Commentary on 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

This selection from 1 Peter continues the letter’s thematic engagement with the rhetoric of suffering. The author expresses joy that the audience might share Jesus’s sufferings (see 4:13). “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the spirit of God, is resting on you” (4:14). Appreciating this text requires understanding how its author connects morality to this suffering and its wider context in narratives of persecution and the formation of Christian identity.

The morals of suffering

First Peter 5:6–11 begins with an exhortation to humility under God, with the hope that God will later exalt those in the letter’s audience who humble themselves. Verse 6 echoes the theology found in the Christ hymn in Philippians 2:6–11, where God raises and exalts Jesus Christ after he humbles himself and suffers by “taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7). For the author of 1 Peter, this humility begins a moral posture for resisting temptation. “Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Alert self-discipline crafts a moral body that resists temptation and withstands suffering. Morality molds endurance.

Not all suffering is moral suffering. Although the lectionary selection stops mid-paragraph at 4:14, verses 15–16 distinguish suffering like Christ from other criminalized forms of suffering. “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker” (4:15). Echoing the author’s earlier exhortation to “honor the emperor” (2:17), 1 Peter makes clear that suffering for criminalized “immorality” is not the same as suffering “as a Christian” (4:16).

To the degree Christianity can be said to have been criminalized under second-century Roman imperialism, Christian “criminals” are the exception to the rule of suffering. It is good to suffer when one does not deserve punishment or prosecution. First Peter promotes a moral politic of good suffering.

One’s suffering must mirror Jesus’s suffering. This appeal to Christ presents Jesus’s suffering as unjust: He was crucified as a criminal who did no wrong. First Peter’s warning against criminals and mischief makers makes explicit the assumption that Jesus’s criminalization is the exception to the rule. Like other early Christian writers, the author assumes that, apart from Jesus and his followers, all other criminals suffer their punishment for good reason.¹

In her essay “Can an Enslaved God Liberate?” biblical scholar Sheila Briggs critiques the rhetoric of slavery and suffering in the Christ hymn of Philippians. She emphasizes how praising Jesus’s divine choice to suffer in slave form ignores the utter lack of agency that characterizes the suffering of enslaved humans. The hymn praises Jesus for choosing what is brutally forced upon others. The hymn lacks solidarity with enslaved people who suffer: Jesus’s humility gets elevated while everyone else remains humiliated. “Christ as divine,” Briggs writes, “was absolutely too worthy to be enslaved.”²

Briggs’s point extends to the 1 Peter’s presentation of good suffering. The author uses the hymn’s rhetoric of humility and elevation in order to present Christ and the “Christians” in their audience as “absolutely too worthy” to suffer. As moral, disciplined people, their undeserved suffering makes them worthy of elevation and power.

Suffering, persecution, and Christian identity

The rhetoric of suffering in this passage tends to be explained as part of a larger narrative about the persecution of the earliest Christians by Rome. Although the author alludes to their potential suffering, the cause and extent of their suffering is unclear. At times, the author speaks in hypotheticals (“If you are reviled…,” 4:14). While it is not impossible that the author is responding to localized experiences of persecution, this suffering could take many other forms. It is important to recognize that Christian persecution was not nearly as widespread or systemic as contemporary martyrdom narratives present it.³

It is not accidental that 1 Peter invokes the term “Christian” (see 4:16) as he discusses suffering and its morality. The rhetoric of suffering became pivotal to the formation of Christian identity. Elizabeth Castelli shows this in her work on martyrdom stories and collective memory, and Shelly Matthews discusses it further in her analysis of Acts’ depictions of the stoning of Stephen.⁴ Christianity is built upon the good suffering that 1 Peter encourages. Its morality distinguishes Christian suffering from that of others. This moral distinction of suffering and persecution lays the groundwork for Christians to claim their suffering is exceptional. Seeing suffering, morally, as a route to power, it leaves little room to consider the suffering of others.

Exceptionalized suffering lacks solidarity with all who suffer. We see this in 1 Peter’s exclusion of criminals and mischief makers from the terms of Christian suffering that get praised and encouraged in the formal lectionary passage. A critical approach to this passage in light of Christianity’s power to inflict systemic suffering demands rethinking whose suffering counts. Instead of moralizing what and whose suffering counts, this requires asking what it means to roar with solidarity for all who suffer.

Notes

1. See, for example, my comments on Luke’s presentation of Jesus’s crucifixion, when Jesus converses with the two criminals beside him. Jimmy Hoke, “Looking into the Lectionary: Reign of Christ—November 23, 2025,” The Presbyterian Outlook, https://pres-outlook.org/2025/11/reign-of-christ-november-23-2025/.
2. Sheila Briggs, “Can an Enslaved God Liberate? Hermeneutical Reflections on Philippians 2:6–11,” Semeia 47 (1989): 143.
3. See especially Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: HarperOne, 2013).
4. See Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), and Shelly A. Matthews, Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).