What Does 1 Peter 4:3 Mean?
For the time already gone of our life has been enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, when we walked in unbridled acts, cravings, wine-soaking, revels, drinking bouts, and forbidden idolatries.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:THE KEY
The verse calls the time spent carrying out the Gentiles’ will sufficient, placing that pattern within time already passed.
THE MEANING
The reader sees time spent doing what the surrounding peoples want named as sufficient. The verse states its list plainly, sexual excess, cravings, drunkenness, revels, drinking bouts, and forbidden idol service, and places those practices in elapsed time.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that past participation permanently defines the present is undone: the verse locates these practices in time that has passed, not in an unchangeable nature.
THE ROOT
βούλημα
boulēma
GROWS FROM
βούλομαι
boulomai
To wish, will, or intend.
“will” in this verse is boulēma. The Greek word names an intention or desired course, not only an abstract command. The verse turns on whose intention the reader has been carrying out.
ALSO GROWS
boulomai: To wish, will, or intend.
βούλομαι
The verb shows the wanting beneath the noun “will.”
boulē: Counsel, plan, or purpose.
βουλή
This related word shows how an intention can take shape as a plan.
παρεληλυθώς
parelēlythōs
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
erchomai
To come or go.
“past” in this verse is parelēlythōs. The word comes from a verb of going and describes time that has passed by. The verse places this pattern in elapsed time, rather than treating it as a permanent identity.
ALSO GROWS
parerchomai: To pass by or go past.
παρέρχομαι
This is the verb behind the verse’s description of time as past.
exerchomai: To go out or go away.
ἐξέρχομαι
This related verb keeps the sense of movement away from a former place or state.
THE PATTERN
A former way of life is named through its shared appetites so its time can be bounded.
Do not be among those saturated with wine, or among those who pour themselves out on flesh.Let us walk with good bearing, as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in bedding and unbridled acts, not in strife and boiling.Among these also we all once walked in the cravings of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the minds, and by birth we were children of anger, even as the rest.THE THREAD
Then you will say to me, "Why does he still find fault? For who has stood against his will?"The same Greek noun, βούλημα, appears in Peter’s phrase for the Gentiles’ will and in Paul’s question about God’s will. The shared word makes the verse’s distinction turn on whose purpose is being carried out.
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