These are the kind of verses that cause so many be believers a good deal of trouble in terms of understanding their salvation. (See the previous Note, “We Are Still ‘Being Saved.’”) Their feeling is, My sins were forgiven when I believed in Christ, and thus I am now “righteous” before God; so I am eternally saved already. Why then does it say here that I still need to be saved, and that, “with difficulty?”

First of all, we must be clear that these verses are not saying we might lose our salvation; we know this, because they draw a clear distinction between “the righteous man,” on the one hand, and “the ungodly and the sinner” on the other.

But, the same distinction makes it undeniable that these verses really are speaking of the saved believers in Christ when it says “the righteous man is saved with difficulty.”

According to Calvin, in his commentary,

The purpose of what [Peter] says…is to show that the children of God should not faint under the bitterness of present evils, but that they ought, on the contrary, calmly to bear their afflictions for a short time, as the outcome will be salvation, while the ungodly will have to exchange a fading and fleeting prosperity for eternal perdition.

While this is true as far as it goes, if Peter only meant that we need to be patient in our trials, then he could have just said something like “we need to endure through difficulty.” Instead, he specifically says that we, who are indeed already “righteous,” still need to be “saved,” and even that we can only be saved “with difficulty.”

In fact, to fully understand Peter’s meaning here, we must be clear about the two different aspects of salvation. The first is the objective aspect, which relates to our standing before God; in regard to this, we surely are “righteous” already, through our faith in Christ; this is the aspect of salvation Reformed theologians always stress.

However, there is another aspect to our salvation, namely, the organic side; this relates to the extent to which we have been conformed to the image of Christ, by His growing and being formed within us through the working of His divine life in our inner being (Gal. 4:19, Col. 1:27, 2 Cor. 3:18, 4:16-18). And it is in regard to this that we still must be “saved with difficulty.” (Verses that deal with both aspects of salvation include Romans 3:23 and Romans 5:9-10; see also the Note, “Our Two Basic Problems Before God & How He Deals With Them.”)

When we consider the context of these verses in 1st Peter, we see that the apostle is dealing with the matter of Christians needing to pass through “fiery trials” (4:12-16). From Satan’s standpoint, these trials are his attack upon the followers of Christ. From God’s standpoint, however, He allows them as His judgment upon His children, so they may be purified and become “full grown in Christ” (Col. 1:27-28), and thus be prepared to meet Him:

For whom the Lord loves
He disciplines
And He chastises every son
Whom He receives.
— Hebrews 12:6; cf. Proverbs 3:11-12

In the Old Testament, this is really the whole meaning of the book of Job.

And in the New Testament, we see a very practical example of this principle, that “the judgment begins from the house of God,” in the structure of the book of Revelation; there the Lord first judges the seven churches through His word in chapters 2-3, and only then does He go on the deal with the world as a whole in chapters 4-20. As G.H. Pember (England, 1837–1910), puts it:

The Lord himself [tarries] for a short while, that, before the angel begins his revelations [in chapters 4-20], He may communicate to John His judgment of the churches as a preliminary to the rest of the book: for judgment must begin at the house of God.
— The Great Prophecies, Volume 4, page 470

So, it is not simply that we are enduring the suffering, but that we submit to God’s dealings with us in these fiery trials in this present age as His judgment upon us—not for our sins, but so that anything in our being that is not according to Christ can be burned away. This surely is a real salvation, and one that truly comes “only with difficulty,” as so many believers can testify from their experience—but it is only in this way that we can be conformed to the image of Christ by His divine life working within us, and thus be prepared to stand before Him at His judgment seat (2 Cor. 5:10).

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— 6 June 2026 —