1 Peter 4:5–6

Godless Gentiles no doubt think it strange that believers have no desire to indulge the lower passions in the same wild excesses as they do. That is why they speak against them. But both we and they will give account to a higher Judge, He who is ready to judge both the living and dead. These judgments are far apart in time, but Christ is already prepared for both. God has exalted Him, and nothing can hinder the judgment He will carry out at the exact time.

In what sense ready? If a judge has a prisoner before him, evidence is given on both sides, and he has to weigh that evidence before giving judgment. There is nothing like that with the Lord. He knows everything perfectly, He reads the secrets of the heart, and hence He "is ready" to judge the living and the dead.

On one side it is true that salvation is ready to be revealed, for the everlasting joy of God's redeemed. On the other side it is just as true that judgment is ready to take its course, for the everlasting misery of those who neglect the salvation God offers… There is nothing to wait for in respect to the judgment, any more than there is in respect to the salvation. The one is as "ready" as the other.

Here he is giving them comfort. The Gentiles say you are strange; never mind, says the apostle… We are walking not to please them, but to please the Lord. And we have to remember this: God is ready to judge the living and the dead, and they will have to give an account to Him. The judgment of the living was clearly the one a Jew was familiar with. The apostle is bringing out here that God is going to judge both the living and the dead — the living, according to Matthew 25, at the start of the kingdom, and the dead, as the final act of the kingdom, at the end of the millennium — at the great white throne.

It is a certain, solemn, yet simple truth: God has definitely appointed the Lord Jesus Christ to this office… God has set a day in which He will judge the inhabited earth by the appointed Man. He has given all men a pledge of this by raising Him from the dead. To the believer Peter taught in 1 Peter 1:21 that His resurrection is to give him faith and hope toward God, delivered from all fear of judgment.

Do not forget that Christ is the Lord of both life and death. If you are not willing to accept Him as your Saviour now, you will meet Him someday as your Judge. All authority has been given to Him and He is ready to judge the living and the dead. Those who have been raised with Him to new life have nothing to fear… So take refuge in Christ, the Source and Giver of life, before it is too late.

"Those that are dead" — is this spiritual or bodily death? The answer, if correct, is that the apostle speaks of those who are dead as to the body. The context points to the same conclusion. In verse 5 Peter declares that the sinners he has been talking about "shall give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead." Those two classes, the living and the dead, are the ones liable to judgment at the appearing of the Lord. An interval of a thousand years will separate the judgment of the dead from the judgment of the living. And "the dead" in verse 5 are without doubt "the dead" in verse 6.

"The gospel was preached to them that are now dead" would be a proper paraphrase for the thought of the writer. Note that he does not say, "For this cause is the gospel preached to them that are dead," but "for this cause was the gospel preached."

It is a thing of the past and means that those who are dead now had heard the preaching of the gospel while they lived… If there were such a thing as preaching to the physically dead, we should find it in the letter to the Romans, that great document of the gospel, or somewhere else in Paul's letters. But we find nothing about this anywhere.

The aim of preaching the gospel is this. Men who receive the glad tidings come out from under the condemnation they lie under, for "whoever does not believe is condemned already." Through the power of the death and resurrection of Christ they receive the forgiveness of their sins, together with a new and divine life… If instead they refuse the gospel preached to them, they are left in their condition as sinners, and remain for judgment before the great white throne, "according to men in the flesh."

We have just seen the effect of the death of Christ on those who grasp it by faith. It is ceasing from sin, ceasing from the will of the Gentiles; and for this the Gentiles judge them. The gospel here has the very same effect: a life "according to God in the Spirit." That is simple. But it should be just as simple that such a life always goes with a judgment by men after the flesh. That fleshly judgment falls on those who have now learned to live a spiritual life.

From the hour that man fell by sin under death and judgment, God had in His grace a gospel to shelter and give life according to God… Faith clung to this from the first. God added to it and made it clearer all through the Old Testament, until the death, resurrection, and glory of Christ gave it fulness. And those now dead who heard it down the ages had their responsibility so much the more increased.

The object of the preaching was that, while they might be judged according to men in the flesh (as men speak evil of a believer), yet they might live according to God in the Spirit. This would be the normal, proper result of the preaching received. Noah's family received it and suffered from men, but lived, while others died. Man's callous judgment counts for so little next to living according to God in the spirit!