Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Peter 4:17

1 Peter 4:17. Because it is the season for the Judgment to begin with the house of God. A reason why, under persecution and in all circumstances, they should so conduct themselves as to glorify God. The reason lies in the thought that the judgment by which God is to search all is already on the wing. The judgment is conceived of as a process which makes the house of God its starting-point, which is even now commencing there in the Church's baptism of suffering, and which cannot stop there. The language is scarcely consistent with the idea that the destruction of Jerusalem was already an accomplished fact. To a Jew like Peter that event would be too great a catastrophe to make it likely that he should speak of it as a beginning only of judgment. The phrase ‘house of God' has the same sense here as the ‘spiritual house' of chap. 1 Peter 2:5, and is immediately identified with the living members of the Church in the next clause ‘if it first begin at us.' To the ‘house of God' itself this judgment was a process of sifting and separation, a judgment like that referred to by Paul (1 Corinthians 11:31), which had for its object that those tried by it should not be condemned with the world. But if so, what must it be to that outer, heathen world?

but if first with us, what (shall be) the end of them that disobey the gospel of God? The term translated ‘disobey' has the same strong, positive sense here as in chap. 1 Peter 2:7-8 (which see), and in chap, 1Pe 3:1; 1 Peter 3:20. The ‘end' is meant in the literal sense of the conclusion which shall come to them, or the goal they shall be brought to, not in the metaphorical sense of the recompense. Peter seems to have in his mind the sense, if not the very terms, of the solemn declarations of the prophets, e.g. Jeremiah 25:15; Jeremiah 25:29; Jeremiah 49:12; Ezekiel 3:16; Amos 3:3. The judgment of God works its searching course out of the Church into the world of heathenism. And if it visits even the household of faith as a refining fire, what end can it portend for those who withstand the Gospel of Him whose prerogative judgment is? The question is like Christ's in Luke 23:31. The answer, most eloquent of awe, to the question about the ‘end' is the answer left untold. ‘There is no speaking of it: a curtain is drawn; silent wonder expresses it best, telling it cannot be expressed. How then shall it be endured?' (Leighton).

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Peter 4:17

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