1 Pet 4.17-19

two judgments

(1 Peter 4.17-19)

Jason Procopio

Last week we got back into our series on Peter’s letters to the churches in Asia Minor. We were in 1 Peter 4, starting in v. 12—and it’s important that we remember what we saw last week, because today’s passage (v. 16-19) is really a small part of a larger piece.

So if you remember, Peter is writing to churches under fire—to Christians living under the threat of persecution in the Roman Empire. And since he knows they are going to suffer for their faith, he is encouraging them to not run from that suffering or lament it as if it were strange, but to lean into God in that suffering. 

And last week we saw three ways in which Christians can suffer for their faith. We can suffer with confidence, because we know God is working in that suffering. (We’ll come back to that a good bit today.) We suffer with Christ, sharing in his suffering, and in that way we can actually see our union with Christ played out in front of our eyes, in our own lives. And we can suffer with courage, because we know our response to persecution serves as a living testimony of the gospel, for the glory of God.

Now up until v. 16, Peter has been using fairly specific language to describe what is happening to these Christians. He talks about the “fiery trial” they will meet; he talks about their “suffering” being “insulted” for the name of Christ. In v. 17, he adds another linguistic layer, and he uses a term that we as modern Christians will find very strange: he speaks of our suffering for the gospel in terms of judgment.

Let’s read the passage in its context (because v. 17-19 are part of a larger whole). We’ll read 1 Peter 4.12-19 to begin:

12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And 

“If the righteous is scarcely saved, 

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” 

19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. 

Now this is a complicated passage; he speaks of our suffering—our “judgment”—at the beginning of v. 17; then in the rest of v. 17 and in v. 18 he contrasts it with the judgment of those who reject the gospel; then he comes back to us in v. 19. On top of the fact that it’s kind of difficult to decipher exactly what he’s talking about, he uses a kind of bookend structure that makes it even more difficult. So to make things a bit simpler, we’re going to deal with these verses thematically, by looking at the different kinds of judgment he’s referring to, and why.

Punitive judgment (v. 17b-18)

Now before we talk about what Peter says in v. 17 and 18, let me do something I try not to do too often. Sometimes when we read a passage of the Bible, we get stuck on a word or a detail which isn’t the main point the author is trying to make, but which he mentions in order to support his main point. So much of the time, we don’t want to dwell too long on that detail, because…well, because it’s not the main point. 

However, sometimes it is necessary to take some time and address it anyway, if the detail in question goes to the heart of how we see God—of who he is and what he is like.

That is the case for v. 17 and 18 here. I know some of you will unintentionally get stuck on one specific word here; and you’ll be practically unable to hear anything else I say unless I address it. So let me take a couple minutes to do that now. 

There are a million bad reasons we could find for rejecting the Bible if we wanted to; but probably the most devastating to us, the most difficult to overcome, is what the Bible says about judgment: that God will judge humanity, and punish those who reject him by pouring out his wrath on them for all eternity in hell.

If you read the Bible, you won’t be able to escape this. You will inevitably stumble across the fact that God has the right to judge human beings, and that he exercises that right. We hate this idea. We hate it because there is perhaps nothing more abhorrent to the modern West than intolerance. 

However…we have to understand that what would be sin for us is not necessarily sin for God. It would be sinful for us to judge other human beings, because they are our equals. But God is not our equal. He is our Creator. And not only is he our Creator—he is the Creator of all things, including the distinction between what is right and what is wrong; what is holy and what is sinful. He sets the boundary lines, so he can decide when those lines have been crossed. There is only one being who has the right, the authority and the wisdom to judge human beings, and that is the God who created them. 

As far as it goes, most people can see the logic in that. But there is another factor that gives us trouble here, and that is the fact that we have so often heard that God is love. We have a very hard time squaring God’s wrath against sin and his judgment of sinners with our idea of God’s love for us. We get stuck here, because Christians talk about God’s love, and we think, Well, if God is love, why does he judge? Why doesn’t he save everyone? Some people will say that God wants to save everyone, but he can’t, because he doesn’t want us to be robots, so he submits to our will. And as appealing as that sounds, the Bible kind of says the opposite.

Now we could talk about this for hours and still not exhaust the subject; there’s far too much philosophical and theological work to be done in the few minutes I have today. 

But for our purposes, if you’re having a hard time getting past the idea of God’s judgment of those who reject him, keep two points in mind.

Firstly: if we can’t reconcile God’s judgment with his love, it’s because our idea of love is flawed. There is no love without wrath (or at least the potential for it). If someone abuses my little girl, I will not sweetly brush it off, saying, “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s okay.” My wrath will rage, and that wrath will be right. Why? Because I love her.

God cannot love without wrath, because if he did, his love would not be love. Sin threatens and twists that which God loves: his own glory and his own image, manifested in the lives of human beings. God must feel wrath against sin, because sin corrupts what God loves: wrath against sin is right. 

That’s the first thing—God’s love and God’s judgment go hand in hand; because he loves what is good, he hates what is evil.

Secondly: no one will ever be judged who doesn’t deserve it, because no one ever rejected God who didn’t want to. Every rejection of God is a willful act of desire—if you reject God, it’s because you want to reject God. No one will be able to stand before God on the day of judgment and say, “You made me do it!” On that day, everyone will tell the truth, and that truth—every single time—will be, “I did it because I wanted to do it.”

(And by the way, if you do want to follow Christ, then follow him! We don’t say this enough: if you want to come to Christ, nothing’s stopping you. Your sin isn’t an obstacle; God isn’t afraid of your sin, and he isn’t afraid of your questions. Jesus clearly said in John 6 that no one will come to him unless the Father draws them to him…but in that same passage, he also said that whoever comes to him, he will never cast out. People don’t desire to know Christ without a reason; if you want to follow him, that desire is usually a good indication that he’s saying, “Come follow me.” There are no hoops you have to jump through, no entry test you have to pass. If you want to come, then come.)

So all of this, we need to keep in mind when we look at v. 17 and 18: God’s judgment is not contrary to his love, and it is not wrong. It is right. It’s what we all deserve.

But like I said, all that is not the main point of this passage. So let’s read these two verses again, and get to the main point.

17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And 

“If the righteous is scarcely saved, 

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” 

There are two questions we need to ask: what is Peter saying, and why is he saying it? 

He’s saying that God is going to judge the ungodly and the sinner (v. 18). Those can be fairly subjective terms, so what does it mean to be “ungodly”? What does it mean to be a “sinner”? The “ungodly,” the “sinners,” are   those who do not obey the gospel of God (v. 17).

The gospel begins with the sobering news we saw before: that God is the Creator of all things, the one being who has the authority and wisdom to say, This is holy, and this is sinful. We were created in his image, but that image was distorted and corrupted when the first man rebelled against him. Now, we are born with a desire to reject God; to be our own gods; to take back the authority that belongs to God alone. No one ever rejected God who didn’t want to, and left to ourselves, we all want to.

Then it continues with the surprise no one saw coming: God, although he would be right to judge and condemn every one of us because of our rebellion, doesn’t do it. Instead he sends his Son Jesus Christ to be human with us, to take our sin—our rejection of God—on himself, and to suffer the punishment we deserve. So God finds a way to be just, and punish sin, and at the same time not punish us. He can declare us holy and righteous, because Christ was holy and righteous for us—that is the gospel. 

Obeying the gospel simply means accepting that. Submitting to it. Receiving it. Trusting it. Obeying the gospel is the most logical and reasonable decision ever offered to us, because it is trusting that we don’t have to be obedient to be saved. We’re not saved by our obedience, but by Christ’s obedience for us. Better news than this is simply unthinkable.

So rejecting that good news—not obeying the gospel—is the very definition of corruption and foolishness. It is holding on to our desire to rule ourselves, even if ruling ourselves means losing ourselves. It is enabling cancer, because we love the cancer.

Such corruption, such foolishness, deserves judgment, and will receive judgment.

And Peter hammers this point home by way of contrast. He contrasts the judgment of those who do not obey the gospel with the judgment of those who do. 

Look again at v. 18 (which is actually a quote from Proverbs 11.31): 

“If the righteous is scarcely saved, 

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” 

Neither Peter, nor Solomon before him, are not calling our salvation into question. This doesn’t mean that we (those who obey the gospel) are almost not saved. He’s saying that when God saved us, he did something extraordinarily difficult. It is not a small thing for God to save his people. And his people are those on whom he placed his affections before the creation of the world. So if it is such a hard thing to save his children, what does that mean for those who aren’t his children? for those who actively reject him? There is no greater foolishness, no greate corruption, than to reject the greatest gift imaginable. So for those who reject Christ, judgment is assured.

So that’s what Peter is saying; now, why is he saying it? Peter’s not writing to unbelievers, after all, but to Christians. He’s writing to those who have been saved. So why does he even need to talk about judgment?

He’s saying it to push us to persevere in obedience.

Seeing passages like this in the letters to the churches can make Christians nervous, because we can get the impression that if we sin against God, if we don’t obey him, then he might take back the salvation he gave us—despite the fact that he very clearly said we’re not saved because of what we do, but because of what Christ did for us. 

God’s goal in giving us the Bible is to make God’s people holy—to bring us to that day when we are once and for all like Christ. Sometimes God does this through encouragements; sometimes he does it through promises; and sometimes he does it through warnings. These warnings don’t mean our salvation is in doubt; they are examples of how seriously we should view our own holiness.

And that’s what Peter’s doing in these two verses. 

He’s saying, Look what God has saved you from! Whatever you’re suffering now, it’s NOTHING compared to what you COULD have suffered if God hadn’t saved you. So no matter what you’re suffering, don’t allow your pain be an excuse to fall back into sin! 

Didn’t he say it just before, in v. 15-16?  

15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

If sinful rejection of God is deserving of such fierce judgment, why would we want to stick our toe in those waters again? This was your life before, but it is not your life now. You’ve been taken out of that. You’ve been spared the judgment that sin deserves—so STOP SINNING! Instead, live holy and unashamed for our God, even if it means suffering to do it.

That encouragement is the point of all of this, and it’s how Peter bookends this passage.

Purifying judgment (v. 17a, 19)  

Now after all we’ve said about judgment, the beginning of v. 17 could throw us off a bit, because Peter uses the same scary word—judgment—and points it at us, at the church.

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God…

“Hold on—I thought you just said that Christ was punished in our place. I thought you said that at the final judgment, God would look at us, he would see Christ’s righteousness which was given to us, and he would declare us righteous.”

That’s true. But the final judgment is not what he’s talking about here. It’s what he was talking about in reference to those who do not obey the gospel, but that’s not what he’s talking about in reference to the household of God. 

So what is he talking about? It’s important to know that usually the word “judgment” refers to a verdict rendered—a judge says, “You did this, you deserve this, you get this.” But sometimes in the Old Testament (for example, in Ezekiel 9.1-6 and Malachi 3.1-4), judgment is not a question of God rendering a verdict, but of God allowing suffering to come to his people to purify them. This is what he means by “judgment for the household of God” here. 

We can even see it in the passage itself—the “for” at the beginning of v. 17 means that the goal of this judgment is to bring about what he just said in v. 16—to make us into the kind of people who, when we suffer, will not be ashamed, but glorify God. 

This is something we don’t always want to hear, but we must. God allows trial to come upon his people, not to punish us, but to purify us. For example, we will suffer—we will lose something or someone which was important to us, and that loss will be profoundly painful for us. (How many of us felt pain over losing the possibility of seeing other people face to face last year?) So we lose something (or we fear losing it), and in the pain of that experience, we realize that we had let this thing or this person take a place in our lives that only God should have—we realize that we had made this thing or this person into an idol. And the proof of our idolatry is that we were devastated when we lost it. The pain helped us see that, and remove that idol from its throne.

Or we’ll suffer because of a personal failure on our part…and we might realize that we had become prideful; we had begun to rely on our own strength, rather than on God’s grace, to get the job done—and we can see it clearly, because now that strength is gone.

Or we’ll suffer persecution and slander and ridicule because of our faith…and we’ll realize just how much other people’s approval weighs in the balance of our own self-worth. We’ll see to what extent what we think of ourselves is determined by what other people think about us. And the pain of that ridicule will remind us that we have hooked our identity and our value onto things which cannot hold them. Even if the admiration of every other person on the planet is taken from us, we still have a great God who delights in us, and his opinion of us is worth more than anything else.

Do you see what I mean? God allows suffering to help us see our own limits more clearly, to help us see his strength for us more clearly. He doesn’t do it to punish us, but to help us, to draw us closer to him—to purify us.

Now I know that some of you will still have an incredibly hard time accepting this. It’s difficult to accept the idea of grace when you’re in pain. It’s difficult to see it as anything but punishment when you’re in it. We often see it later, but in the moment? when we’re in so much pain we can barely breathe? when we can’t even see straight through the tears? It’s a lot harder.

And that is why Peter says what he says in v. 19.  In every sermon, you get to what’s called the application—it’s how we are called to respond to the Word of God that we have seen in this text. In some cases, you have to do a bit of work to see how to respond; in many cases, the author just tells us. This is one of those cases.

V. 19:

19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will [which is always the case] entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. 

So that “therefore” is referring to everything Peter has said from v. 12 to v. 18. Our trials are not surprising; they are not strange—this is what Jesus told us to expect if we follow him. In addition, our trials are means which God uses to show us that we are united to Christ, because we share in his sufferings, and we share in his sufferings so that we can also share in his joy. Our suffering drives us to seek our refuge in God, which brings us a deeper knowledge and awareness of his Holy Spirit at work in us. Even if we are insulted for the name of Christ, we are not ashamed, but we glorify God, because we know that God is using those insults, using these trials, to refine us, to purify us, and not to punish us. We have seen his grace at work in our lives; we know what he saved us from, what he took us out of—once we deserved condemnation, but now we have received mercy; once, judgment meant eternal punishment for us, but now, judgment means that God is shaping us, modeling us, making us more like his Son.

And because we know all these things—THEREFORE—let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. 

Do you see his point? If God is gracious to us even in pain; if he transforms our suffering, and puts it to use for us and not against us…can we not trust him? Suffering is going to come. We will suffer in natural ways—we’ll get sick, we’ll lose jobs, we’ll be afraid and stressed and exhausted; and we will suffer abuse—slander and insults and mockery for our faith. But our God is so good as to make nothing—not even our pain—useless. He will use it all to bring us closer to him, to bring us more joy in him, to make us more like his Son.

He is faithful…so we can trust him. 

Peter’s well aware that when we suffer, we may well not feel like God is faithful. We may feel like he’s absent. We may feel like there’s no point in persevering in holiness, in obeying his commands, because it feels like obeying him just brings us more harm than good.

So it’s important to know that this word “entrust” in v. 19 does not describe a feeling, or a state of mind. When we’re in suffering, we may not want to trust him. We may have the impression that he’s not there—remember, suffering makes us feel and think things we wouldn’t ordinarily think or feel.

Peter’s command here is not to feel something, but to do something. It’s an imperative; it’s an act.

We choose to entrust ourselves to God, regardless of how we feel…because we have all the proof we ever needed that he is faithful. So we choose to entrust ourselves to him, and we choose to pursue righteousness…because he is our faithful Creator.

So listen, I know some of you are hurting. I know some of you are suffering from “ordinary” things (that aren’t directly linked to your faith); and I know some of you are suffering for your faith. I know for a fact that some of you have had some extremely contentious conversations with your family and friends because you’re a Christian, and others of you are worried that those conversations are coming. And even if you’re not suffering for your faith, you still are, because it’s painful to persevere in obedience, to continue to pray, to continue to read your Bible, when you’re hurting and God doesn’t seem to be answering. 

I’m not going to ask you to feel any differently. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong to feel that hurt. 

All I’m telling you is that no matter how badly you’re hurting, no matter how you feel, you can entrust yourself to him anyway. He may not seem faithful, but he is. And in ten years, or twenty, or thirty, when you look back on this time, you’ll remember the pain…and you’ll see what parts of you God was working on through it. You’ll see the parts of your soul that God was kneading, pressing on, excising, growing. 

Physical therapy is painful for wounded people. They twist your body this way and that, they stimulate your muscles, they put you through excruciating exercises… It feels like torture. But six months down the road you can see those areas they tortured are actually stronger now. 

Spiritual therapy is no different. We suffer, and it’s painful…but in that pain, we share in Christ’s sufferings. 

In that pain, the Spirit rests upon us. 

In that pain, we testify about the gospel, unashamed. 

In that pain, we remember what he saved us out of. 

In that pain, God purifies us.

So if you are suffering, whatever the reason, entrust your souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.