What Does 1 Peter 4:18 Mean?

(18) **And if the righteous scarcely be saved.**—This is a literal quotation, word for word, of Proverbs 11:31, according to the LXX. The quotation proves to us St. Peter’s perfect familiarity with both the Hebrew original and the Greek version. We have seen how he rejects the LXX. version when it does not suit his meaning (*e.g., *1Peter 2:8): here it suits him (though it differs from the Hebrew), and he accepts it. The “righteous” man here means, apparently, as Leighton says, “he that endeavours to walk uprightly in the ways of God,” rather than the man who is then declared finally justified. The fact that they are “scarcely” saved “imports not,” according to Leighton, “any uncertainty or hazard in the thing itself to the end, in respect of the purpose and performance of God, but only the great difficulties and hard encounters in the way.” This is only partly true. The Apostle is rather thinking of the final judgment than of the life of trial; and he means that there was but little margin left: a very few more falls, a few more refusals to follow the calls of grace, and they would have been lost. Doubtless, when the best of us looks back, in the light of the last day, upon all that he has been through, he will be amazed that he ever could be saved at all. Yet Bengel well calls us to see the other side of the picture in 2Peter 1:11. **The ungodly and the sinner.**—This is the Gentile character. “Ungodly” denotes open irreligion—contempt of God and all that belongs to His worship. “Sinner” goes more to the moral side of the nature, pointing most of all to sins of the flesh. (Comp., for instance, Luke 7:37.) “Sinners” was almost a synonym for “Gentiles.” (See, *e.g., *Luke 6:32; Luke 24:7; Galatians 2:15.) The question “Where shall he appear?” imagines some scene such as that of Matthew 25:32 : “Where shall we see him? where will he have to stand?”