And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
— Matthew 3:9-10
For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?
— Luke 23:31
Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
— Matthew 11:20-24
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
— Galatians 3:1
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
— Revelation 2:5
A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.
— Daniel 7:10
Judgment Must Begin at the House of God, by Robert Leighton. The following contains an excerpt from his work, “A Practical Commentary Upon the First Epistle of Peter.”
Chapter 4, Verse 17 — For the time is come, that judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God?
There is not only perfect equity, but withal a comely proportion and beauty in all the ways of God, had we eyes opened to discern them, particularly in this point of the sufferings and afflictions of the Church. The Apostle here sets it before his brethren, For the time is come, &c. In which words, there is 1st. A parallel of the Lord’s dealing with his own and with the wicked. 2d. A persuasion to due compliance and confidence, on the part of his own, upon that consideration.
The parallel is in the order and the measure of punishing; and it is so that, for the order, it begins at the house of God, and ends upon the ungodly. And that carries in it this great difference in the measure, that it passes from the one on whom it begins, and rests on the other on whom it ends, and on whom the full weight of it lies for ever. It is so expressed: What shall the end be, &c., which imports, not only that judgment shall overtake them in the end, but that it shall be their end; they shall end in it, and it shall be endless upon them.
The time is. Indeed, the whole time of this present life is so, is the time of suffering and purifying for the Church, compassed with enemies who will afflict her, and subject to those impurities which need affliction. The children of God are in their under-age here: all their time they are children, and have their frailties and childish follies; and therefore, though they are not always under the stroke of the rod, for that they were not able to endure, yet they are under the discipline and use of the rod all their time. And whereas the wicked escape till their days of full payment, the children of God are in this life chastised with frequent afflictions. And so, the time ό καιρὸς may here be taken according as the Apostle St Paul uses the same word, Rom. 8:18, παθήματα τοῦ νῦνκαίροῦ, The sufferings of this present time.
But withal, it is true, and appears to be here implied, that there are peculiar set times, which the Lord chooses for the correcting of his Church. He hath the days prefixed and written in his Ephemerides, hath his days of correcting, wherein he goes round from one church to another. We thought it would never come to us, but we have now found the smart of it.
And here the Apostle may probably mean the times of those hot persecutions that were then begun, and continued, though with some intervals, for two or three ages. Thus, in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse, after the white horse, immediately follow at his heels, the red, and the black, and the pale horse. And as it was upon the first publishing of the Gospel, so usually, upon the restoring of it, or upon remarkable reformations of the Church and revivings of religion, follow sharp and searching trials. As the lower cause of this is the rage and malice of Satan, and of the ungodly world acted and stirred by him, against the purity and prevalency of religion, so it is from a higher hand for better ends. The Lord will discover the multitudes of hypocrites and empty professors, who will at such a time readily abound, when religion is upon an advancing way, and the stream of it runs strong. Now, by the counter-current of troubles, such fall back and are carried away. And the truth of grace, in the hearts of believers, receives advantage from these hazards and sufferings; they are put to fasten their hold the better on Christ, to seek more experience of the real and sweet consolations of the Gospel, which may uphold them against the counter-blasts of suffering. Thus is religion made a more real and solid thing in the hearts of true believers: they are entered to that way of receiving Christ and his cross together, that they may see their bargain, and not think it a surprise.
Judgment. Though all their sufferings are not such, yet commonly, there is that unsuitable and unwary walking among Christians, that even their sufferings for the cause of God, though unjust from men, are from God just punishments of their miscarriages towards him, in their former ways; their self-pleasing and earthliness, having too high a relish for the delights of this world, forgetting their inheritance and home, and conforming themselves to the world, walking too much like it.
Must begin. The Church of God is punished, while the wicked are free and flourish in the world, possibly all their days; or, if judgment reach them here, yet it is later; it begins at the house of God.
1. This holds in those who profess his name, and are of the visible church, compared with them who are without the pale of it, and are its avowed enemies.
2. In those who profess a desire of a more religious and holy course of life within the Church, compared with the profane multitude.
3. In those who are indeed more spiritual and holy, and come nearer unto God, compared with others who fall short of that measure. In all these respects it holds, that the Lord doth more readily exercise them with afflictions, and correct their wanderings, than any others.
And this truly is most reasonable; and the reason lies in the very name given to the Church, the house of God. For,
1. There is equity in such a proceeding. The sins of the Church have their peculiar aggravations, which fall not upon others. That which is simply a sin in strangers to God, is, in his people, the breach of a known and received law, and a law daily unfolded and set before them: yea, it is against their oath of allegiance; it is perfidy and breach of covenant, committed both against the clearest light, and the strictest bonds, and the highest mercies. And still the more particular the profession of his name and the testimonies of his love, these make sin the more sinful, and the punishment of it the more reasonable. The sins of the Church are all twice dipped Dibapha, have a double dye. Isa. 1:18. They are breaches of the law, and they are, besides, ungrateful and disloyal breaches of promise.
2. As there is unquestionable equity, so there is an evident congruity in this. God is ruler of all the world, but particularly of his Church, here called his house wherein he hath a special residence and presence; and therefore it is most suitable that there he be specially observed and obeyed, and if disobeyed, that he take notice of it and punish it; that he suffer not himself to be dishonoured to his face by those of his own house. And therefore, whosoever escapes, his own shall not. You only have I known, of all the families of the earth: therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities. Amos 3:2. It is fit that he who righteously judges and rules all nations, should make his justice most evident and exemplary in his own house, where it may best be remarked, and where it will best appear how impartial he is in punishing sin. So a king, (as the Psalmist, Psal. 101:2,) that he may rule the land well, makes his own house exemplary. It is, you know, one special qualification of a bishop and pastor, to be one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection; for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? 1 Tim. 3:5. Now this, therefore, more eminently appears in the supreme Lord of the Church; he rules it as his own house, and therefore when he finds disobedience there, he will first punish that. So he clears himself, and the wicked world being afterwards punished, their mouths are stopped with the preceding punishment of the Church. Will he not spare his own? Yea, they shall be first scourged. What then shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel.
And indeed, the purity of his nature, if it be every where contrary to all sinful impurity, cannot but most appear in his peculiar dwelling house; that he will especially have neat and clean. If he hate sin all the world over, where it is nearest to him he hates it most, and testifies his hatred of it most: he will not endure it in his presence. As cleanly, neat persons cannot well look upon any thing that is nasty, much less will they suffer it to come near them, or touch them, or to continue in their presence in the house where they dwell: so the Lord, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, will not abide it within his own doors; and the nearer any come to him, the less can he endure any unholiness or sinful pollution in them. He will be sanctified in all that come nigh him, Lev. 10:3; so especially in his ministers. Oh, how pure ought they to be, and how provoking and hateful to him are their impurities! Therefore, in that commission to the destroyers, Ezek. 9:6, to which place the Apostle here may have some reference, Go, says he, slay the old and the young, and begin at my sanctuary. They were the persons who had polluted his worship, and there the first stroke lighted. And in a spiritual sense, because all his people are his own elect priesthood, and should be holiness to the Lord; when they are not really so, and do not sanctify him in their walking, he sanctifies himself, and declares his holiness in his judgments on them.
3. There is mercy in this dispensation too; even under the habit of judgment, love walks secretly and works. So loving and so wise a Father will not undo his children by sparing the rod, but because he loves, rebukes, and chastens. See Heb. 12:6. Prov. 3:11. Apoc. 3:19.
His Church is his house; therefore that he may delight in it, and take pleasure to dwell in it, and make it happy with his presence, he will have it often washed and made clean, and the filth and rubbish scoured and purged out of it; this argues his gracious purpose of abiding in it.
And as he doth it, that he may delight in his people, so he doth it that they may delight in him, and in him alone. He imbitters the breast of the world, to wean them; makes the world hate them, that they may the more easily hate it; suffers them not to settle upon it, and fall into a complacency with it, but makes it unpleasant to them by many and sharp afflictions, that they may with the more willingness come off and be untied from it, and that they may remember home the more, and seek their comforts above; that finding so little below, they may turn unto him, and delight themselves in communion with him. That the sweet incense of their prayers may ascend the more thick, he kindles those fires of trials to them. For though it should not be so, yet so it is, that in times of ease they would easily grow remiss and formal in that duty.
He is gracious and wise, knows what he does with them, and the thoughts he thinks towards them. Jer. 29:11. All is for their advantage, for the purifying of their iniquities. Isa. 27:9. He purges out their impatience, and earthliness, and self-will, and carnal security; and thus refines them for vessels of honour. We see in a jeweller’s shop, that as there are pearls and diamonds, and other precious stones, so there are files, cutting instruments, and many sharp tools, for their polishing; and while they are in the work-house, they are continual neighbours to them, and often come under them. The Church is God’s jewelry, his work-house, where his jewels are a polishing for his palace and house; and those he especially esteems and means to make most resplendent, he hath oftenest his tools upon.
Thus observe it, as it is in the Church compared to other societies, so is it in a congregation or family; if there be one more diligently seeking after God than the rest, he shall be liable to meet with more trials, and be oftener under afflictions than any of the company, either under contempt and scorn, or poverty and sickness, or some one pressure or other, outward or inward. And those inward trials are the nearest and sharpest which the world sees least, and yet the soul feels most. And yet all these, both outward and inward, have love, unspeakable love in them all, being designed to purge and polish them, and, by the increasing of grace, to fit them for glory.
Inf. 1. Let us not be so foolish as to promise ourselves impunity on account of our relation to God as his Church in covenant with him. If once we thought so, surely our experience hath undeceived us. And let not what we have suffered harden us, as if the worst were past. We may rather fear it is but a pledge and beginning of sharper judgment. Why do we not consider our unhumbled and unpurified condition, and tremble before the Lord? Would we save him a labour, he would take it well. Let us purify our souls, that he may not be put to further purifying by new judgments. Were we busy reading our present condition, we should see very legible foresigns of further judgments; as for instance:
1. The Lord taking away his eminent and worthy servants, who are as the very pillars of the public peace and welfare, and taking away counsel, and courage, and union, from the rest; forsaking us in our meetings, and leaving us in the dark to grope and rush one upon another.
2. The dissensions and jarrings in the state and Church, are likely, from imagination, to bring it to a reality. These unnatural burnings threaten new fires of public judgments to be kindled amongst us.
3. That general despising of the Gospel and abounding of profaneness throughout the land, not yet purged, but as our great sin remaining in us, calls for more fire and more boiling.
4. The general coldness and deadness of spirit; the want of zeal for God, and of the communion of saints, that mutual stirring up of one another to holiness; and, which is the source of all, the restraining of prayer, a frozen benumbness in that so necessary work, that preventer of judgments, that binder of the hands of God from punishment, and opener of them for the pouring forth of mercies.—Oh! this is a sad condition in itself, though it portended no further judgment, the Lord hiding himself, and the spirit of zeal and prayer withdrawn, and scarcely any lamenting it, or so much as perceiving it! Where are our days either of solemn prayer or praises, as if there were cause for neither? And yet, there is a clear cause for both. Truly, my brethren, we have need, if ever we had, to bestir ourselves. Are not these kingdoms, at this present, brought to the extreme point of their highest hazard? And yet, who lays it to heart?
Inf. 2. Learn to put a right construction on all God’s dealings with his Church, and with thy soul. With regard to his Church, there may be a time wherein thou shalt see it not only tossed, but, to thy thinking, covered and swallowed up with tears; but wait a little, it shall arrive safe. This is a common stumbling-stone, but walk by the light of the word, and the eye of faith looking on it, and thou shalt pass by and not stumble at it. The Church mourns, and Babylon sings—sits as a queen; but for how long? She shall come down and sit in the dust; and Sion shall be glorious, and put on her beautiful garments, while Babylon shall not look for another revolution to raise her again; no, she shall never rise. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus, with violence, shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. Rev. 18:21.
Be not hasty; take God’s work together, and do not judge of it by parcels. It is indeed all wisdom and righteousness; but we shall best discern the beauty of it, when we look on it in the frame, when it shall be fully completed and finished, and our eyes enlightened to take a fuller and clearer view of it than we can have here. Oh, what wonder, what endless wondering will it then command!
We read of Joseph hated, and sold, and imprisoned, and all most unjustly, yet because, within a leaf or two, we find him freed and exalted, and his brethren coming as supplicants to him, we are satisfied. But when we look on things which are for the present cloudy and dark, our short-sighted, hasty spirits cannot learn to wait a little, till we see the other side, and what end the Lord makes. We see judgment beginning at the house of God, and this perplexes us while we consider not the rest, What shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel? God begins the judgment on his Church for a little time, that it may end and rest upon his enemies for ever. And indeed, he leaves the wicked last in the punishment, that he may make use of them for the punishment of his Church. They are his rod, Isa. 5:5; but when he hath done that work with them, they are broken and burnt, and that, when they are at the height of their insolence and boasting, not knowing what hand moves them, and smites his people with them for a while, till the day of their consuming come, ver. 16, 24, 25. Let the vile enemy that hath shed our blood and insulted over us, rejoice in their present impunity, and in men’s procuring of it, and pleading for it;* there is another hand whence we may look for justice. And though it may be, that the judgment begun at us, is not yet ended, and that we may yet further, and that justly, find them our scourge, yet, certainly, we may and ought to look beyond that, unto the end of the Lord’s work, which shall be the ruin of his enemies, and the peace of his people, and the glory of his name.
Of them that obey not the Gospel. The end of all the ungodly is terrible, but especially the end of such as heard the Gospel, and have not received and obeyed it.
The word ἀπειθούντων hath in it both unbelief and disobedience; and these are inseparable. Unbelief is the grand point of disobedience in itself, and the spring of all other disobedience; and the pity is, that men will not believe it to be thus.
They think it an easy and a common thing to believe. Who doth not believe? Oh, but rather, who does? Who hath believed our report? Were our own misery, and the happiness that is in Christ believed, were the riches of Christ and the love of Christ believed, would not this persuade men to forsake their sins and the world, in order to embrace him?
But men run away with an extraordinary fancy of believing, and do not deeply consider what news the Gospel brings, and how much it concerns them. Sometimes, it may be, they have a sudden thought of it, and they think, I will think on it better at some other time. But when comes that time? One business steps in after another, and shuffles it out. Men are not at leisure to be saved.
Observe the phrase, The Gospel of God. It is his embassy of peace to men, the riches of his mercy and free love opened and set forth, not simply to be looked upon, but laid hold on; the glorious holy God declaring his design of agreement with man, in his own Son, his blood streaming forth in it to wash away uncleanness. And yet this Gospel is not obeyed! Surely, the conditions of it must be very hard, and the commands intolerably grievous, that are not hearkened to. Why, judge you if they be. The great command is, to receive that salvation; and the other is this, to love that Saviour; and there is no more. Perfect obedience is not now the thing; and the obedience which is required, that love makes sweet and easy to us, and acceptable to him. This is proclaimed to all who hear the Gospel, but the greatest part refuse it: they love themselves, and their lusts, and this present world, and will not change, and so they perish!
They perish—What is that? What is their end? I will answer that but as the Apostle doth, and that is even by asking the question over again, What shall be their end?
There is no speaking of it; a curtain is drawn: silent wonder expresses it best, telling that it cannot be expressed. How then shall it be endured? It is true, that there be resemblances used in Scripture, giving us some glance of it. We hear of a burning lake, a fire that is not quenched, and a worm that dies not. Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44; Rev. 21:8. But these are but shadows to the real misery of them that obey not the Gospel. Oh, to be filled with the wrath of God, the ever-living God, for ever! What words or thoughts can reach it? Oh, eternity, eternity! Oh, that we did believe it!
This same parallel of the Lord’s dealing with the righteous and the wicked, is continued in the following verse, in other terms for the clearer expression, and deeper impression of it.
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