“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”
“The mystery of divine providence is that God is absolutely sovereign, but His rule and predetermination is never apart from human responsibility. And the evil of man never reduces Him to a secondary cause. God is primary in providentially accomplishing every feature of His eternal will and plan. Christ’s perfect example of suffering unjustly and through that accomplishing the glorious saving purpose of God should give believers hope and confidence for the triumph of God’s purpose in the midst of their own suffering.” John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – 1 Peter, Moody, Chicago, 2004
In these few verses of 1 Peter 3 are some of the most befuddling words in the Bible. He makes reference to Jesus going to a place that he calls ‘prison’, where ‘spirits’ are kept, and not just spirits in general but spirits who were specifically disobedient in the days of Noah.
Then he talks about Jesus making a proclamation of some kind to them, and I have to tell you that the commentators I checked had varying approaches to the meaning of these things.
Frankly, this is one of those passages that I think a lot of preachers would be tempted to pass over and leave alone.
But I do think there are some interesting things for us to learn in them, so we will attempt to handle them properly today.
First though, we need to start at the beginning of our text and pay close attention to the news of verse 18 and the unchangeable and glorious doctrine it contains.
THE TRUTH THAT SETS US APART
Something that has always been vital for the Christian to understand, but becomes increasingly important to have a handle on in these days in which we live, is that the Christian faith is unique to all other religions of the world and there is absolutely no room for compromise on that issue.
In February of 1988 the Baha’i International Community issued a statement to the forty-fourth session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, calling for the elimination of all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief.
In the midst of their statement, which called for cessation of oppression and torture which, in itself, is good, they made this claim:
“…we believe that all the world’s major religions have proceeded from the same Source, worshipped alike by Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew and Moslem, as well as members of other religions. The core teachings of every religion – for example, the teaching to love one’s neighbor – are essentially the same, and we submit that they reflect one universal truth.” BIC Document #88-0217 – Eliminating Religious Intolerance, Geneva, Switzerland, 17 February 1988
I think that even those of the Jewish and Islamic religions would disagree with those sentiments simply because they are based on an ideal rather than a person.
If every religion of the world was simply a set of philosophical reasonings with no basis in relationship to a living God then their statements would make sense. Different groups and cultures of people would only have to agree to disagree on the finer points on which they find no common ground and live in peace.
But as soon as you come to deal with a Person, a Deity to be worshiped, then someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong.
In philosophy man can debate man all day long over the hairsplitting finer points of opinion. But in theology the more those same two men know the One who reveals Himself, the less there will be to argue about because their knowledge will be founded on what He has revealed, not what they have cooked up in their heads.
My daughters might sit in their room and speculate from sun up to sun down about what I might like for my birthday. But as soon as they come to me and ask what I would like and I tell them there no longer remains a reason to debate.
Taking this to the next step then, we ask, ‘Is it enough to worship a personal God, even if much of our doctrine differs, and call for equal acceptance of other religions based on that alone?’
I found an article by Umar F. Abd-Allah, who is chairman of the Nawawi Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization based in Chicago.
His title asked the question, “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?”
In brief, his conclusion was that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same God because they all call on the God of Abraham. He said in his article; “Historical arguments between their faiths have rarely if ever been over what to call Abraham’s God or who was invoked by that call, and Islamic salvation history is rooted in the conviction that there is a lasting continuity between the dispensations of Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the biblical and extrabiblical prophets.”
He made the unfortunate choice of quoting Bertrand Russell, philosopher and atheist of a previous century, as saying, “The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists”. (Italics mine)
In other words, if you have strong convictions about the things you believe, that alone is evidence that there is no evidence. What a bunch of hooey!
Nevertheless Abd-Allah’s choice of using this quote in itself sends the message that it doesn’t really matter whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. What matters is that we ‘let it be’ in the sense that John Lennon meant the phrase in his song. There is no absolute truth, so you have yours and I’ll have mine and let’s have another cup of coffee and let’s have another piece of pie.
Christians, the spirit of the age has men looking for peace but not truth.
Truth offends, and offense has become so offensive that the one who dares to utter a belief in an absolute truth in a public manner is likely to find himself being called upon to publicly apologize, not for the truth, but for having the audacity to offend someone with it.
C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
And folks I believe we are living in a despairing world today because the worship of the idol of political correctness has spread rejection of truth to pandemic proportions.
Give me peace and comfort and safety but don’t try to tell me that I have to believe a truth. Let’s all give our various gods a capital “G” and not argue about it.
CHRIST DIED ONCE FOR ALL
Well folks, here is the one truth that separates us from the rest. Here is the absolute truth that makes Christianity the only viable and valid faith in history and in the world.
“For Christ also died for sins once for all”
My response to all that Mr. Abd-Allah had to say is ‘No, Christians and Muslims and Jews do not worship the same God’. Because as soon as Christ is denied as Deity and as the Son of God who suffered and died in the flesh to pay the penalty for the sin of mankind, then the one true and Living God is no longer being worshiped.
When you reject God’s true revelation of Himself at any point, you cease to worship God, and you begin worshiping a god (small ‘g’) of your own design.
It doesn’t matter if you say you are calling on Abraham’s God, if you do not have the faith that gained for Abraham God’s approval; the faith for which righteousness was imputed to him. (Genesis 15:1-6, Romans 4:9-21)
Abraham believed in a promise relating to a Redeemer. He was promised that in his descendant all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Now you of our local congregation have heard me say this before but it bears repeating.
There is only one thing that could possibly bless all the nations of the world. There is only one common denominator affecting all of mankind and therefore every nation of mankind and that is the condition of sin.
Therefore if all the nations are to be blessed by one man, that man must be the One who will provide redemption from sin to all the nations of the world. Abraham believed that promise and was declared right with God through faith.
Christ died for sins once for all. To put him on equal plane with Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, or any of the biblical or extrabiblical prophets, is to deny the efficacy of that death; it is to deny His resurrection; it is to deny the Father’s approval of the Son’s atoning work; it is to call God a liar. Because God said “…My covenant I will establish with Isaac”, not Ishmael Gen 17:21, and “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” Gen 22:18
And from Isaac came the twelve tribes of Israel, and from the one named Judah came Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish nation, who died for sins, once for all.
The Holy Spirit made the truth abundantly clear in this passage. Christ died once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God.
Here are a couple of other passages that should be brought to the Bible student’s mind at this point.
“For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.” Heb 2:10
and
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6
Christ tasted of death for every one so that every one who believes will never taste of death.
Here is what I mean by that. On the cross as Jesus became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21), He experienced the condition that all of us were in; that being, separation from the Father. It is why He cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” In divine wisdom then, He committed His spirit to the Father’s care and hung His head and died in the flesh, having finished what He came to accomplish; all that the Father sent Him to do.
He did this, as Peter says in our text, ‘in order that He might bring us to God’.
Does that sound like any other religion? Does that jive in any way with a claim that “The core teachings of every religion…are essentially the same”?
There is a level of truth in that if you’re talking only of the teaching of morality and social community on which all reasonable men agree.
But when Christ comes into the picture, dying in the flesh and rising in a glorified body into the heavens before witnesses, then we leave philosophy and enter into relationship and friend, either you is or you ain’t!
PROCLAMATION IN PRISON
Now as we come to verses 19 and 20 let’s take note of the fact that what Peter now says had to come to him supernaturally by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as he wrote, or he was told this personally by the risen Christ in the course of the 40 days He was still on earth in His glorified body prior to His ascension. I can’t think of another way Peter could have this knowledge.
So once more this puts us in the position of affirming Biblical truth. Is the Bible all true? Yes. Is it infallible? Yes. Is it God-breathed? Yes. Is it sometimes hard to understand? Yes. So we need the help of the Holy Spirit to understand it, but we take great comfort in the fact that we begin on the solid ground of truth.
Therefore in our quest for understanding we do not embark upon an investigation into the validity of the Scriptures, but we seek to have our spiritual understanding enlightened to their inerrant and unchangeable message.
Now as we look again at the wording of these verses we note that Peter says Christ was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. And we know from the gospel accounts that when He rose from the dead it was in His glorified, physical body.
So from this we can glean that His going to this place Peter calls ‘prison’ in spirit means that He went there during the time His body of flesh lay in the tomb and prior to His resurrection.
Let’s look at the verses once more then sharpen our focus.
“…in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”
Now I don’t want to recite commentary here and break down all the word studies and rehash the various views that, frankly, often read as though the commentator himself was confused and a little shaky on what he actually thought went on here.
Let me just present the cooked meal to you and let you go later, if interested, and search out the information for yourself if you want that much detail.
Peter has made reference here to certain demonic spirits who were active in the world before the flood. Genesis 6:1-4 says,
“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”
Not only the wording itself but also the usage of certain Hebrew words and terms in the manuscripts indicates that these ‘sons of God’ mentioned in verse 2 were demonic spirits, who either took human form or possessed human men for the purpose of forcibly taking human women and procreating with them.
Nevertheless, the fruit of those unions would have had to be mortal in which case they would have been thoroughly corrupt, perhaps even the whole generation of mankind spoken of in Genesis 6:5 of whom it says “…every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” and they would have drowned in the Flood with the rest.
Now pertaining to the spirits that committed these acts, they were so evil and so disobedient to the purposes of God that He chained them in a place where they can never do those things again, and where they await their final destruction.
Peter refers to them again in his second letter, (2:4-5).
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;”
And as you see, he once more connects them with Noah. Then there is Jude 6:
And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,”
At this point we might ask two questions. 1. What was particularly heinous about this particular evil that was happening in the years Noah was building the ark? And 2. Why does Peter mention it at this point? And if we can answer these two questions I think we can bring this to a close.
SATAN’S EVIL PLOT
To answer the first question then, let’s remind ourselves of the one thing that Satan would have wanted to accomplish. In the Garden of Eden after the first couple sinned, God announced that through the seed of the woman would come a Redeemer who would crush the serpent’s head.
So if he could completely demonize mankind through perverse sexual union he might think that in that way he could stop the coming of the One who was promised.
Remember, there are a number of times in history, recorded for us in the Bible, when he killed a great many babies hoping to wipe out the line of the Christ and even the infant Messiah Himself. He used Pharaoh for that purpose when Moses was born and Herod at the time Jesus was born.
Thinking this through might help us to understand more clearly why God would wipe out the entire race of mankind at that time. Man was so thoroughly corrupt, so completely evil, that in 120 years of knowing the ark was being built and being warned of the coming destruction there was not one convert, but only Noah and his seven family members that were brought through the Flood.
But through that Godly man God preserved the line of Christ and subsequently imprisoned the demons involved in the failed plot, reserving them for judgment.
The second question we asked was why Peter would mention these things at this point in his letter.
GOD’S TRIUMPH THROUGH SUFFERING
Let’s start on this one by reminding ourselves of Peter’s theme. He’s talking about the suffering of those to whom this letter is addressed.
Remember that back in the earlier verses of this chapter he encouraged them to keep their behavior Godly and their consciences clear of wrong-doing, not that they would avoid suffering in that way, but that their suffering would be for the sake of righteousness (vs 14).
Then in verse 17 he says “For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong”
Christians, if we suffer for doing wrong, we’re only getting what’s coming to us and there is nothing useful to God in that. But when we suffer for doing what is right; when we suffer for the sake of righteousness, God can and will accomplish great things through that sacrifice that we’ve made.
And this is Peter’s point. And this is why Christ, after his suffering, went to these spirits in prison to make proclamation to them.
Think about it. Their task was to frustrate life and stop the promise of Eden from coming to pass. Since Noah’s time they had been chained up and locked away and probably by the time Jesus came had long-since thought they had succeeded in their task.
But through His suffering and sacrifice on the cross He accomplished the greatest triumph of all time, and it was His honor as the Conqueror to go to them and declare the victory He had won!
So why does Peter mention it here? For our encouragement.
When he says in verse 21 “And corresponding to that,” he’s using a word that means that Noah and the ark are a type, or a ‘figure pointing to’ the salvation that is in Christ.
When he says baptism now saves you he is quick to interject that he is not talking about water baptism, but trust placed in God to keep us out of the destruction to come and carry us through to safety as He did Noah and his family.
Believer, Christ is our example that God accomplishes mighty things through suffering. He won the victory on Calvary’s cross that had been promised to Adam and Eve as they stood in the Garden trying to provide their own righteousness with withering fig leaves. But God made them more permanent covering with the skin from the very first animal sacrifice indicating that He, not they, would provide their righteousness and it would be everlasting.
He won the victory and then went to proclaim His triumph to those who had come closest to stopping it, then He rose from the dead and sat down at the right hand of the Father as the One to whom all angels and authorities and powers had been subjected. He has provided your righteousness, your eternal clothing so that you may stand right before the Father’s throne, and because of this you and I can know that when we suffer for righteousness’ sake we will, in the end, be shouting His triumph before the throne, and our triumph in Him.
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ…” 2 Cor 2:14
