1 Peter 4:17

For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?

Hardly any verses in the New Testament have been misunderstood any more than have this one and the next. Does Peter, for one moment, mean to say that Christians shall hardly be saved at all? Certainly not! Did not he himself say, "An abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom shall be richly supplied to us" (2 Peter 2:11 KJV)? Well, what is in view here?

The time is come for judgment to begin ... This does not mean the eternal judgment is about to begin, but it refers to the judgment against Jerusalem impending in the total destruction of it, and prophetically foretold by both Christ and the apostles.

Begin at the house of God ... From the beginning, it had been the Jews who enlisted the power of the Roman state against Christ and his church; and the hatred they had fostered against Christianity throughout the empire was about to become a roaring tornado of extermination and death venting its full fury against the church of Jesus Christ. Yes, indeed, the judgment would begin "at the house of God," the true temple of God, which is the church. Little could the Jews have seen in the approach of this destruction, which they had done so much to foster and encourage, little could they have seen that it would also encompass themselves even more completely and more terribly than that coming on the Christians. An apostle of Christ in this sentence prophetically foretold the fate as being even more terrible than that impending for Christians.

What shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel ... ? The "them" of this place is the secular Israel. The introduction of "house of God," with its meaning of the true temple, makes it virtually certain that the old Israel with "their house," the Herodian temple, are those designated as the ones who "obey not the gospel."

And it worked out exactly as Peter prophesied. The Neronian persecution soon ended in the shameful, wretched death of Nero; but his successors went on to put down a Jewish insurrection, which ended in the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem and over a million of the Jews by Vespasian and Titus, A.D. 70, only five years after Peter wrote these lines. Thus the ancient chosen people, who had an opportunity to procure both for themselves and for the Christians a permanent status of legality in the pagan empire, stubbornly opposed it for Christians, little seeing that by so doing they were also eventually making outlaws of themselves. Peter foresaw that and accurately foretold here the onset and progress of the holocaust.

Obey . .. the gospel ... is an excellent term for conversion, and it may only be deplored that current religious culture has found so little use for it. It is as if, by leaving out such a harsh word as "obey," they may be able to claim salvation upon some other basis. However, obedience of the truth is a sine qua non of salvation in Christ. Paul revealed fully the fate of persons who will not "obey the gospel" (2 Thessalonians 1:8).