1 Peter 4:4

4 And now the heathen are surprised when you do not join them in the same wild and reckless living, and so they insult you.

1 Peter 4:4 Meaning and Commentary

1 Peter 4:4

Wherein they think it strange
Here the apostle points out what the saints must expect from the men of the world, by living a different life; and he chooses to mention it, to prevent discouragements, and that they might not be uneasy and distressed when they observed it; as that they would wonder at the change in their conversations, and look on it as something unusual, new, and unheard of, and treat them as strangers, yea, as enemies, on account of it:

that you run not with them into the same excess of riot;
to their luxurious entertainments, their Bacchanalian feasts, and that profusion of lasciviousness, luxury, intemperance, and wickedness of all sorts, which, with so much eagerness of mind, and bodily haste, they rushed into; being amazed that they should not have the same taste for these things as before, and as themselves now had; and wondering how it was possible for them to abstain from them, and what that should be that should give them a different cast of mind, and turn of action:

speaking evil of you;
and so the Syriac and Arabic versions supply "you" as we do; but in the Greek text it is only, "speaking evil of, or blaspheming"; God, Christ, religion, the Gospel, and the truths of it, and all good men; hating them because different from them, and because their lives reprove and condemn them; charging them with incivility, unsociableness, preciseness, and hypocrisy.

1 Peter 4:4 In-Context

2 From now on, then, you must live the rest of your earthly lives controlled by God's will and not by human desires.

3 You have spent enough time in the past doing what the heathen like to do. Your lives were spent in indecency, lust, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and the disgusting worship of idols.

4 And now the heathen are surprised when you do not join them in the same wild and reckless living, and so they insult you.

5 But they will have to give an account of themselves to God, who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

6 That is why the Good News was preached also to the dead, to those who had been judged in their physical existence as everyone is judged; it was preached to them so that in their spiritual existence they may live as God lives.