And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1 Pet. 4:18, KJV).
And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner? (NASB).
Peter indicated that there are two categories of people, the righteous and the unrighteous. The latter he describes as “godless” and “sinners.”
It would be absurd to imagine that the “righteous” of whom Peter wrote are people who are just legally righteous but who are every bit as much sinners as the ungodly. Clearly, Peter was contrasting people who live righteously, that is, people who are holy and obedient to God, with people who don’t live righteously, that is, ungodly sinners.