1 Peter 4:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For the time is come Foretold by Christ, Matthew 24:9; John 16:2; that judgment must begin at the house of God In the Christian Church; God's own family, which he first visits, both in justice and mercy. The judgment here spoken of is thought by many commentators to signify the particular distress which was to happen before Jerusalem should be utterly destroyed. the Christians were to expect to feel some of the first effects of that general calamity: it was to begin with them, as Christ had plainly foretold in the passages just referred to. It was God's method of old to begin with sending calamities on his own people; and indeed a state of trial seems highly proper before a state of recompense. See 1 Peter 1:6. There seems to be an allusion in this passage to Ezekiel 9:6, and Jeremiah 25:29. By us here, the apostle meant the Christians of that age, whether formerly Jews or Gentiles; for they appear to have been now persecuted generally everywhere. And if it first begin at us Who have truly turned to God, and are taken into his favour through Christ, his beloved Son; what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God? Who, through unbelief and obstinacy, reject the counsel of God against themselves? how terribly will he visit them! The words, who obey not the gospel of God, properly describe the unbelieving Jews: they were not chargeable with idolatry; they acknowledged, and in a sense worshipped, the true God; but they rejected the gospel which God had revealed by his Son, and therefore the divine wrath was executed upon them in so dreadful a manner. See on 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. Whoever compares the accounts in the Scriptures, or ancient fathers, concerning the persecutions which befell the Christians about this time, with the sufferings of the Jews, as related by Josephus, will easily see that the distress only began with the Christians, and was light compared with what afterward fell upon the Jews: for when Jerusalem was destroyed, the Christians escaped with their lives, and enjoyed more peace and tranquillity than they had done before.