The Bible Says
1 Peter 5:8-9 Meaning

1 Peter 5:8-9 instructs the believers receiving this letter of the importance of resisting Satan in their walk. In the previous section, Peter instructed his readers to humble themselves under God’s mighty hand, and trust that He would provide a reward superior to anything the world could offer. He exhorted the believers to cast upon Him any anxiety, including fear of future consequences that came with resistance to evil or persecution from the world.

Peter now focuses on another source of opposition: the devil, who is Satan. The first way to deal with the devil is to be mentally prepared. Peter exhorts believers: Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (v. 8).

Peter gives two instructions on how to be mentally prepared to deal with the devil. The first mental preparation is Be of sober spirit (v. 8). The phrase Be of sober spirit translates a single Greek word “nepho” meaning “self-controlled.” We see “nepho” also in 1 Peter 1:13, 4:7. The second mental preparation is to be on the alert, implying to be in a constant state of mental readiness. Jesus used the Greek word translated be on the alert in Matthew 26:41 where He said:

“Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
(Matthew 26:41)

In this verse the word translated be on the alert is rendered “keep watching.” The specific alertness believers should engage in is to be aware of temptation and avoid falling into it. James 1:14-15 says that temptation actually comes from our own inner desires. The way to defeat the inner desires of our flesh that leads to sin and death is to first be aware of them, then to displace them with God’s word (James 1:21).

Paul speaks of taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). He also speaks of using faith to extinguish “flaming arrows” from Satan. Both of these verses confirm that the primary battleground with Satan is in the mind. It is in deciding what to believe, whether to have the faith to believe what God says is true or to believe a lie. It is in deciding what perspectives are true.

Humans only control three things: who or what we believe, what perspective we choose, and what actions we take. What we believe and what perspective we choose will naturally lead to the actions we take. Satan desires that we believe lies and choose perspectives that are untrue. He frames life as death, and death as life.

We saw this battle to believe what is true and to choose a perspective that is true in the interaction between Jesus and Satan in Matthew 4. There Jesus used scripture to combat Satan’s temptations to follow His own way instead of submitting to His Father’s will. Satan attempted to frame life as following our own way, and Jesus countered with the truth of God’s word that life was following in the will of God. The Apostle Paul also speaks of the necessity to win the battle in the mind:

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
(2 Corinthians 10:5)

Mental alertness is a necessity to resist and defeat your adversary. The Greek word translated adversary is usually translated “opponent.” The devil opposes a walk of faith and has specific intent to throw believers off and cause them to stumble.

This enemy is identified as the devil. The Greek word “diabolos” is translated as devil.

• It was the devil who tempted Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1).
• The devil is Satan, as Jesus addressed the devil as “Satan” when He commanded the devil to be gone (Matthew 4:10).
• The word devil emphasizes the activity of Satan as an accuser and slanderer.
• The word “Satan” emphasizes that Satan is an adversary.

We see in Psalm 8:2 that a reason God created humans was to silence Satan, the adversary of both God and man. God intended to silence Satan by giving humans authority to reign over the earth in obedience to Him (Psalm 8:4-6). Psalm 8:2 calls humans “infants and nursing babes” because we are feeble, new arrivals in the created order, as compared to the angelic creatures.

Satan’s desire is to reign over the earth as a tyrant, independent of God (Isaiah 14:12-14). Apparently, because Adam fell, Satan was given to reign over earth (John 16:11). Jesus has now displaced Satan, regaining the right for humans to reign. He gained this through the “suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9). Because of His obedience to the Father, He was given authority over all (Philippians 2:8-10).

Satan has been defeated, but he is still in office, so to speak. There will come a time (future as of this writing) where Jesus will strip Satan of his authority and render him powerless; he will be thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). In the meanwhile, he is still at large.

Until Satan is completely neutralized, the believer must be constantly prepared mentally because our enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. The imagery of the devil as a roaring lion seeking prey is used to intensify the need to be clear-headed and mentally alert. No one would be casual if they knew a lion was prowling nearby, seeking to devour them. They would be in a constant state of high alert, always ready to flee or defend against the lion’s attack.

Peter’s image of Satan as a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour serves to exhort believers to remain in a mental state of alert, so that we will not become the person the devil consumes. The word devours is used elsewhere in scripture literally to describe something being swallowed up (Matthew 23:24) and figuratively to mean “overwhelmed” in being consumed by sorrow (2 Corinthians 2:7). In each case, Satan’s goal is to bring us under his sway that we might follow his ways, which will lead to our destruction. This is of course Satan’s goal, as he is a murderer by nature (John 8:44).

We know from scripture that Peter knew by experience what it meant to come under the influence of Satan. Just after having been told that he was blessed when God granted him to know that Jesus was the Christ, the Anointed One, Peter tried to control what Jesus said. Jesus rebuked Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Mark 8:33).

This again emphasizes that the battle with Satan in in the mind. Jesus was rebuking Peter for having a perspective that was untrue. We can infer that Peter’s perspective was that Jesus came to be a physical king and remove Rome from power, therefore He could not submit to arrest and be killed. But that was a perspective based on what Peter desired rather than a perspective based on what was true and real.

Peter might have had this incident in mind while writing this passage. He knew from firsthand experience that it takes constant vigilance to keep our minds on obeying God. When Peter rebuked Jesus, he had in his mind that he knew better than Jesus, so was “setting Him straight.” He rebuked Jesus for saying that He was going to Jerusalem to die (Mark 8:32, Matthew 16:22).

So, we might say that Peter rebuked Jesus for not following his, Peter’s, way. Peter was not mentally alert to the wiles of the devil; mistaking Satan’s will as being his own. He chose a wrong perspective based on the lie of Satan, apparently without knowing it. It took Jesus to point out to him that the perspective he had chosen was untrue, and therefore of Satan.

Following our own way apart from God is actually following Satan. We see this in the very first sin; Satan’s temptation to Eve could be framed as, “Don’t you want to have the knowledge to know how to make the best choices for yourself apart from God so you can have the best possible life experience?” (Genesis 3:4-5). The antidote to being led by Satan is to fully submit to God. Part of our submission to God is to submit to others.

Although believers are indwelt by God’s Spirit, we still have our old nature, which Paul calls the “flesh.” That flesh is part of the world and connected to the lusts of it (Galatians 5:17). Scripture exhorts believers to not choose to follow the flesh and its lusts (1 John 2:15-17).

Our inner lusts are the tools of the devil, and he will lead us to be consumed by them if we do not actively resist and choose instead to submit to God. We can see in Romans 1:24, 26, 28 a progression of sin: when we persist in sin, God turns us over to our flesh which then leads us to destruction. A fundamental perspective our lusts promote is “my happiness comes through feeding my appetites.” Whether this is for entertainment, affirmation, sensual pleasure, or other desires, becoming a slave to our inner-pleasures leads to death (James 1:13-15).

The varying forms of submission to other humans Peter has spoken of throughout this letter prepare our hearts to submit to Him (1 Peter 2:2, 13, 18, 3:1, 7-8). Submitting to others trains our will to say “no” to our inner pleasures and “yes” to God’s will for us to serve others in love; we are to submit to others as an act of submission to God, “for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13).

Peter learned from the experience in being rebuked by Jesus that a believer needs to exercise diligence to avoid falling prey to the devil’s influence to believe a lie and/or choose a perspective that is untrue. So, he strongly exhorts his readers, But, indicates a contrast to falling prey to the devil, resist him. Peter’s full statement on how to resist Satan follows: But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world (v. 9).

The word resist means to set oneself against in opposition (James 4:7, Ephesians 6:13). We might think of setting up a defensive position in battle. Verse 8 tells us that Satan is our adversary, our opponent. So, we should act accordingly and prepare to defend ourselves. In Ephesians 6:14-18, the Apostle Paul depicts each day as a spiritual battle against the “flaming arrows” of the enemy (Ephesians 6:16). The inference is that all these battles take place in the mind.

In Ephesians 6, Paul sets forth a number of defenses against Satan, including faith, righteousness, peace, and truth. He mentions prayer as a part of the weaponry, echoing Jesus’s admonition to remain alert and pray in order to avoid temptation (Matthew 26:41).

The believer’s ability to resist the devil rests on being mentally self-controlled and alert as well as being spiritually firm, meaning steadfast and strong, in your faith, referring to your trust in Christ’s ability and willingness to come to your aid (Hebrews 2:18, 4:16, 1 Peter 1:21). To be firm in our faith also means to take care to believe what is true. This includes believing God and choosing the perspectives we embrace based on what is true. In his epistle, James notes that temptation comes from choosing to follow our inner desires, which leads to sin and death, then urges his readers:

“Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.”
(James 1:21)

In this verse from James, the word “souls” is “psyche” in Greek which is translated “life” about half the time. The point here is that by “putting aside” and replacing the untrue perspectives advocated by our inner flesh (filthiness and wickedness) with “the word implanted” within us, we can save our lives from the negative effects of sin. This begins with choosing to believe what is true and choosing perspectives that are true (“in humility receive the word implanted”).

In addition to being mentally alert and spiritually firm in faith, Peter mentions another area of mental comprehension that would help his readers resist the devil, knowing, meaning to have mental awareness, that the same experiences of suffering, referring to unjust suffering for the cause of Christ (1 Peter 4:16) are being experienced by your brethren in the world.

Peter points out that this is a common lot for believers desiring to live as faithful witnesses. Every human has the same basic battle. We all have an inner, fallen nature that seeks to lead us to live with false perspectives. Since the perspectives we choose lead to our actions, succumbing to the false perspectives advocated by the flesh leads to actions that exhibit the “deeds of the flesh” which are destructive both to self and to others (Galatians 5:19-21).

Luke records Paul as preaching that entering the kingdom of God, gaining the full blessing and reward of His kingdom, requires many tribulations (Acts 14:22). Paul also stated that there is no temptation that is not common to man, but God will not allow us to face any temptation we cannot endure (1 Corinthians 10:13). In 2 Timothy 3:12, Paul states overtly that any believer desiring to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution.

This passage from Peter serves as a sort of capstone to the argument he began in Chapter 3, that suffering persecution for being a Christian is a common experience of believers, who should expect to suffer in the same manner Jesus suffered, enduring the rejection of men (1 Peter 3:17-18). Accordingly, suffering unjustly should not take us by surprise (1 Peter 4:12-13). Peter wants us to adopt a perspective that suffering rejection from the world for faithfully following God’s ways is a positive sign that we are succeeding at life-and this will ultimately result in participating in God’s glory for us, which will never fade away (1 Peter 1:4).

Perpetually continuing in being mentally and spiritually prepared helps us resist the devil. Satan will attempt to get our minds off Christ and onto self. He might tempt us to take our own path because we are unhappy with God’s way (as Peter was in Matthew 16). He might get us focused on retribution, defending ourselves, meting out our own justice rather than trusting Him to be the righteous judge (Romans 12:19-21). He might tempt us to fall into the various lusts that are in the world (1 John 2:15-17).

But choosing to adopt Satan’s false perspectives and untrue framing leads to following Satan’s ways. This in turn leads to loss and destruction. This is true in this life, as falling into sin starts a progression that leads to addiction and loss of mental health (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). It is also true in the next life, as believers will “suffer loss” for deeds that do not withstand the judgment fire of Christ (1 Corinthians 3:15).

By resisting Satan, recognizing and refusing to adopt his false framing, and instead adopting true perspectives from God’s word, believers can become all God intended us to be, which is our greatest possible reward. That is Peter’s next statement, as he begins to bring this letter to a close.