because it needs more room to breath that I can give it here. I do encourage you, if you are so inclined, to dig deeper into that.
For our purposes, I want to step back and consider what is the point Peter is emphasizing here. Read as a whole, we can see that Peter’s main point is to call us to a holy life. He wants us separate ourselves from indulging in the sins of the flesh.
Once again he connects this commitment to holiness to the death of Christ:
“For Christ also suffered once for sins...Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.” (3:18, 4:1)
Peter then reminds us that we only have so much time here. He talks about how we should “live the rest of [our] time.” And tells us that “We have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles.”
Pastor John Piper wrote a book titled, “Don’t Waste Your Life,” in which he was arguing basically the same point Peter is making here. You are only given a limited amount of time here. While we don’t know whether our lives will last 40 or 100 years on this earth, we do know that they have an expiration date.
The question then becomes, how will I spend the days God has given me here? Or in this case, Peter is telling us how not to spend our days here.
To take any of the precious hours God has granted to us for this life and to spend them on “Lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries,” is a waste indeed.
Often, before we can know what is a good investment of our time, we have to first understand what is a waste of our time.
You’ve spent enough time in indulging the flesh.
Don’t waste your life.
