1 Peter 4:17 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

For the time is come; or season, viz. that which is fixed by God: the afflictions that befall God's people come in the time appointed, and so are never unseasonable. Or this may imply, that what the prophets spoke in their time, Isaiah 10:12 Jeremiah 25:29, doth especially agree to gospel times, viz. that judgment begins at the house of God. Judgment; viz. temporary, and for good, in opposition to the destructive judgment he implies in the latter part of the verse; he means all those afflictions God brings upon his children for their correction, trial, instruction, mortification, 1 Corinthians 11:31,32. Must begin at the house of God; the church of God, and the members of it, called here his house, as 1 Timothy 3:15 Hebrews 3:6, and typified by the material house or temple of God under the Old Testament. What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? How miserable, how dreadful will be the end of all those that would not obey the gospel! Implying, that they shall be in a much worse condition if God take them in hand. If he spare not his children, much less will he his enemies. If the one sip of the cup of God's wrath, the other shall wring out the dregs, and drink them, Psalms 75:8.