Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
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Now who will harm you if you become imitators of that which is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.” But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear, having a good conscience. Thus, while you are spoken against as evildoers, they may be disappointed who curse your good way of life in Christ. For it is better, if it is God’s will, that you suffer for doing well than for doing evil. Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him.
Parallel Translations
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Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit,
in whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison,
who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
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For as moche as Christ hath once suffered for synnes the iuste for the vniuste forto bringe vs to God and was kylled as pertayninge to the flesshe: but was quyckened in the sprete.
In which sprete he also wet and preached vnto the spretes that were in preson
which were in tyme passed disobedient when the longe sufferinge of God abode excedinge paciently in the dayes of Noe whyll the arcke was a preparinge wherin feawe (that is to saye.viii soules) were saved by water
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For Christ also hath once suffered for sinnes, the iust for the vniust, that he might bring vs to God, and was put to death concerning the flesh, but was quickened by the spirit.
By the which hee also went, and preached vnto the spirits that are in prison.
Which were in time passed disobedient, when once the long suffering of God abode in the dayes of Noe, while the Arke was preparing, wherein fewe, that is, eight soules were saued in the water.
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Cross-references (54)
- Hebrews 9:28 (v18) so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, without sin, to those who are eagerly waiting…
- 1 Peter 4:6 (vv18–19) For to this end the Good News was preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed as men in the flesh, but live as to God in…
- Hebrews 9:26 (v18) or else he must have suffered often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the ages, he has been revealed to put…
- 2 Corinthians 5:21 (v18) For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
- Isaiah 61:1 (v19) The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken…
Show all 53 cross-references
- Romans 5:6-8 (v18) For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet perhaps for a…
- Titus 2:14 (v18) who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for…
- Isaiah 42:7 (v19) to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness out of the prison.
- 1 John 1:9 (v18) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
- Colossians 1:21-22 (v18) You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through…
- Romans 4:25 (v18) who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.
- Romans 8:3 (v18) For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for…
- Hebrews 11:7 (v20) By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which…
- 1 Peter 4:1 (v18) Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he who has suffered in the flesh has…
- 2 Peter 2:5 (v20) and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world…
- Genesis 6:3 (v20) Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years.”
- Genesis 6:5 (v20) Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually…
- Isaiah 49:9 (v19) saying to those who are bound, ‘Come out!’; to those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves!’ “They shall feed along the paths, and their…
- Galatians 3:13 (v18) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”
- Galatians 1:4 (v18) who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father—
- Genesis 8:18 (v20) Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him.
- Isaiah 53:4-6 (v18) Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced…
- Ephesians 2:16-18 (v18) and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it. He came and preached peace to…
- Genesis 6:13–7:7 (v20) God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and…
- Nehemiah 9:30 (v19) Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not listen. Therefore…
- Romans 1:4 (v18) who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our…
- Romans 5:2 (v18) through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
- 1 Peter 2:21-24 (v18) For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps, who didn’t sin,…
- Romans 2:4-5 (v20) Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But…
- 2 Corinthians 13:4 (v18) For he was crucified through weakness, yet he lives through the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we will live with him…
- Genesis 7:13 (v20) In the same day Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the sons of Noah—and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into…
- Genesis 7:17-23 (v20) The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth. The waters rose,…
- Matthew 7:14 (v20) How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.
- Matthew 24:37-39 (v20) “As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and…
- Acts 3:14 (v18) But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,
- Romans 8:11 (v18) But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life…
- James 5:6 (v18) You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you.
- Revelation 20:7 (v19) And after the thousand years, Satan will be released from his prison,
- Genesis 8:1 (v20) God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The…
- Isaiah 30:18 (v20) Therefore Yahweh will wait, that he may be gracious to you; and therefore he will be exalted, that he may have mercy on you, for Yahweh is…
- Zechariah 9:9 (v18) Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you! He is righteous, and having salvation;…
- Matthew 27:19 (v18) While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered…
- Luke 12:32 (v20) Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.
- Luke 13:24-25 (v20) “Strive to enter in by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter in and will not be able. When once the master of the house…
- Luke 17:26-30 (v20) As it was in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, and they were…
- Acts 22:14 (v18) He said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from his mouth.
- Romans 9:22 (v20) What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
- 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 (v20) For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved and in those who perish: to the one a stench from death to death, to the…
- 2 Peter 3:15 (v20) Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you,
- 2 Corinthians 1:24 (v18) We don’t control your faith, but are fellow workers with you for your joy. For you stand firm in faith.
- Ephesians 5:26 (v20) that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
- 1 Peter 1:11-12 (v19) searching for who or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, pointed to, when he predicted the sufferings of Christ, and…
- Revelation 19:10 (v19) I fell down before his feet to worship him. He said to me, “Look! Don’t do it! I am a fellow bondservant with you and with your brothers…
53 distinct cross-references across this passage (54 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (24 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18 For Christ also It is another comfort, that…
18 For Christ also It is another comfort, that if in our afflictions we are conscious of having done well, we suffer according to the example of Christ; and it hence follows that we are blessed. At the same time he proves, from the design of Christ’s death, that it is by no means consistent with our profession that we should suffer for our evil deeds. For he teaches us that Christ suffered in order to bring us to God. What does this mean, except that we have been thus consecrated to God by Christ’s death, that we may live and die to him?
There are, then, two parts in this sentence; the first is, that persecutions ought to be borne with resignation, because the Son of God shews the way to us; and the other is, that since we have been consecrated to God’s service by the death of Christ, it behoves us to suffer, not for our faults, but for righteousness’ sake.
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Here, however, a question may be raised, Does not God chastise the faithful, whenever he suffers them to be afflicted? To this I answer, that it indeed often happens, that God punishes them according to what they deserve; and this is not denied by Peter; but he reminds us what a comfort it is to have our cause connected with God. And how God does not punish sins in them who endure persecution for the sake of righteousness, and in what sense they are said to be innocent, we shall see in the next chapter.
Being put to death in the flesh Now this is a great thing, that we are made conformable to the Son of God, when we suffer without cause; but there is added another consolation, that the death of Christ had a blessed issue; for though he suffered through the weakness of the flesh, he yet rose again through the power of the Spirit. Then the cross of Christ was not prejudicial, nor his death, since life obtained the victory. This was said (as Paul also reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:10) that we may know that we are to bear in our body the dying of Christ, in order that his life may be manifested in us. Flesh here means the outward man; and Spirit means the divine power, by which Christ emerged from death a conqueror.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv18–20 Another argument taken of the happy end of these…
Another argument taken of the happy end of these afflictions, wherein also Christ goeth before us both in example and virtues, as one who suffered most grievous torments even unto death, although but in one part only of him, to wit, in the flesh or man’s nature, but yet became conqueror by virtue of his divinity.
Another argument being partly taken of things coupled together, to wit, because Christ bringeth us to his Father that same way that he went himself, and partly from the cause efficient: to wit, because Christ is not only set before us for an example to follow, but also he holdeth us up by his virtue in all the difficulties of this life, until he bring us to his Father.
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As touching his manhood, for his body was dead, and his soul felt the sorrows of death.
A proof of either of the rules, by the example of Christ himself our chief pattern who was afflicted, not for his own sins (which were none) but for ours, and that according to his Father’s decree.
An argument taken of comparison: Christ the just suffered for us that are unjust, and shall it grieve us who are unjust to suffer for the just’s cause?
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins,…
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
Ver. 18. That he might bring us] To reconcile and bring men again to God was the main end of Christ’s coming and suffering. This is the wonderment of angels, torment of devils, &c.
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The just for the unjust] Oh, the vile dulness of our hearts, that cannot be duly affected herewith! Behold, here was piety scourged for the impious man’s sake, wisdom derided for the fool’s sake, truth denied for the liar’s sake, justice condemned for the unjust man’s sake, mercy afflicted for the cruel man’s sake; life dies for the dead man’s sake. What a suffering was that, when the Just suffered for the unjust, with the unjust, upon unjust causes, under unjust judges, and by unjust punishments, &c. Euripides saith it is but righteous that they that do things not good should suffer things not pleasant; but what had that innocent "Lamb of God" done?
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv18–20 For Christ also hath once suffered; in opposition to…
For Christ also hath once suffered; in opposition to the legal sacrifices which were offered from day to day, and from year to year, Heb 7:27; 9:25; and Heb 10:12; and this shows, as the perfection of Christ’s sufferings, (in that they needed not be repeated), so our conformity to him in deliverance from ours; that as Christ underwent death (the principal part of his sufferings) not often, but once only, and then his glory followed; so likewise, if in this life we suffer for righteousness’ sake, according to Christ’s example, there remains no more suffering for us, but we shall be glorified with him, 2Ti 2:12.
For sins; i.e. for the expiation of sin. This is another argument for patience under sufferings, that Christ by his sufferings hath taken away the guilt, and freed us from the punishment, of sin; so that our sufferings, though they may be not only by way of trial, but of correction, yet are not properly penal or vindictive.
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The just for the unjust; and therefore well may we, who are in ourselves unrighteous, be content to suffer, especially for his cause and truth.
That he might bring us to God; i.e. reconcile us to God, and procure for us access to him with freedom and boldness, Rom 5:2; Eph 3:12.
Being put to death in the flesh; his human nature, frequently in Scripture called flesh, as 1Pe 4:8; Joh 1:14; and though his soul, as being immortal, did not die, yet he suffered most grievous torments in it, and his body died by the real separation of his soul from it.
But quickened by the Spirit; i.e. his own Godhead, Joh 2:19; Joh 10:17,18. The former member of this sentence speaks of the subject of his death, his flesh, which was likewise the subject of his life in his resurrection; this latter speaks of the efficient cause of his life, his own eternal Spirit.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v18 These words are brought in as a strong argument,…
These words are brought in as a strong argument, why Christians that suffer wrongfully should bear it patiently; it was our Saviour’s own case; he that had perfect innocency and unspotted righteousness, suffered in the severest manner for us that were unrighteous, that he might reconcile us to God, being put to death in the flesh, that is, in our human anture, but quickened by the Spirit, or raised to life again by the power of his godhead; it doth therefore well become all his followers cheerfully to undergo all manner of sufferings for him, which they meet with in their duty to him.
Note here, 1. Christ did not barely suffer for our good, but he suffered in our stead: he is not only said to suffer for us, but to suffer for our sins, that is, the punishment of our sins; for no man was ever said to suffer for sin that did not undergo and endure the punishment of sin.
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As the sin-offering under the law is called an offering for sin, because it did expiate the guilt of sin, by dying in the place and stead of the offender; in like manner, when the death of Christ is called an offering for sin, what can it import, but that he suffered to make atonement for sin in our place and stead? The just for the unjust; if these words do not imply the substitution of Christ as our surety, and his suffering the punishment due to our sins, what words can express it?
Note, 2. That the great end of Christ’s bitter death and bloody sufferings, was to bring all those for whom he died unto God; now Christ’s bringing us to God imports our apostasy from him, and our inability to return to him; that sin unsatisfied for, which was the great bar to keep us from him, is mercifully removed by him, and that our chief happiness consists in the enjoyment of him.
Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: As if St. Peter had said, "Though Christ suffered for our sins, and was put to death in his human nature, or flesh, yet he was quickened and made alive by the Spirit, in which, or by which Spirit, he went and preached to the spirits in prison, which in the days of Noah were hardened in sin and disobedience, whilst the long-suffering of God endured them, and waited for their repentance no less than an hundred and twenty years, whilst the ark was making and preparing, and Noah preached to them; yet so impenitent were they to the very last, that only eight were saved in the ark."
Note here, 1. That the old world before the flood were in prison whilst here on earth, being in bondage and captivity to sin and Satan, held in the chains of their lusts, and in the bondage of their iniquity; such as are in bondage to sin, are captives in Satan’s prison: the old world was also in prison whilst on earth, as having received from God the sentence of destruction, and were reserved as in prison, against the day of slaughter, if they repented not within an hundred and twenty years.
Note, 2. That Christ by his Spirit did preach to the old world in the ministry of his prophets, Enoch and Noah; and his Spirit did chide with them and reprove them, in order to their bringing to repentance.
Note, 3. That those refractory and hardened sinners, for despising the offers of grace made to them, were for their disobedience clapped up in the prison of hell, suffering the vengence of eternal fire; such as were cast into prison in Noah’s time, were all fast in St. Peter’s time: there is no picking the locks of hell gates, no breaking through the walls of the fiery Tophet; hell has a door to take in, but none to let out.
Note, 4. That though Christ by his Spirit preached to the spirits in prison, yet it was not when they were in prison, I mean in the prison of hell, but when here on earth; there are no sermons in hell, no conditions of happiness proposed, no tenders of salvation propounded there; Christ preached to these prisoners to prevent their imprisonment, Christ preached to these men, who were now in prison, that they might not have been imprisoned.
Note lastly, That the obstinate infidelity, and sottish stupidity, of the old world, was amazing, that after an hundred and twenty years’ preaching, no more than eight persons should be persuaded into the belief of the world’s destruction.
From the beginning we find that the prophets of God had cause to complain that few have believed their report: do not the ministers of God now groan to God, that they run in vain, and labour in vain, and spend their strength for nought? From the beginning it has been so.
Lord! if thou honourest any of us with better success, and givest us to see the fruit of our labours in the lives of our people, help us to set the crown of praise on the head of thine own grace, and say Non nobis, Comine, non nobis, &c. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory."
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v18 Here, I. The example of Christ is proposed as…
Here, I. The example of Christ is proposed as an argument for patience under sufferings, the strength of which will be discerned if we consider the several points contained in the words; observe therefore, 1. Jesus Christ himself was not exempted from sufferings in this life, though he had no guilt of his own and could have declined all suffering if he had pleased. 2. The reason or meritorious cause of Christ's suffering was the sins of men: Christ suffered for sins. The sufferings of Christ were a true and proper punishment; this punishment was suffered to expiate and to make an atonement for sin; and it extends to all sin. 3. In the case of our Lord's suffering, it was the just that suffered for the unjust; he substituted himself in our room and stead, and bore our iniquities. He that knew no sin suffered instead of those that knew no righteousness. 4. The merit and perfection of Christ's sacrifice were such that for him to suffer once was enough. The legal sacrifices were repeated from day to day, and from year to year; but the sacrifice of Christ, once offered, purgeth away sin, Heb 7:27; Heb 9:26, Heb 9:28; Heb 10:10, Heb 10:12, Heb 10:14. 5. The blessed end or design of our Lord's sufferings was to bring us to God, to reconcile us to God, to give us access to the Father, to render us and our services acceptable, and to bring us to eternal glory, Eph 2:13, Eph 2:18; Eph 3:12; Heb 10:21, Heb 10:22. 6. The issue and event of Christ's suffering, as to himself, were these, he was put to death in his human nature, but he was quickened and raised again by the Spirit. Now, if Christ was not exempted from sufferings, why should Christians expect it? If he suffered, to expiate sins, why should not we be content when our sufferings are only for trial and correction, but not for expiation? If he, though perfectly just, why should not we, who are all criminals? If he once suffered, and then entered into glory, shall not we be patient under trouble, since it will be but a little time and we shall follow him to glory? If he suffered, to bring us to God, shall not we submit to difficulties, since they are of so much use to quicken us in our return to God, and in the performance of our duty to him?
II. The apostle passes from the example of Christ to that of the old world, and sets before the Jews, to whom he wrote, the different event of those who believed and obeyed Christ preaching by Noah, from those that continued disobedient and unbelieving, intimating to the Jews that they were under a like sentence. God would not wait much longer upon them. They had now an offer of mercy; those that accepted of it should be saved, but those who rejected Christ and the gospel should be as certainly destroyed as ever the disobedient in the times of Noah were.
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1. For the explication of this we may notice, (1.) The preacher - Christ Jesus, who has interested himself in the affairs of the church and of the world ever since he was first promised to Adam, Gen 3:15. He went, not by a local motion, but by special operation, as God is frequently said to move, Gen 11:5; Hos 5:15; Mic 1:3. He went and preached, by his Spirit striving with them, and inspiring and enabling Enoch and Noah to plead with them, and preach righteousness to them, as Pe2 2:5. (2.) The hearers. Because they were dead and disembodied when the apostle speaks of them, therefore he properly calls them spirits now in prison; not that they were in prison when Christ preached to them, as the vulgar Latin translation and the popish expositors pretend. (3.) The sin of these people: They were disobedient, that is, rebellious, unpersuadable, and unbelieving, as the word signifies; this their sin is aggravated from the patience and long-suffering of God (which once waited upon them for 120 years together), while Noah was preparing the ark, and by that, as well as by his preaching, giving them fair warning of what was coming upon them. (4.) The event of all: Their bodies were drowned, and their spirits cast into hell, which is called a prison (Mat 5:25; Pe2 2:4, Pe2 2:5); but Noah and his family, who believed and were obedient, were saved in the ark.
2. From the whole we learn that, (1.) God takes exact notice of all the means and advantages that people in all ages have had for the salvation of their souls; it is put to the account of the old world that Christ offered them his help, sent his Spirit, gave them fair warning by Noah, and waited a long time for their amendment. (2.) Though the patience of God wait long upon sinners, yet it will expire at last; it is beneath the majesty of the great God always to wait upon man in vain. (3.) The spirits of disobedient sinners, as soon as they are out of their bodies, are committed to the prison of hell, whence there is no redemption. (4.) The way of the most is neither the best, the wisest, nor the safest way to follow: better to follow the eight in the ark than the eight millions drowned by the flood and damned to hell.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv18–20 By which also he went and preached unto the…
By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. Various are the senses given of this passage: some say, that Christ, upon his death, went in his human soul to hell; either, as some, to preach to the devils and damned spirits, that they might be saved, if they would; and, as others, to let them know that he was come, and to fill them with dread and terror; but though hell may be meant by the prison, yet the text does not say that he went unto it, or preached in it; only that the spirits were in it, to whom he sometimes went, and preached; nor is his human soul, but his divine nature meant, by the Spirit, by which he went and preached to them: and as for the ends proposed, the former is impracticable and impossible; for after death follows judgment, which is an eternal one; nor is there any salvation, or hope of salvation afterwards; and the latter is absurd, vain, and needless. Others, as the Papists, imagine the sense to be, that Christ, at his death, went in his human soul, into a place they call "Limbus Patrum", which they suppose is meant by the prison here, and delivered the souls of the Old Testament saints and patriarchs from thence, and carried them with him to heaven; but this sense is also false, because, as before observed, not the human soul of Christ, but his divine nature, is designed by the Spirit; nor is there any such place as here feigned, in which the souls of Old Testament saints were, before the death of Christ; for they were in peace and rest, in the kingdom of heaven, in Abraham's bosom, inheriting the promises, and not in a prison; besides, the text says not one word of the delivering of these spirits out of prison, only of Christ's preaching to them: add to all this, and which Beza, with others, observes, the apostle speaks of such as had been disobedient, and unbelievers; a character which will not agree with righteous men, and prophets, and patriarchs, under the former dispensation: others think the words are to be understood of Christ's going to preach, by his apostles, to the Gentiles, as in Eph 2:17 who were in a most miserable condition, strangers to the covenants of promise, and destitute of the hope of salvation, and sat in darkness, and the shadow of death, and, as it were, at the gates of hell; were in the bonds of iniquity, and dead in sin, and had been for long time past foolish and disobedient, serving divers lusts and pleasures, to which they were in bondage. This is, indeed, a more tolerable sense than the former; but it will be difficult to show, that men, in the present state of life, are called "spirits", which seems to be a word that relates to the souls of men, in a separate state from their bodies; and especially that carnal and unconverted men are ever so called; and besides, the apostle is speaking of such who were disobedient in the times of Noah; and therefore not of the Gentiles, in the times of the apostles: add to which, that the transition from the times of the apostles, according to this sense, to the days of Noah, is very unaccountable; this sense does not agree with the connection of the words: others are of opinion, that this is meant of the souls of the Old Testament saints, who were , "in a watch", as they think the phrase may be rendered, instead of "in prison": and said to be in such a situation, because they were intent upon the hope of promised salvation, and were looking out for the Messiah, and anxiously desiring his coming, and which he, by some gracious manifestation, made known unto them: but though the word may sometimes signify a watch, yet more commonly a prison, and which sense best suits here; nor is that anxiety and uneasiness, which represents them as in a prison, so applicable to souls in a state of happiness; nor such a gracious manifestation so properly called preaching; and besides, not believers, but unbelievers, disobedient ones, are here spoken of; and though it is only said they were sometimes so, yet to what purpose should this former character be once mentioned of souls now in glory? but it would be tedious to reckon up the several different senses of this place; some referring it to such in Noah's time, to whom the Gospel was preached, and who repented; and though they suffered in their bodies, in the general deluge, yet their souls were saved; whereas the apostle calls them all, "the world of the ungodly", Pe2 2:5 and others, to the eight souls that were shut up in the ark, as in a prison, and were saved; though these are manifestly distinguished in the text from the disobedient spirits. The plain and easy sense of the words is, that Christ, by his Spirit, by which he was quickened, went in the ministry of Noah, the preacher of righteousness, and preached both by words and deeds, by the personal ministry of Noah, and by the building of the ark, to that generation who was then in being; and who being disobedient, and continuing so, a flood was brought upon them which destroyed them all; and whose spirits, or separate souls, were then in the prison of hell, so the Syriac version renders it, "in hell", see Rev 20:7 when the Apostle Peter wrote this epistle; so that Christ neither went into this prison, nor preached in it, nor to spirits that were then in it when he preached, but to persons alive in the days of Noah, and who being disobedient, when they died, their separate souls were put into prison, and there they were when the apostle wrote: from whence we learn, that Christ was, that he existed in his divine nature before he was incarnate, he was before Abraham, he was in the days of Noah; and that Christ also, under the Old Testament, acted the part of a Mediator, in his divine nature, and by his Spirit discharged that branch of it, his prophetic office, before he appeared in human nature; and that the Gospel was preached in those early times, as unto Abraham, so before him.
when the Apostle Peter wrote this epistle; so that Christ neither went into this prison, nor preached in it, nor to spirits that were then in it when he preached, but to persons alive in the days of Noah, and who being disobedient, when they died, their separate souls were put into prison, and there they were when the apostle wrote: from whence we learn, that Christ was, that he existed in his divine nature before he was incarnate, he was before Abraham, he was in the days of Noah; and that Christ also, under the Old Testament, acted the part of a Mediator, in his divine nature, and by his Spirit discharged that branch of it, his prophetic office, before he appeared in human nature; and that the Gospel was preached in those early times, as unto Abraham, so before him.
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1 Peter 3:20
pe1 3:20
pe1 3:20
pe1 3:20Which sometime were disobedient,.... To all the instructions and warnings which God gave them, to all the strivings of his Spirit, and to the ministry of Christ, by Noah; they continued in their profaneness and impiety, and to corrupt their ways, and fill the earth with violence and wickedness; not believing what they were threatened with, or that ever a flood would come upon them, and destroy them: and this "sometime" refers to the time of their being upon earth, who were now in hell; "to the days of Noah"; hereafter mentioned; and which the Syriac version connects with this clause, reading it thus, "who of old were disobedient in the days of Noah"; at which time it was, that Christ, by his Spirit in Noah, went and preached to them: when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah: that is, when God, who is longsuffering and patient, waited on these disobedient ones, in Noah's time, for the space of an hundred and twenty years:
while the ark was preparing; by Noah, according to the directions which God gave him, Gen 6:14 and which, as R. Tanchuma says (b), was fifty two years a building; others say (c) an hundred years; but Jarchi says (d) it was an hundred and twenty; and which seems most likely, that being the term of time in which God's longsuffering waited on them; during which time Noah was preaching to them, and building the ark:
wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water; the eight persons were, Noah, and his wife, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their three wives. It is a common tradition with the Jews (e), that besides these, Og, king of Bashan, escaped the flood; and who, they say, is the same that escaped, and told Abraham of Lot's being carried captive by the kings (f); the manner of his escape at the flood they relate thus (g),
"Og came, who was delivered from the men that died at the flood; and he rode upon the ark, and he had a covering upon his head, and was fed with the food of Noah; but not for his worthiness was he delivered, but that the inhabitants of the world might see the power of the Lord;
and elsewhere (h), after this manner, citing those words, "and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark", Gen 7:23 they add,
"except Og, king of Bashan, who sat on a certain piece of wood which belonged to the scaffolding of the ark, and he swore to Noah, and his sons, that he would be their servant for ever. What did Noah do? he bored an hole in the ark, and every day reached out food to him, and he remained alive, according to what is said, Deu 3:11 "only Og, king of Bashan", &c.
But this is all a mere fiction; and equally fabulous is the account the Arabians give, who say (i) that eighty persons, together with Noah, were taken into the ark, among whom was Jorham, their father; for there were no more than eight persons saved; and this is the apostle's sense; and agreeably the Syriac version renders it, "and eight souls" "only entered into it, and were saved by water"; and we are told by some of the eastern writers (k), that when these eight went out of the ark, they built a city, which they called Themanin, which, in the Arabic language, signifies "eight", according to their number. The ark was a type of Christ, into whom whoever enters by faith, or in whom whoever believes, shall be saved; but as they that entered into the ark were but few, so are those that enter in at the strait gate, or believe in Christ; and they that went into the ark were saved by the water bearing up the ark, even by that by which others were destroyed; as the very same thing, for different reasons, is the cause or means of destruction and salvation; so Christ is set, for the fall and rising of many, is a stumblingblock to some, and the power and wisdom of God to others; and the Gospel, and the ministers of it, are the savour of life unto life to some, and the savour of death unto death to others. This instance of the dispensation of the providence of God to the old world is very appropriately, though by way of digression, introduced by the apostle; showing, that in times past, as then, God's usual method has been to afford the outward means to ungodly men, and to bear with them long, and then bring down his vengeance upon them, and save his own people; and this suffering saints might depend upon would be their case, and therefore should bear their afflictions patiently,
(b) In Pirke Eliezer, c. 23. (c) Elmacin. Hist. apud Hottinger. Smegma Orient. l. 1. c. 8. p. 249. (d) In Gen. vi. 15. (e) Targum Jon. in Deut. iii. 11. T. Bab. Nidda, fol. 61. 1. (f) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 42. fol. 37. 2. Targum Jon. & Jarchi in Gen. xiv. 13. (g) Targum Jon. in Gen. xiv. 13. (h) Pirke Eliezer, c. 23. (i) Pocock. Specim. Hist. Arab. p. 38. (k) Eutychii Annal. p. 43. Elmacin. Hist. l. 1. c. 1. p. 12. Patricides, p. 10. Apud Hottinger, Smegma Orient. l. 1. c. 8. p. 251, 252.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv18–20 For - This is undoubtedly best, whereby we are…
For - This is undoubtedly best, whereby we are most conformed to Christ. Now Christ suffered once - To suffer no more. For sins - Not his own, but ours. The just for the unjust - The word signifies, not only them who have wronged their neighbours, but those who have transgressed any of the commands of God; as the preceding word, just, denotes a person who has fulfilled, not barely social duties, but all kind of righteousness. That he might bring us to God - Now to his gracious favour, hereafter to his blissful presence, by the same steps of suffering and of glory. Being put to death in the flesh - As man. But raised to life by the Spirit - Both by his own divine power, and by the power of the Holy Ghost.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv18–20 Verse 18. Christ also hath once suffered] See Clarke…
Verse 18. Christ also hath once suffered] See Clarke on Ro 5:6; "Heb 9:28".
Put to death in the flesh] In his human nature.
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But quickened by the Spirit] That very dead body revived by the power of his Divinity. There are various opinions on the meaning of this verse, with which I need not trouble the reader, as I have produced that which is most likely.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v19 1Pe 3:19-20. By which also — That is, by…
1Pe 3:19-20. By which also — That is, by which Spirit; he went and preached — Πορευθεις εκηρυξεν, having gone, he preached, namely, in and by Noah, who spake by the Spirit of Christ, (1Pe 1:11,) and of the Father, who said, (Gen 6:3,) referring to the men of that generation, My Spirit shall not always strive with man. Hence Noah is called a preacher of righteousness: 2Pe 2:5. “By attributing the preaching of the ancient prophets to Christ, the apostle hath taught us, that from the beginning the economy of man’s redemption has been under the direction of Christ. To the spirits in prison — That is, which were in prison when St. Peter wrote this epistle. They were men in the flesh when Christ preached to them by his Spirit speaking in Noah; but after they were dead, their spirits were shut up in the infernal prison, detained, like the fallen angels, (Jdg 1:6,) unto the judgment of the great day; which sometime — Ποτε, once, or formerly, were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited — For their repentance; in the days of Noah — During the long space of one hundred and twenty years; while the ark was preparing — During which time Noah warned them all to repent, and flee from the wrath to come. Wherein — In which ark; few, that is, eight souls — Namely, Noah and his wife, with their three sons and their wives; were saved by water — Or, were carried safely through the water; namely, the waters of the flood, which bare up the ark in which they were enclosed. Some suppose that the persons here spoken of are said to have been in prison in the days of Noah, by the same figure of speech, by which the persons to whom Christ preached in the days of his flesh, are called captives in prison, Luk 4:18. “Christ’s preaching to the antediluvians by Noah, their destruction for their disobedience to that preaching, and the preservation of Noah and his family in the ark, are all fitly mentioned, to show that it hath been God’s way from the beginning of the world, when the wickedness of men became general, to oppose it, by raising up prophets to reprove them, and warn them of their danger; and after waiting for their repentance to no purpose, to destroy them; while he delivered the righteous from the evils to which they were exposed, by manifest interpositions of his power. These things teach us, that we should not think the worse of the gospel, because it hath been rejected by many; nor of ourselves, because we are persecuted by the wicked. On the other hand, by the punishment of the antediluvians, and of the Jews who crucified our Lord; wicked men and persecutors are taught to dread the judgments of God.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv18–20 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins -…
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins - Compare the notes at 1Pe 2:21. The design of the apostle in the reference to the sufferings of Christ, is evidently to remind them that he suffered as an innocent being, and not for any wrong-doing, and to encourage and comfort them in their sufferings by his example. The reference to his sufferings leads him 1Pe 3:18-22 into a statement of the various ways in which Christ suffered, and of his ultimate triumph. By his example in his sufferings, and by his final triumph, the apostle would encourage those whom he addressed to bear with patience the sorrows to which their religion exposed them. He assumes that all suffering for adhering to the gospel is the result of well-doing; and for an encouragement in their trials, he refers them to the example of Christ, the highest instance that ever was, or ever will be, both of well-doing, and of suffering on account of it. The expression, “hath once suffered,” in the New Testament, means once for all; once, in the sense that it is not to occur again. Compare Heb 7:27. The particular point here, however, is not that he once suffered; it is that he had in fact suffered, and that in doing it he had left an example for them to follow.
The just for the unjust - The one who was just, (δίκαιος dikaios,) on account of, or in the place of, those who were unjust, (ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων huper adikōn;) or one who was righteous, on account of those who were wicked. Compare the Rom 5:6 note; 2Co 5:21 note; Heb 9:28 note. The idea on which the apostle would particularly fix their attention was, that he was just or innocent. Thus, he was an example to those who suffered for well-doing.
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That he might bring us to God - That his death might be the means of reconciling sinners to God. Compare the notes at Joh 3:14; Joh 12:32. It is through that death that mercy is proclaimed to the guilty; it is by that alone that God can be reconciled to people; and the fact that the Son of God loved people, and gave himself a sacrifice for them, enduring such bitter sorrows, is the most powerful appeal which can be made to mankind to induce them to return to God. There is no appeal which can be made to us more powerful than one drawn from the fact that another suffers on our account. We could resist the argument which a father, a mother, or a sister would use to reclaim us from a course of sin; but if we perceive that our conduct involves them in suffering, that fact has a power over us which no mere argument could have.
Being put to death in the flesh - As a man; in his human nature. Compare the notes at Rom 1:3-4. There is evidently a contrast here between “the flesh” in which it is said he was “put to death,” and “the Spirit” by which it is said he was “quickened.” The words “in the flesh” are clearly designed to denote something that was unique in his death; for it is a departure from the usual method of speaking of death. How singular would it be to say of Isaiah, Paul, or Peter, that they were put to death in the flesh! How obvious would it be to ask, In what other way are people usually put to death? What was there special in their case, which would distinguish their death from the death of others? The use of this phrase would suggest the thought at once, that though, in regard to that which was properly expressed by the phrase, “the flesh,” they died, yet that there was something else in respect to which they did not die. Thus, if it were said of a man that he was deprived of his rights as a father, it would be implied that in, other respects he was not deprived of his rights; and this would be especially true if it were added that he continued to enjoy his rights as a neighbor, or as holding an office under the government. The only proper inquiry, then, in this place is, What is fairly implied in the phrase, the flesh? Does it mean simply his body, as distinguished from his human soul? or does it refer to him as a man, as distinguished from some higher nature, over which death had no power Now, that the latter is the meaning seems to me to be apparent, for these reasons:
(1) It is the usual way of denoting the human nature of the Lord Jesus, or of saying that he became in carnate, or was a man, to speak of his being in the flesh. See Rom 1:2; “Made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” Joh 1:14; “and the Word was made flesh.” 1Ti 3:16; “God was manifest in the flesh.” 1Jo 4:2; “every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.” 2Jo 1:7; “who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”
(2) So far as appears, the effect of death on the human soul of the Redeemer was the same as in the case of the soul of any other person; in other words, the effect of death in his case was not confined to the mere body or the flesh. Death, with him, was what death is in any other case - the separation of the soul and body, with all the attendant pain of such dissolution. It is not true that his “flesh,” as such, died without the ordinary accompaniments of death on the soul, so that it could be said that the one died, and the other was kept alive. The purposes of the atonement required that he should meet death in the usual form; that the great laws which operate everywhere else in regard to dissolution, should exist in his case; nor is there in the Scriptures any intimation that there was, in this respect, anything special in his case. If his soul had been exempt from whatever there is involved in death in relation to the spirit, it is unaccountable that there is no hint on this point in the sacred narrative. But if this be so, then the expression “in the flesh” refers to him as a man, and means, that so far as his human nature was concerned, he died. In another important respect, he did not die. On the meaning of the word “flesh” in the New Testament, see the notes at Rom 1:3.
But quickened - Made alive - ζοωποιηθεὶς zoōpoiētheis. This does not mean “kept alive,” but “made alive; recalled to life; reanimated.” The word is never used in the sense of maintained alive, or preserved alive. Compare the following places, which are the only ones in which it occurs in the New Testament: Joh 5:21 (twice); Joh 6:63; Rom 4:17; Rom 8:11; 1Co 15:36, 1Co 15:45; 1Ti 6:13; 1Pe 3:18; in all which it is rendered “quickened, quicken, quickeneth;” 1Co 15:22, “be made alive;” 2Co 3:6, “giveth life;” and Gal 3:21, “have given life.” “Once the word refers to God, as he who giveth life to all creatures, 1Ti 6:13; three times it refers to the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, or of the doctrines of the gospel, Joh 6:63; 2Co 3:6; Gal 3:21; seven times it is used with direct reference to the raising of the dead, Joh 5:21; Rom 4:17; Rom 8:11; 1Co 15:22, 1Co 15:36, 1Co 15:45; 1Pe 3:18.” See Biblical Repos., April, 1845, p. 269. See also Passow, and Robinson, Lexicon. The sense, then, cannot be that, in reference to his soul or spirit, he was preserved alive when his body died, but that there was some agency or power restoring him to life, or reanimating him after he was dead.
By the Spirit - According to the common reading in the Greek, this is τῷ Πνεύματι tō Pneumati - with the article the - “the Spirit.” Hahn, Tittman, and Griesbach omit the article, and then the reading is, “quickened in spirit;” and thus the reading corresponds with the former expression, “in flesh” (σαρκὶ sarki,) where the article also is lacking. The word “spirit,” so far as the mere use of the word is concerned, might refer to his own soul, to his divine nature, or to the Holy Spirit. It is evident:
(1) That it does not refer to his own soul, for:
(a)As we have seen, the reference in the former clause is to his human nature, including all that pertained to him as a man, body and soul;
(b)There was no power in his own spirit, regarded as that pertaining to his human nature, to raise him up from the dead, any more than there is such a power in any other human soul. That power does not belong to a human soul in any of its relations or conditions.
(2) It seems equally clear that this does not refer to the Holy Spirit, or the Third Person of the Trinity, for it may be doubted whether the work of raising the dead is anywhere ascribed to that Spirit. His special province is to enlighten, awaken, convict, convert, and sanctify the soul; to apply the work of redemption to the hearts of people, and to lead them to God. This influence is moral, not physical; an influence accompanying the truth, not the exertion of mere physical power.
(3) It remains, then, that the reference is to his own divine nature - a nature by which he was restored to life after he was crucified; to the Son of God, regarded as the Second Person of the Trinity. This appears, not only from the facts above stated, but also:
(a) from the connection, It is stated that it was in or by this spirit that he went and preached in the days of Noah. But it was not his spirit as a man that did this, for his human soul had then no existence. Yet it seems that he did this personally or directly, and not by the influences of the Holy Spirit, for it is said that “he went and preached.” The reference, therefore, cannot be to the Holy Spirit, and the fair conclusion is that it refers to his divine nature.
(b) This accords with what the apostle Paul says Rom 1:3-4, “which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh,” that is, in respect to his human nature, “and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness,” that is, in respect to his divine nature, “by the resurrection from the dead.” See the notes at that passage.
(c) It accords with what the Saviour himself says, Joh 10:17-18; “I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” This must refer to his divine nature, for it is impossible to conceive that a human soul should have the power of restoring its former tenement, the body, to life. See the notes at the passage. The conclusion, then, to which we have come is, that the passage means, that as a man, a human being, he was put to death; in respect to a higher nature, or by a higher nature, here denominated Spirit (Πνεῦμα Pneuma,) he was restored to life. As a man, he died; as the incarnate Son of Gods the Messiah, he was made alive again by the power of his own Divine Spirit, and exalted to heaven. Compare Robinson’s Lexicon on the word Πνεῦμα Pneuma, C.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv18–19 Christ....being put to death indeed in the flesh, dying…
Christ....being put to death indeed in the flesh, dying on the cross for our sins, but brought to life by the spirit.[2] By the spirit here some understand Christ’s divine spirit, and power of his divinity, by which he soon raised himself again from death to an immortal life by his glorious resurrection. But others by the spirit rather understand Christ’s soul, by which he never died, which always remained united to his divine person, and which the third day he again reunited to his body. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
In quo (spiritu) Greek: en o (pneumati) veniens Greek: poreutheis, profectus. As to the different expositions of this place, see Estius, Cornelius a Lapide, &c. which also Dr. Pearson sets down at large. The late Protestant writers, as may be seen in Dr. Hammond and Dr. Wells, expound this place so as to signify no real descent of Christ’s soul into hell, or to any infernal place, but only that his divine spirit sent Noe [Noah] to preach to the spirits in the prison of their body, (i.e. to those wicked men who lived in the days of Noe) to exhort them to repentance. But this exposition, as Dr. Pearson observed, is against the general opinion of the Church and the ancient Fathers; and of which St. Augustine said, (Epis. 163. tom. 2. p. 574) Quis nisi infidelis negaverit, fuisse apud inferos Christum?
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v18 Analysis:—Further exhortation to readiness of suffering in consideration of…
1Pe_3:18-22
Analysis:—Further exhortation to readiness of suffering in consideration of a deeper motive. Only thus do we attain to resembling Christ, who suffered for our sins, whose sufferings had every where, even in the world of the dead, salutary effects, and led to the most blessed issue
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18 For49 Christ also hath once suffered for sins,50 the just for the unjust,51 that he might 19bring us to God, being put to death52 in the flesh, but quickened53 by the Spirit:54 By55 20which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime56 were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing,57 wherein few,58 that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21The like figure59 whereunto even baptism doth also now save us,60 (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh,61 but the answer62 of a good conscience toward God,) by63 the resurrection of Jesus Christ: 22Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God;64 angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.65
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Pe_3:18. Because Christ also suffered.—If, according to our ideas, any one ought to have been spared the cup of suffering, it was Christ; but He also suffered on account of sins and for their atonement.
Once, cf. Rom_6:10; Heb_7:27; Heb_9:7.—It requires not to be repeated and as compared with eternity, it is a short suffering, being compressed into the space of several years and days. It probably relates to the exhortation which follows that we also should once for all die unto sin, 1Pe_4:1. (Lachmann reads: περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν ἀπέθανεν.).—περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν, on account of sins, cf. 1Pe_2:24; Rom_8:3. Sins were the originating cause of His sufferings and their blotting out His aim.
A just person for (in the stead of) unjust persons.—δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων. Although ὑπέρ per se may be rendered “for the benefit of,” yet both the circumstance that the context opposes one innocent person to many guilty persons and the word προσάγειν clearly express the idea of vicarious suffering; for προσάγειν relates to Christ’s office of High-priest. Defilement by sin under the Old Testament barred all approach to God; the Priest had the privilege to draw near to God and to mediate the people’s approach to Him. This is rendered in the LXX. by προσάγειν. Vide Weiss, cf. προσέρχεσθαι 1Pe_2:4.—The word ἅπαξ confirms this view, cf. Heb_9:27-28.—The repeated reference to the sufferings of Christ shows in the opinion of Gerhard, that the Apostle cannot weary to make mention of His sufferings, hence he calls himself 1Pe_5:1, a witness of the sufferings of Christ.
Put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.—Θανατωθείς is best joined to προσάγειν. The restoration of men to the lost communion with God is conditioned by the sacrificial death of Christ, by His resurrection and royal power.—ζωοποιεῖν not = ἐγείρειν, cf. Joh_5:21; Rom_8:11; 1Co_15:22.—σαρκί, πνεύματι; the two Datives denote the sphere to which the predicate must be supposed to be limited, cf. Winer, § 41, 3. a. The Datives are evidently parallel and must be taken in the same sense. The sense of the first is clear: He was put to death as to His outward, sensuous nature. If this is established, it is impossible to interpret the second member as follows: He was made alive by the spirit that had been given to Him, by the higher divine part of His nature. Weiss:—The parallelism indicated by μέν and δέ, rather requires us to render, “as to His Spirit He was made alive,” (animated.). Death hardly affected the spirit and soul of Christ, but both at the moment of Christ’s dying were for a short time put into a state of unconsciousness. But hardly had Christ surrendered His spirit into the hands of the Father, when the Divine Spirit filled and penetrated Him with a new Divine life. Flacius already observes: “the antithesis clearly shows that Christ was put to death as to one part of His nature, but made alive as to another. It is a modus loquendi taken from or alluding to the universal lot of the godly, cf. Gen_45:27; 1Th_3:8. Roos:—“His soul, for its great refreshing, was endued with and penetrated by heavenly strength.” Others take the view that His death ensued in virtue of the weakness inherent in the flesh, His reanimation in virtue of the strength peculiar to the Spirit, cf. 2Co_13:4. But θανατωθείς; does not well suit this interpretation, which is somewhat forced. [Luther: “This is the meaning, that Christ by His sufferings was taken from the life which is flesh and blood, as a man on earth, living, walking and standing in flesh and blood and He is now placed in another life, and made alive according to the spirit, has passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, which includes in itself the whole life which Christ now has in soul and body, so that He has no longer a fleshly but a spiritual body.” Hoffman, Schriftbeweiss 2, 337, says: “It is the same who dies and the same who is again made alive, both times the whole man Jesus, in body and soul. He ceases to live in that that, which is to His Personality the medium of action, falls under death; and He begins again to live, in that He receives back this same for a medium of His action again. The life which fell under death was a fleshly life, that is, such a life as has its determination to the present condition of man’s nature, to the externality of its mundane connection. The life which was won back is a spiritual life, that is, such a life as has its determination from the Spirit, in which consists our inner connection with God.”—M.] [Wordsworth: “St. Peter thus guards his readers against the heresy of Simon Magus, and the Docetæ who said that Christ’s flesh was a phantom; and against that of the Cerinthians, and other false teachers, whose errors were propagated in Asia, who alleged that the Christ was only an Aeon or Emanation, which descended on the Man Jesus, at His Baptism, but departed from Him before His Passion.”—M.]
1Pe_3:19. In which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.—Ἐν ᾦ is evidently to be joined with πνεύματι, not=διὰ πνεύματος, but really in the condition of a spirit separated from the body. Bengel:—”Christ dealt with the living in the body, with the spirits in the spirit.”—καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ.—καί =even to the spirits in prison He did preach; so great was His condescension and so far reached the consequences of His voluntary, vicarious sufferings. As Paul the Apostle, Eph_4:9-10, adverts to the descent of Christ to the lowest parts of the earth, doubtless in close connection with the exhortation, cf. 1Pe_5:2, and with the evident meaning that the example of Christ should move believers to descend to the weakest and most abandoned persons, of whose salvation none entertained any hope, so here the descent of Christ to the world of departed spirits occurs in connection with the preceding exhortations to perseverance in well-doing and suffering.—ἐν φυλακᾖ not=in the realms of death, for the word always denotes a custody, a place of confinement, a prison, Rev_20:7; Mat_5:25; Mat_14:3; Mat_18:30; Mat_25:36; Mar_6:17; Mar_6:27; Luk_2:8; Luk_12:58; Luk_21:12; Luk_23:19; Joh_3:24; Act_5:19; Act_8:3; 2Co_6:5; Heb_11:36; consequently it has not the abstract sense of being bound. But this prison must be in the realms of death, cf. 2Pe_2:4; Judges 6; Mat_5:25-26. This evidently follows also from the comparison with 1Pe_4:6. That it is not a mere condition, but a locality in Hades, is manifest both from πορευθείς, for one does not go, i. e., travel into a condition, and from the parallel πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν of 1Pe_3:22. As heaven is a definite locality, so is the netherworld (Hades).—The power of the death and life of Christ operates in two directions, downwards to the realms of death, and upward to the higher regions of heaven.—ἐκήρυξε. Gerhard takes it not so much of verbal as of real preaching, as in Heb_12:24, not in order to liberate them or to give them time for repentance, but in order to show His glorious victory to the spirits of the damned. But the usus loquendi of κηρύττειν, and 1Pe_4:6, which should be connected with the passage under notice, militate against his view. The word occurs joined with τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in Mat_4:23; Mat_9:35; Mar_1:14; Mar_16:15. Where it is found alone, it is understood that the chief burden of His preaching was: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come nigh, repent and believe the Gospel, Mar_1:38; Mar_1:15; Mat_3:1; Mat_4:17; Mat_9:35. It was just this kind of testimony which was to constitute the sum and substance of Apostolical preaching, Mat_10:7; Mat_24:14; Mar_3:14; Mar_6:12; Mar_13:10; Luk_9:2; Act_9:20; Act_10:42-43; 1Co_1:23; Php_1:15 : 2Ti_4:2. It is never used of judicial preaching. It is, therefore, by no means so indefinite an expression as Bengel supposes, but one which has a very definite meaning; further light, moreover, is shed on it by εὐηγγελίσθη of 1Pe_4:6. The unequivocal sense is: Jesus proclaimed to those spirits in the prisons of Hades the beginning of a new epoch of grace, the appearance of the kingdom of God, and repentance and faith as the means of entering into the same.
1Pe_3:20. Now follows a further definition. They are men, who once were unbelivers, in the time of Noah. Their having repented on seeing the flood break in, or during the long interval until the coming of Christ, is a gratuitous and arbitrary conjecture. Their unbelief was practical, exhibited by their disobedience, for so Peter invariably takes ἀπειθεῖν, cf. 1Pe_2:7. They ridiculed the prediction of the coming floods and despised the exhortation to repent.
When the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few persons, that is eight souls, were saved by water.—Ἀπεξεδέχετο (The Text. Rec. had ἅπαξ ἑξεδέχετο, but our reading is doubtless correct.), the goodness of God, exhibited as μακροθυμία, in the long postponement of punishment and judgment, and the waiting for amendment; ποτε cannot be separated without violence from the following ἐν ἡμέραις Νῶε. It waited 120 years for repentance, Gen_6:3.—Since Noah was a preacher of righteousness in word and deed to his contemporaries, 2Pe_2:5, and since the difficult building of his floating house, covering so long a space of time, ought to have excited their serious consideration, their unbelief appears so much the more culpable.—κιβωτός = תֵּבָה, the well-known name of the ark, cf. Mat_24:38; Luk_17:27; Heb_11:7.—κατασκευαζομένης, denotes the difficulty and long duration of the building which was progressing in their sight.—εἰς ἣν ὀλίγαι, into which a few souls fled, and were saved, through, and by means of, the water. διά suggests both ideas in connection with the comparison with baptism which follows.
A few persons, put designedly, not only because, as Steiger remarks, this narrative shows per se the relation of believers and unbelievers, but also because the fact itself supplies the strongest motive for Christ’s descent into the realms of death, as an act demanded by the grace of God. Only eight souls were saved in the deluge—many thousands and thousands, who were very diverse as to their moral condition, perished; how conclusive, therefore, the inference that that event took place in the world of spirits, which Peter, however, knew, not from inferences he had drawn, but doubtless in consequence of a special revelation. As the time of Noah was elsewhere viewed as an important type of after-times, cf. 2Pe_2:5; 2Pe_3:6-7; Mat_24:37, etc., so here also it ought to be taken in a typical sense, while the activity of Jesus ought not to be considered as being limited to the generation of Noah. By the example of Noah’s family, Peter was taught the dealings of God with all men, who, without any fault of theirs, have not known the salvation in Christ. This passage of Christ’s descent into Hades belongs to those which have suffered most from the treatment of commentators. Some distorted the preaching of Christ into mediate preaching by Noah or the Apostles, others into preaching, which, although having taken place immediately in the realms of death, was yet confined to the godly only. Steiger has enumerated their vagaries; they carry their confutation within themselves, and rest, one and all, on dogmatical embarrassment. Our explanation is supported by many passages, e. g., Act_2:27; Act_2:31; Psa_16:10; Eph_4:8; Act_13:35; Act_13:37; Act_2:24; Luk_23:46; Mar_15:37; Mar_15:39; Php_2:10; Luk_16:19. Cf. Koenig, Christ’s Descent into Hell; Güder, Doctrine of Christ’s Appearing among the Dead; Zezschwiz, Petri ap. de Christi ad inferos descensu sententia; Herzog, Real-Encyclopædie, Art. Hades; [and the Excursus on the Descensus ad Inferos at the end of this section.—M.]
[Wordsworth:—”St. Peter’s Epistle was probably written in the East (see 1Pe_3:13). There the belief in two opposite principles, (dualism), a Good and Evil, was widely disseminated by the religion of Zoroaster, and by the Magi of Persia (see Psa_45:3; Psa_45:7). There also the Ark rested after the waters of the Flood.
The author of this Epistle, written in the East, may have heard the objection raised, on the history of the Flood, against the Divine Benevolence and the Unity of the Godhead, and he appears to be answering such objections as those, and to be vindicating that history. He shows the harmony of God’s dispensations, Patriarchal and Evangelical. He teaches us to behold in the Ark a type of the Church, and in the Flood a type of Baptism. He thus refutes the Manichæan heresy. He says that God was merciful, even to that generation. He speaks of God’s long-suffering, waiting for them while the Ark was preparing. He states boldly the objection, that few, only eight souls, were saved in the Ark, and contrasts the condition of those who were drowned in the Flood with the condition of those who have now offers of salvation in Baptism. He says that the rest disobeyed while the Ark was preparing. He uses the Aorist tense (ἀπειθήσασι). He does not say, when the Ark had been prepared, and when the Ark was shut, and when the Flood came, and it was too late for them to reach it, they all remained impenitent. Perhaps some were penitent at the eleventh hour, like the thief on the cross. Every one will be justly dealt with by God. There are degrees of punishment, as there are of reward (see Mat_10:15; Luk_12:48). God does not quench the smoking flax (Mat_12:20). And St. Peter, by saying that they did not hearken formerly, while the Ark was preparing, almost seems to suggest the inference that they did hearken now, when One greater than Noah came in His human spirit into the abysses of the deep of the lower world, and that a happy change was wrought in the condition of some among them by His coming.”—M.]
1Pe_3:21. Which, in the antitype, is now saving us.—ὅ καὶ ἡμᾶς (The Textus. Rec. reads ᾦ, an easier reading. Lachmann reads ὑμᾶς instead of ἡμᾶς; so also Tischendorf;) resumes 1Pe_3:18, after the Apostle’s manner of returning after a parenthesis, to what had gone before, and by making it the subject of further elucidation, cf. 1Pe_2:24; 1Pe_2:21. The thoughts now mentioned are by no means accidental, and such as might have, been omitted, but the προσάγειν of 1Pe_3:18 remained to be explained, as to the manner how it was effected, viz.: by baptism, whereof that saving water was a type.—ὅ relates to ὕδωρ, similar to the members of Noah’s family.—αντίτυπον, antitypal, in the antitype, that is, as baptism. Two appositions to ὕδωρ. The water of the flood is here viewed only in the light of having been saving to Noah and his family, inasmuch as it carried the ark.—σώζει, the Present is used because the saving has only begun and is not yet completed.
Not putting-away the filth of the flesh, but inquiry of a good conscience after God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.—Now follows a more particular account of the nature of baptism, first, negatively, theft, positively. The end contemplated is not, as in the case of Jewish lustrations, purification from the filth of the body. Steiger cites Justin Martyr, Tryph. p. 331, “Of what avail is that baptism, (that of the Jewish lustrations) which cleanses the flesh and the body only?” It is rather an ἐπερώτημα συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς. In explaining this dark passage, it is necessary to begin with the more lucid points. The antithesis of the putting-away of the filth of the flesh suggests a reference to the moral import of baptism, to inward, spiritual cleansing. Hence the Apostle names this ἀγαθὴ συνείδησις as the end contemplated in baptism. With this we have to connect the apposition εἰς Θεόν, for a good conscience toward God, which is much more than a good conscience toward men (1Co_4:4), is just what we need. Connecting, with the majority of commentators, εἰς Θεόν with ἐπερώτημα, as indicating the end of ἐπερώτημα, would yield a very harsh expression, which cannot be illustrated by 2Sa_11:7, besides, the apposition would then appear to be superfluous. But since the Genitive ἀγαθῆς συνειδήσεως corresponds with ῥύπου σαρκός, it must be like the latter, the Genit. objecti, not the Genit. subjecti. As to the matter itself, the good conscience cannot be supposed to be existing at baptism and preceding it, for the Apostle elsewhere regards a good conscience as something received at, and effected by, baptism, Act_2:38. If the good conscience were anterior to baptism, it would be difficult to see how salvation, by means of baptism, could be necessary. What, then, is the meaning of ἐπερώτημα, which occurs only once, and that in this passage, in the New Testament? We should expect a word signifying the cleansing of the conscience: but ἐπερώτημα is never used in such a sense; nor does it signify promise or pledge, as Grotius explains the word from the usage of Roman law, nor address, confidence, open approach, but simply asking, inquiry. This gives quite a good sense: baptism is the inquiry for a good conscience before God, the desire and longing for it. This would define the subjective side of baptism, with reference to the circumstance that from the earliest time certain questions relating to the state of his conscience were proposed to the candidate for baptism. Lutz approaches the right explanation: “Baptism is the request for a good conscience, for admittance to the state of reconciliation on the part of such as have a good conscience toward God, a petition for the pardon of sin, which is obtained by the merits of Christ.” Similar are the views of Wiesinger and Weiss, except that they erroneously join εἰς Θεόν and ἐπερώτημα. Adhering to the idea of asking, the thing asked may be conceived, as follows: How shall I rid myself of an evil conscience? Wilt Thou, most holy God, again accept me, a sinner? Wilt Thou. Lord Jesus, grant me the communion of Thy death and life? Wilt Thou, O Holy Ghost, assure me of grace and adoption, and dwell in my heart? To these questions the Triune Jehovah answers in baptism, Yea. Now is laid the solid foundation for a good conscience. The conscience is not only purified from its guilt, but it receives new vital power by means of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
δι’ ἀναστάσεως is better joined with συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς than with σώζει, from which it is too far separated. In 1Pe_1:3, the living hope is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, here, the good conscience. The mediating features of προσάγειν τῷ Θεῷ and of σώζειν have now been indicated. [Most commentators connect δι’ ἀναστάσεως with σώζει, treating the intervening sentence as a parenthesis.—M.]
[Wordsworth:—From the Book of Common Prayer: “Baptism represents to us our profession, which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him, that as He died and rose again for us, so we who are baptized and buried with Christ in His death, should be dead to sin and live unto righteousness,” “continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living,” in order that we who are “baptized into His death may pass through the grave and gate of death to our joyful Resurrection, through His merits who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Waterland, On Justification, p. 1 Peter 440:—“St. Peter assures us that Baptism saves; that is, it gives a just title to salvation, which is the same as to say that it conveys justification. But then it must be understood, not of the outward washing, but of the inward lively faith stipulated in it and by it. Baptism concurs with Faith, and Faith with Baptism, and the Holy Spirit with both; and so the merits of Christ are savingly applied. Faith alone will not ordinarily serve in this case, but it must be a contracting faith on man’s part, contracting in form corresponding to the federal promises and engagements on God’s part; therefore, Tertullian rightly styles Baptism obsignatio fidei, testatio fidei, sponsio salutis, fidei pactio, and the like.”
Baptismal interrogatories were used in the primitive, even in the Apostolical Church, and Peter seems to refer to them here. See Act_8:37; Heb_6:1-2; cf. Rom_10:10. Justin Martyr, Apol. 1, c. 61; Tertullian, de Spect., c. 4; de Coronâ Mil., c. 3, and de Resurrect. Carnis, c. 48. “Anima non lavatione sed responsione sancitur.“ Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 70, 76, 85; Hippolytus, Theophan., c. 10; Origen, Exhortatio ad Martyr, c. 12; Vales in Euseb. 7, 8, and Euseb. 7, 9, where Dionysius, Bp. of Alexandria, in the third century, speaks of a person who was present at the baptism of some who were lately baptized, and heard the questions and answers, τῶν ἐπερωτήσεων καὶ ἀποκρίσεων. See more in Wordsworth.—M.]
1Pe_3:22. Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected unto him.—Now follows, as the further consequence of the sufferings of Christ, His ascension into heaven, and exaltation to the right hand of God. A former sufferer is now exalted to the highest dignity of heaven. Thus this verse beautifully connects with the exhortation to willingness of suffering, cf. 1Pe_3:17-18, and paves the way for 1Pe_4:1, etc.—ὅς ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ; cf. Ps. Exodus 1; Rom_8:34; Eph_1:20; Col_3:1; Heb_1:3; Php_3:20. He has been received as sharer of the Divine government. He is not only King of His Church, but of the whole world.—πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν=having gone into heaven. It is incorrect that this designates, not a locality of the universe, but a relation to the world. Wiesinger.—ὑποταγέντων, cf. Heb_1:4; Eph_1:21; Col_2:10. The spirits, in their various gradations, are now subjected to Him who has suffered so much and so deeply. We do not pretend to determine whether they can be distinguished, with Hoffmann, as ἄγγελοι, inasmuch as they are the executors of the Divine will, as ἐξουσίαι, inasmuch as they sway authority in this world, and δυνάμεις, because they bring about the alternations of this world, cf. Mat_28:18; Luk_24:49; Act_2:32; Act_2:35; Act_3:21; Act_3:26; Act_4:10-12; Act_10:40-42.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The fact that the Apostles do not separate the vicarious element of the sufferings of Christ from its typical element suggests an important hint to preachers as to the treatment of the atonement of Jesus.
2. The restoration of the lost communion of sinners with God is, according to 1Pe_3:18, one of the main ends of the sufferings of Christ; but His resurrection is also a co-operating factor in this great work, 1Pe_3:21.
3. There are no stronger motives for perseverance in well-doing, even where it involves the endurance of great suffering, than those taken from the innocent and vicarious sufferings and death of Jesus. As His sufferings and death conducted Him to life and to a greatly blessed sphere of work, so we are warranted to believe, if through suffering for righteousness we are made like Him, that suffering and death itself will also conduct us, and others by us, to life and blessedness. That which has affected the Head will also in different degrees affect the members, cf. Eph_2:5; Eph_2:7.
4. Christ’s descent into hell, or rather into Hades, which transpired, not after, but before His resurrection (cf. Act_2:27; Act_2:31), is by no means a subordinate point in the Apostle’s creed that may be surrendered to unbelief, but a fundamental article. But doubtless it is not founded, as Weiss assumes, on a conclusion reached by the Apostle’s reasoning, as if he had inferred the necessity of Christ’s preaching among the dead, both from the exclusiveness of the salvation wrought by Christ only, and from the justice of God, but rather on an illumination of the Holy Ghost, whose organs the Apostles were. The justice and love of God now appear to us in glorious light, and withhold the definite sentence of condemnation until all men have decided with full consciousness concerning Christ and His Gospel. He is set as the rock of salvation or stone of stumbling for all the world, 1Pe_2:6, etc.
5. Hades is not the final, absolute place and state of punishment; this is evident from Rev_20:14; Rev_20:10; the lake of fire and brimstone, the fiery pit, γέεννα, is that final place. There are in Hades two provinces or regions, separated from one another by a gulf. The one is a place of repose, comfort and refreshing, Abraham’s bosom, Luk_16:22, probably that paradise to which before His resurrection and ascension (Joh_20:17) Jesus went with the thief, Luk_23:43; lower paradise, as contrasted with the upper, to which Paul was transported, 2Co_12:2; 2Co_12:4; cf. Rev_2:7. Another part of the lower world contains the different prisons of human souls, who in their bodily existence had despised the word of God, acted against the light of conscience, and died in guilty unbelief. Here Jesus, as a spirit, appeared to fallen spirits, to some as Conqueror and Judge, to others, who still stretched out to Him the hand of faith, as a Saviour. We may, therefore, suppose with König that the preaching of Christ begun in the realms of departed spirits its is continued there in a manner adapted to the relation of the world of the dead, and analogous to the manner in which such provision has been made adapted to our earthly relations (cf. 1Ti_2:4; 2Pe_3:9), so that those who here on earth did not hear at all, or not in the right way, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, shall hear it there. If this truth had always been sufficiently recognized, the anti-scriptural opinion of universal recovery would hardly have found such extensive circulation. [But see the Excursus, below.—M.]
6. Baptism is here taken as a means of grace, although not described from every point of view, but only according to its subjective condition, the desire for a good conscience, which coincides with μετάνοια and according to its saving power which is mediated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
7. This passage in connection with Act_5:32 contains a testimony for the visible ascension of Christ, which has recently been questioned, and, alas! occasionally also by professedly believing teachers.
8. “The doctrine of this section has,” as Richter says, “nothing in common with the heresies of purgatory and universal recovery. But it affords a lucid example that the atonement once made (Act_5:18) is of universal import for all men and for all times. It affects even the dead, and the decision of their eternal destiny depends upon their relation to the announcement of the death and resurrection of Christ.”
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Suffer gladly for Christ’s sake, because He also has suffered for you and for all. Look at the glory into which your Head has entered through suffering.—Consider that suffering happens to us only once in the flesh, 1Pe_3:18, and that it has manifold blessings for us and for others.—The universal sin-offering of Jesus, the fulfilment of all the typical offerings.—The atonement having been made for all men, must also be preached to all men.—It was part of the reward of the perfect obedience of Christ that He should receive the keys of hell and death. Hence He was able to enter the realms of death and remove thence as many as He chose without the ruler of those prisons being able to prevent it.—There are in the prisons of the unhappy realms of death, in which unconverted souls are detained unto judgment, differences and degrees of which some are more supportable and others more fearful and insupportable, Mat_10:15; Mat_11:22.—The descent of Christ into the dark and horrible regions of the world of the dead exhibits the stupendous power of His commiserating love.—Christ appearing to them as Conqueror and Judge, did not proclaim to them the sentence of condemnation but announced to them the only way of salvation from their long, more than two thousand years’ imprisonment.—Let nobody die with the false consolation of hearing the Gospel hereafter in the world of death.—As here, so beyond the grave, there are not wanting witnesses of Christ and preachers of the Gospel.—The success of Christ’s preaching in those prisons is not recorded; Peter may intend to give a hint on the subject in mentioning the few who escaped the flood.—A threefold fruit of the sufferings of Christ: 1. He has brought us to God by reconciling us to God through His blood and becoming our peace, Rom_5:10; Eph_2:13; Col_1:20; Col_1:2. He brings us daily to God, for through Him we have access to the Father by faith, Rom_5:2; Eph_2:18, and by His Spirit He renews us day by day. 3. He will bring us to God in the end, when it shall appear what we shall be.
Besser:—“It is infinitely better to suffer once with Christ than to suffer eternally without Christ.”
Bede:—“The ark was lifted up with Noah and his family: so we are carried upward and made citizens of the kingdom of heaven by baptism. As the water of itself did not save Noah, but only by means of the ark, so the water of baptism saves us not as water only but as water with the true ark which is Christ. All the power of baptism flows from the sufferings of Christ, from the wood of the cross.” Despair not, little flock; look through the mist of thy tribulation upward to the Prince of glory, to thy King, before whom every thing lies prostrate.—To what manifold and rich glory do sufferings lead!—How will it fare with those who cause tribulation to believers?—Do not abuse the long-suffering of God, believe that the punishment, of God comes irresistibly and with more fearful weight, if His grace has been neglected.
Starke:—Away, popish mass! We need no more offering for sin. The one offering of Christ is mighty and valid for eternity, Heb_10:12.—O, the riches of the love of God and of Christ! For a righteous man one will perhaps suffer a little, but Christ has suffered every thing for sinners, Rom_5:7-8; Rom_5:10.—The vengeance of God comes slowly but it strikes hard. Long spared, fearfully punished; such has been the experience of thousands who lived after the first world, 1Co_10:6, etc.—Our baptism should continually remind us not to act against the dictates of our conscience or to sin against God, Rom_6:4.—There are orders among the holy angels, although we do not understand their nature and condition, Col_1:16.
Lisco:—The glory of the grace of Christ.—The duty of Christians to make a good confession in word and deed.—The history of the victory of Jesus Christ, the Head of the kingdom.
[As Fronmueller’s views on this passage, 1Pe_3:19-20; 1Pe_4:6 are rather onesided and the doctrinal inferences drawn from them laid down rather too dogmatically, it is but fair that the question in all its bearings should be laid before the readers of this Commentary, which is-done in the subjoined excursus, taken from an article prepared by me for the Evangelical Review., January 1866.—M.]
EXCURSUS ON THE DESCENSUS AD INFEROS
[The object of our Lord’s descent to Hades.—The passage, 1Pe_3:19, stands in the context from 1Pe_3:18-20, in a literal and grammatical translation, as follows: “Because Christ also suffered for sins once, a just person on behalf of unjust, in order that He might present us to God; put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which were disobedient formerly, when the long suffering of God was waiting in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing,” etc. The reasons for this translation appear from the exegesis, to which we now proceed.
ὅτι, 1Pe_3:18, gives the reason why suffering for well-doing is better than suffering for evil-doing; because it establishes the conformity of Christians to Christ their Head. He suffered for sins once, that is, He voluntarily underwent suffering for our sins: He made Himself our sin-offering, He suffered in our stead, and His sufferings were the means of everlasting blessedness to others and of eternal glory to Himself; so we also suffer, and for sins, not indeed for the sins of others, but for our own, and by parity of reasoning it follows that the sufferings of Christians not only conform them to Christ (with reverence be it spoken), but are the means of everlasting blessedness to themselves and of eternal glory to Christ. This applies not to all suffering, but only to suffering for well-doing. This “beam of comforting light falls on the sufferings of Christians from this ἄπαξ through καί,” Besser. καί indicates the analogy and shows that ἄπαξ belongs to Christ and His followers. He suffered once and once only, once for all. So it will be with us. Our suffering is only once, limited to a short space of time; it is only for a season, and our present suffering is not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. The way to glory lies through the valley of humiliation. Christ suffered as a just person on behalf of unjust; of course the comparison is only relative, for although we are called δίκαιοι in 1Pe_3:12, and suffer as ἄδικοι, yet is our δικαιοσύνη infinitely inferior to that of Christ, and our suffering not vicarious like His, for we suffer not ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, but περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν. The end of our Lord’s suffering is stated in the words ἴνα ἡμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῷ θεῷ, “that He might bring us near to God.” “This is the fruit of our Lord’s passion, that He brings the wanderers back to the Father, and the lost to the homes of blessedness;”66 or, in the words of Bengel: “That going Himself to the Father, He might bring in, who had been alienated, but now justified, together with Him into heaven, 1Pe_3:22, by the selfsame steps of humiliation and exaltation, which He Himself had trodden. From this verse onward to 1Pe_4:6, Peter thoroughly links together the course of progress of Christ and believers (wherein He Himself followed the Lord according to His prediction, Joh_13:36), in conjunction with the unbelief and punishment of the many.”67 The Apostle next proceeds to specify the manner how Christ opened the way of our being brought to God. We have here a double antithesis θανατωθείς and ζωοποιηθείς, and σαρκί and πνεύματι; the two nouns have been variously explained. Oecum., Theoph., Gerhard, Clarius, Calov, Horneius, Capellus makes them erroneously to denote the human and the divine natures of Christ; Castellio (also Com. a Lap., Flacius, Estius, Bengel) interprets: Corpore necatus, animo in vitam revocatus; Grotius paraphrases σαρκί by “quod attinet ad vitam hanc fragilem et caducam,“ and explains πνεύματι by that divine power. There are many other variations; without entering upon their discussion, we hold with Alford that the two nouns have adverbial force and that this construction removes the difficulties which otherwise spring up. The fact is that quod ad carnem, Christ was put to death, quod ad spiritum, He was brought to life. “His flesh was the subject, recipient, vehicle of inflicted death; His spirit was the subject, recipient, vehicle of restored life. But let us beware, and proceed cautiously. What is asserted is not that the flesh died and the spirit was made alive, but that “quoad” the flesh the Lord died, “quoad“ the spirit, He was made alive. He, the God-man, Christ Jesus, body and soul, ceased to live in the flesh, began to live in the spirit; ceased to live a fleshly mortal life, began to live a spiritual resurrection-life. His own spirit never died, as the next verse shows us.” Alford.—”This is the meaning, that Christ by His sufferings was taken from the life which is flesh and blood, as a man on earth, living, walking and standing in flesh and blood, * * * and He is now placed in another life, and made alive according to the spirit, has passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, which includes in itself the whole life which Christ now has in soul and body, so that He has no longer a fleshly but a spiritual body.” Luther.—“It is the same who dies and the same who is again made alive, both times the whole man, Jesus, in body and soul. He ceases to live, in that that, which is to His personality the medium of action, falls under death; and He begins to live, in that He receives back this same for a medium of His action again. The life which fell under death was a fleshly life, that is, such a life as has its determination to the present condition of man’s nature, to the externality of its mundane connection. The life which was won back is a spiritual life, that is, such a life as has its determination from the Spirit, in which consists our inner connection with God.” Hofmann, Schriftbeweiss, 2, 336.
ἐν ᾦ. 1Pe_3:19, clearly refers to πνεύματι and must be rendered “in which,“ not by which as in E. V. καὶ may be connected with the whole period and rendered “in which He also went, etc.”—(Alford), or with τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασι, and translated “in which He went and preached also (or even) to the spirits in prison,” Steiger. The latter construction seems preferable, for it not only avoids the awkwardness of subordinating the whole period to what precedes, but also gives prominence to the new idea that the activity of Christ reached even to the spirits in prison. On τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασι see below, πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν denotes the actual presence of the Spirit of Christ in the place of departed spirits, for πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν in 1Pe_3:22 clearly shows that the participle must refer to local transference. Ἐκήρυξεν is=almost εὐηγγελίσατο (from cf. 1Pe_4:6, whose εὐηγγελίσθη is used with reference to the dead); our verb in connection with τὸ εὐαγγέλιον is found in Mat_4:23; Mat_9:35; Mar_1:14; Mar_16:15; it implies the preaching of the gospel in Mar_1:38; Mar_1:15; Mat_3:1; Mat_4:17; Mat_9:35; it has this meaning in the following passages: Mat_10:7; Mat_24:14; Mar_3:14; Mar_6:12; Mar_13:10; Luk_9:2; Act_9:20; Act_10:42-43; 1Co_1:23; Php_1:15; 2Ti_4:2; it is never used in the sense of judicial announcement and N. T. usage clothes it with the meaning “to preach the gospel.”
1Pe_3:20 describes the character of the spirits in prison; they were still disobedient (ἀπειθήσασιν), i. e., exhibited unbelief in disobedience. They derided the prediction of the coming flood, and despised the exhortation to repentance, ποτέ ὄτε distinctly marks the period of their unbelief, viz., the time during which the ark was preparing. The long suffering of God gave them one hundred and twenty years’ time for repentance. In ἀπεξεδέχετο, which is doubtless the true reading (A. B. C. K. Z.) the full time during which the exercise of the Divine long-suffering took place, is brought out, just as κατασκευαζομένης intimates the difficulty and protracted duration of the building of the ark.
Sound exegesis clearly establishes the Apostolic declaration, that our Lord Jesus Christ, after His crucifixion, went in spirit to the place of departed spirits (Hades, Sheol as in Syriac) and there preached to those spirits, who, in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, persisted in unbelief and disobedience. Why, what and with what effect he preached there, is not revealed. The Apostle’s declaration, however clearly established, has been felt from the earliest times to present many and great difficulties, and occasioned an almost endless variety of interpretations, the main features of which will appear in the following classification. Making the κήρυγμα of our Lord the starting point, we have the following survey (given by Steiger):
Christ Preached. I. Mediately: 1, by Noah, 2, by the Apostles. II. Immediately, in the realms of the dead: 1. to the good; 2. to the good and the wicked; 3. to the wicked.
I. 1. Christ preached mediately by Noah. Augustine, Bede, Thomas Aquinas, Lyra, Hammond, Beza, Scaliger, Leighton, Horneius, Gerhard, Elsner, Benson, al., and among more recent authors John Clausen, and Hofmann, (Schriftbeweiss II. 335–341) hold that Christ preached by Noah to his contemporaries, that preacher of righteousness not preaching of himself, but in obedience to the prompting of the spirit of Christ; so that while Noah was the instrument, Christ was virtually preaching by him. In illustration of this view we quote Augustine (Ep. 99 ad Euodiam; cf. also Ep. 164): “Spiritus in carcere conclusi sunt increduli qui vixerunt temporibus Noe, quorum spiritus, i. e., animæ erant in carne et ignorantiæ tenebris velut in carcere conclusæ Christus iis non in carne, qui nondum erat incarnatus, sed in spiritu, i. e., secundum divinitatem prædicavit; and Beza: “Christ, says he (the Apostle), whom I have already said to be vivified by the power of the Godhead, formerly in the days of Noah, when the ark was preparing, going forth or coming. not in a bodily form (which He had not yet assumed) but by the self-same power through which He afterwards rose from the dead, and by inspiration whereof the prophets spoke, preached to those spirits who now suffer deserved punishment in prison, as having formerly refused to listen to the admonitions of Noah?”
This kind of interpretation, notwithstanding the respectable authorities who advocate it, will be rejected by candid scholars as arbitrary and ungrammatical. As arbitrary, because the Apostle neither intimates any such figurative preaching of the spirit of Christ in Noah, nor that Noah preached at all; as ungrammatical, because
a. The subject of discourse is not the Logos but the God-Man (Calov), and the means by which He preached is not the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of Christ ἐν ᾦ sc, πνεύματι).
b. The object (πνεύματα) designates not living men, but departed spirits (cf. Luk_24:37; Heb_12:23; Rev_22:6).
c. The metaphorical φυλακή of Augustine “caro et ignorantiæ tenebræ” and the “qui nunc in carcere meritas dant pœnas” of Beza are inadmissible, the former because it destroys all local reference and thus spiritualizes away the historical value of the Apostle’s declaration, the second because it takes an unjustifiable liberty with that declaration in transferring to the present what manifestly belongs to the past: ἔπαθεν, θανατωθείς, ζωοποιηθείς, and πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν set forth historical events in chronological order, and the τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν “describes the local condition of the πνεύματα as the time when the preaching took place,” (Alford).
d. ἀπειθήσασιν ποτέ interrupts the chronological order, and plainly separates the time of Christ’s preaching from the time of their disobedience. Bengel says: “Si sermo esset de præconio per Noe, τὸ aliquando aut plane omitteretur, aut cum prædicavit jungeretur;” and Flacius, as he disjoins the kind of preaching from the disobedience of those spirits, so on the other hand, he conjoins it with their imprisonment or captivity.
e. πορευθείς, as compared with 1Pe_3:22, cannot be resolved into a pleonasm; giving to the words their common meaning πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξε must mean, “he went away and preached.” (Hensler).
I. 2. Christ preached mediately by the Apostles. This is the view advocated by Socinus, Vorst, Grotius, Schen, Schlichting and Hensler. It is distinguished, like I, 1, by the metaphorical interpretation of τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν; ἐν φυλακῇ=the prison of the body (Grotius) or=the prison of sin (Socinus, Schlichting, Hensler;) and the πνεύματα either=the Jews (sub jugo legis existentes,) or=the Jews and Gentiles (sub potestate diaboli jacentes). ποτέ is explained in the sense that those to whom Christ preached have now ceased to be unbelievers; Hensler, who gives this explanation, is constrained to read in the next clause ὅτι. But it is a purely arbitrary assumption, unwarranted by the facts of the case that all have believed. πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, according to the advocates of this view, refers to the efficacy of Christ through the Apostles, but it requires an uncommonly fertile imagination to bring this out. The supposed analogy in Eph_4:21; Eph_2:17, cannot be pressed into the service of these expositors, for the context is too plain to admit of a similar construction; the αὑτον ἐκούσατε of Eph_4:21 is=ἐμάθετ ε τόν χριστόν, 1Pe_3:20, and ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιδάχθητε, 1Pe_3:21, while ἐλθὼν εὐηγγελίσατο εἰρήνην, in Eph_2:17, clearly refers back to αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐστιν ἡ εἰρήνη ἡμῶν, 1Pe_3:14, and denotes His coming to the earth in person to make known the covenants of peace, sealed with His atoning sacrifice. On grammatical grounds this view is altogether untenable, and its advocates are constrained to wave grammatical considerations. Although Huther justly remarks, “How this interpretation heaps caprice on caprice, need not be shown,” the following objections to it may be found useful:—
a. The πνεῦμα in which Christ preached, according to this view, must be the Holy Spirit; but this Isaiah , 1. forbidden by the context, for ἐν ᾦ refers to the πνεύματι immediately preceding it. 2. Gives a double meaning to πνεῦμα, for πνεύμασι must signify the souls of men.
b. Christ preached by the Apostles not during His bodily death, 1Pe_3:18, but after His exaltation, 1Pe_3:22. Steiger.
c. πορευθείς in point of time immediately follows θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι and denotes an actual going away. These considerations abundantly refute explanations like that of Grotius, which we give as a sample of theological finessing: “Adjungere voluit Petrus similitudinem a temporibus Noe, ut ostendat quanta res nunc melius per Christum quam tunc per Noen processerit.”
We now pass on to the second class of interpretations, viz.:
II. Christ preached immediately in the realms of the dead.
I. To the good. Marcion. (Irenæus I. 24, 27, cf. Walch, Hist. d. Ketzer. I. 512; Neander, Ch. Hist. I. p. 799), held that Christ then set at liberty those whom the Old Testament describes as ungodly, but whom he (Marcion) maintained to be better than the believers of the Old Covenant, who had to stay behind in hell. The Apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus asserts the same concerning the truly good (see Birch’s Auctarium, p. 109, 147, cf. Matthæi p. 200, and Euseb. H. E. I.). Irenæus (I 3:27, 2; 3:31, 1), taught that Christ announced to the pious (the patriarchs and others), the redemption He had purchased, in order to bring them into the heavenly kingdom, (cf. Just. Mart. Dial c. Tryph. p. 298). This is substantially the view of Tertullian (de Anima. 7, 55), Hippolytus (de Antichr. c. 26), Isidorus (Sent. I. 16, 15) Gregory the Great and the Greek Church, Petr, Mogilae, Conf. Eccl. Gr. Orth. I. 49, etc.; Joh. Damasc, de Orth. fide III. 26), the Schoolmen (Anselm, Albertus, Thom. Aquin.), Zwingle and Calvin, Zwingle (Fidei Chr. Expos, art. de. Chr. VII.) says: “It is to be believed that He (Christ) departed from among men to be numbered with the inferi, and that the virtue of His redemption, reached also to them, which St. Peter intimates, when he says that to the dead, i. e., to those in the nether world, who, after the example of Noah, from the commencement of the world, have believed upon God, while the wicked despised His admonitions, the gospel was preached.” On doctrinal ground he defends his view by the position that no one could come to heaven before Christ (Joh_3:13) because He must have in all things pre-eminence (Col_1:18). (De vera et f. rel. art. de baptismo, p. 214, 29). Calvin interprets φυλακή by “specula sive ipse excubandi actus,” and describes the spirits in ψυλακή as “pias animas in spem salutis promisssæ intentas, quasi eminus eam considerarent.” Perceiving a difficulty in ἀπειθήσασί ποτε κ.τ.λ. he explains: “Quum increduli fuissent olim; quo significat, nihil nocuisse sanctis patribus, quod impiorum multitudine pæne obruti fuerint;” that as those believers sustained no injury to their souls from the multitude of believers that surrounded them, so also now believers are, through baptism, delivered from the world. The way in which he justifies his interpretation, sets forth views to which many, that now call themselves after the Genevan Reformer, are hardly prepared to subscribe: “Discrepat fateor, ab hoc sensu Græca syntaxis; debuerat enim Petrus, si hoc vellet, genitivum absolutum ponere. Sed quia apostolis novum non est liberius casum unum ponere alterius loco, et videmus Petrum hic confuse multas res simul coacervare, nee vero aliter aptus sensus elici poterat; non dubitavi ita resolvere orationem implicitam, quo intelligerent lectores, alios vocari incredulos, quam quibus prædicatum fuisse evangelium dixit.” To this class of interpreters Bp. Browne also belongs, who makes ἐκήρυξεν to signify proclaimed, and explains that Christ proclaimed to the patriarchs that their redemption had been fully effected, that Satan had been conquered, that the great sacrifice had been offered up, and asks, If angels joy over one sinner that repenteth, may we not suppose Paradise filled with rapture when the soul of Jesus came among the souls of redeemed, Himself the Herald (κήρυξ) of His own victory; Browne’s view is that of Horsley (Vol. I. Serm. 20), who favours, however, in language more decided than Browne’s, the view that Christ virtually preached to those “who had once been disobedient in the days of Noah.” The difficulty of ἀπειθήσασιν Browne supposes to be met by the consideration that many who died in the flood were, nevertheless, saved from final damnation, which he thinks highly probable. The real difficulty, in his opinion, “consists in the fact that the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of salvation, is represented by St. Peter as having been addressed to these antediluvian penitents, and as mention is made of the penitents of later ages, who are equally interested in the tidings.” We have already shown that ἐκήρυξεν cannot be diluted into a mere proclaiming or heralding forth, and we shall show, by and by, that the antediluvian sinners, not penitents, appear to be singled out because of the enormity of their wickedness, and that the fact of their being made the objects of Christ’s tender solicitude, seems to shed the light of heaven on one of the most bewildering subjects in irreligion.
The objections to this whole view, in its different modifications, are—
a. The text says nothing whatever of the good, but refers explicitly to the disobedient. All interpretations which ignore this distinct and explicit reference, are arbitrary, and substitute speculation for the language of inspiration.
b. The text says nothing whatever of the repentance of the contemporaries of Noah, nor does any other passage of Scripture give us any information to that effect. We must, therefore, conclude that the expedient which makes those antediluvians to have repented at the breaking in of the flood, however ingenious, amounts to simple assumption. (The last view is held by Suarez, Estius, Bellarmine, Luther on Hosea 4, 2, A. D. 1545, as quoted by Bengel, Peter Martyr, Osiander, Quistorp, Hutter, Gessner and Bengel. The latter says: “Probabile est nonnullos ex tanta multitudine, veniente pluvia, resipuisse: cumque non credidissent dum expectaret Deus, postea cum area structa esset et pœna ingrueret, credere cœpisse: quibus postea Christus, eorumque similibus, se præconem gratiæ praestiterit.” Browne also shares this view.)
II. 2. Christ preached in the realms of the dead to the good and the wicked. This is maintained by Athanasius, Ambrose, Erasmus, Calvin, Instit. 2, 16, 9. Christ’s preaching to the good is described as a “prædicatio evangelica ad consolationem,” to the wicked as a “prædicatio legalis, exprobatoria, damnatoria ad terrorem.” Bolton quotes the language of Abraham to Dives (Luke 16, 23 sq.) in support of this view, which is however, open to the same objections as II. 1. viz.: that Scripture is silent concerning the good.
II. 3. Christ preached in the realms of the dead to the wicked. Luther (Werke, Leipz. Vol. XII. p. 285) appears to favour this view when he says “that one could not reject this opinion, because that which St. Peter clearly affirms, etc.” Even under this head we have divergent opinions in connection with the question whether Christ manifested himself to the disobedient as Redeemer or as Judge.
Flacius, Calov, Buddeus, Wolf, Aretius, al., make the burden of Christ’s preaching an announcement of condemnation. Hollaz (quoted by Huther) says: “Fuit prædicatio Christi in inferno non evangelica quæ hominibus tantum in regno gratiæ annunciatur, sed legalis, elenchtica, terribilis, eaque tum verbalis, qua ipsos æterna supplicia promeritos esse convincit, tum realis immanem terrorem iis incussit.” Against this view, it may be said—
a. That κηρύσσειν, as already stated, used of Christ and the Apostles, does not admit of such a sense, but uniformly signifies to preach the Gospel;
b. That such damnatory preaching, besides being utterly superfluous in the case of spirits already reserved to condemnation (Alford) is derogatory to the character of the Redeemer; Christian consciousness revolts from the thought that the holy Jesus, whose dying words were words of forgiveness and love, should have visited the realms of the dead and exulted over the misery of the damned, and publishing His triumph, have intensified their torments and made hell more of hell to them;
c. That the context forbids such a view, “As if Peter would console the faithful with the arguments, that Christ, even when dead, underwent suffering on behalf of those unbelievers” (Calvin); for it must be borne in mind that the whole passage, of which these much controverted verses form part, is designed to show how the sufferings of Christ minister to the consolation of believers, (cf. Wiesinger, p. 241.)
We come now to the only remaining view, according to which Christ visited the realms of the dead and preached there the Gospel to the dead. This is the explicit declaration of the Apostle, who says nothing, however, of the effect of His preaching, whether many, few, or any, were converted by it. It is necessary to start with this caution, because the disregard of it has led many expositors, especially among the fathers, to unwarranted conclusions. E. g., Clement of Alexandria, says: “Wherefore, that He might bring them to repentance, the Lord preached also to those in Hades. But what, do not the Scriptures declare, that the Lord has preached to those that perished in the deluge, and not to these only, but to all that are in chains, and that are kept in the ward and prison-house of Hades;” adding, that while Christ preached only to those of the Old Testament, the Apostles, after His example, must have preached there, and that, also to the heathen, but both only to the good, “to those that lived in the righteousness which was agreeable to the law and philosophy, yet still were not perfect, but passed through life under many short-comings.” Origen (on 1 Kings 28. Hom. 2) adds to this, that the prophets had also been there, in order to announce beforehand the arrival of Christ, but confines the number of the delivered also to those who, before death, had been prepared for it. This view seems to have generally spread through the Eastern Church. (See Steiger, p. 225.) These, and similar opinions, cannot be taken as interpretations, for they superadd inferences which are not warranted by the language of St. Peter, who declares that Christ preached the Gospel in Hades to the unbelieving contemporaries of Noah; nothing more, nothing less.
It has been shown above that Hades denotes the place of the departed, and consists of two separate regions, kept asunder by an impassable gulf. As we know from our Lord’s promise to the penitent thief, that He went on the day of His crucifixion to Paradise, so we learn from St. Peter that He preached to the spirits in prison, and that these disembodied prisoners were those of men who were disobedient in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing.
The word φυλακή cannot be rendered otherwise than prison. Cf. Mat_5:25; Luk_14:3; Luk_18:30; Luke 25:36, 39, 43, 44; Mar_6:17; Mar_6:27; Luk_3:20; Luk_12:58; Luk_21:12; Luk_22:33; Luk_23:19; Joh_3:24; Act_5:19; Act_12:4 and in 13 other places; 2Co_6:5; 2Co_11:23; Heb_11:36; Rev_2:10
The word ἐκήρυξεν has been shown to signify “preached the gospel.” It has this sense in the following passages: Mat_3:1; Mat_4:17; Mat_10:7; Mat_10:27; Mat_11:1; Mar_1:7; Mar_1:38-39; Mar_3:14; Mar_5:20; Mar_16:20; Luk_4:44; Rom_10:14; 1Co_9:27; 1Co_15:11; and was thus understood by Irenæus (4, 37, 2, p. 347, ed Grabe.) “Dominum in ea quæsunt sub terra descendisse evangelizantem adventum suum.” (Clemens Alex. Strom. 6, 6, ὁ κύριος δἰ οὐδὲν ἔτερον ἐς ᾄδου κατῆλθεν, ἤ διὰ τὸ εὐαγγελίσασθαι. So Cyril Alex, on Joh_16:16, and in Hom. Pasch. 20.)
In concluding this Excursus, it is important to observe that the Apostle teaches nothing that bears any resemblance to the Popish notion of purgatory, since hades and purgatory are two distinct conceptions, the one being the abode of all the departed, the other a supposed place of purification for a particular class of Christians; nor does he teach universal recovery; nor does he intimate any thing in favour of a second probation after death. In addition to this caution, the reader is referred to the capital note of Rev. Dr. Schaff on Matthew XII. 32. pp. 228, 229.
Footnotes:
[49]1Pe_3:18. [ὅτι, because, German ‘dieweil,’ better than for; it is not, as Alford puts it, a reason, but the reason, why Christian suffering for well-doing is blessed,—M.]
[50]1Pe_3:18. [καὶ Χῥιστὸς ἅπαξ περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἔπαθεν, translate: “Christ also suffered for sins once.”—M.]
[51]1Pe_3:18. [δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων=a just person for unjust persons.—M.]
[52]1Pe_3:18. [θανατωθεὶς, Aor. put to death.—M.]
[53]1Pe_3:18. [ζωοποιηθεὶς, Aor. made alive.—M.]
[54]1Pe_3:18. [Both σαρκί and πνεύματι, are in the Dative without any preposition: the change of prepositions in the English version is peculiarly unhappy, as obscuring the sense; σαρκί and πνεύματι, are put in antithesis by the regular μὲν and δὲ; translate: “put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” The German has “after the flesh” and “after the spirit.”—τῷ before πνεύματι is omitted in A. B. C. K. L. and Cod. Sin.—M.]
[55]1Pe_3:19. [ἐν ᾦ=not by but in which, so German.—M.]
[56]1Pe_3:20. [ποτὲ ὅτε; translate: “Which were disobedient once (ποτὲ) when (ὅτε) the long-suffering of God, etc.”—M.]
[57]1Pe_3:20. [κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ=the ark was being prepared.—M.]
[58]1Pe_3:20. [εἰς ἣν ὀλίγαι=in which a few persons. The construction of εἰς ἣν is pregnant, the few being saved in it after having entered into it. A. B. sustain ὀλίγοι; so does Cod. Sin.—M.]
[59]1Pe_3:21. [ὃ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀντίτυπον νῦν σώζει βάπτισμα. Translate: “Which (the water), as the antitype (de Wette) or ‘in the antitype’ (Germ. Polygl.) is now saving us even (as or in) baptism.” ἡμᾶς, Rec. C. K. L. Sinait. ὑμᾶς, A. B. with many versions. σώζει, Present, the action not yet completed.—M.]
[60]1Pe_3:21. [ὃ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀντίτυπον νῦν σώζει βάπτισμα. Translate: “Which (the water), as the antitype (de Wette) or ‘in the antitype’ (Germ. Polygl.) is now saving us even (as or in) baptism.” ἡμᾶς, Rec. C. K. L. Sinait. ὑμᾶς, A. B. with many versions. σώζει, Present, the action not yet completed.—M.]
[61]1Pe_3:21. [“Not putting-away (subst.) the filth of the flesh.”—M.]
[62]1Pe_3:21. [“But ἐπερώτημα, inquiry (Vulgate, de Wette, Alford) of a good conscience after God.” See note below, in Exeg. and Critic.—M.]
[63]1Pe_3:21. [διὰ, by means of.—M.]
[64]1Pe_3:22. [Translate: “Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven.” The Vulgate adds after Θεοῦ deglutiens mortem, ut vitæ æternæ hærnæ efficeremur.—M.]
[65]1Pe_3:22. [ὑποταγέντων=being subjected.—M.]
[66] Bullinger:—Hic est fructus passionis dominicæ, quod fugitivos reducit ad Patrem, et perditos in ædes beatas.
[67]“Ut nos qui abalienati fueramus, ipse abiens ad Patrem secum una, justificatos, adduceret in cœlum, 1Pe_3:22, per eosdem gradus, quos ipse emensus est, exinanitionis et exaltationis. Ex hoc verbo Petrus, usque ad c. i1Peter 1Pe_3:6, penitus connectit Christi et fidelium iter sive processum (quo etiam ipse sequebatur Dominum ex ejus prædictione, Joh_13:36) infidelitatem multorum et pœnam innectens.“
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv18, 20 Confirmation of Pe1 3:17, by the glorious results of…
Confirmation of Pe1 3:17, by the glorious results of Christ's suffering innocently.
For--"Because." That is "better," Pe1 3:17, means of which we are rendered more like to Christ in death and in life; for His death brought the best issue to Himself and to us [BENGEL].
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Christ--the Anointed Holy One of God; the Holy suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust.
also--as well as yourselves (Pe1 3:17). Compare Pe1 2:21; there His suffering was brought forward as an example to us; here, as a proof of the blessedness of suffering for well-doing.
once--for all; never again to suffer. It is "better" for us also once to suffer with Christ, than for ever without Christ We now are suffering our "once"; it will soon be a thing of the past; a bright consolation to the tried.
for sins--as though He had Himself committed them. He exposed Himself to death by His "confession," even as we are called on to "give an answer to him that asketh a reason of our hope." This was "well-doing" in its highest manifestation. As He suffered, "The Just," so we ought willingly to suffer, for righteousness' sake (Pe1 3:14; compare Pe1 3:12, Pe1 3:17).
that he might bring us to God--together with Himself in His ascension to the right hand of God (Pe1 3:22). He brings us, "the unjust," justified together with Him into heaven. So the result of Christ's death is His drawing men to Him; spiritually now, in our having access into the Holiest, opened by Christ's ascension; literally hereafter. "Bring us," moreover, by the same steps of humiliation and exaltation through which He Himself passed. The several steps of Christ's progress from lowliness to glory are trodden over again by His people in virtue of their oneness with Him (Pe1 4:1-3). "To God," is Greek dative (not the preposition and case), implying that God wishes it [BENGEL].
put to death--the means of His bringing us to God.
in the flesh--that is, in respect to the life of flesh and blood.
quickened by the Spirit--The oldest manuscripts omit the Greek article. Translate with the preposition "in," as the antithesis to the previous "in the flesh" requires, "IN spirit," that is, in respect to His Spirit. "Put to death" in the former mode of life; "quickened" in the other. Not that His Spirit ever died and was quickened, or made alive again, but whereas He had lived after the manner of mortal men in the flesh, He began to live a spiritual "resurrection" (Pe1 3:21) life, whereby He has the power to bring us to God. Two ways of explaining Pe1 3:18-19, are open to us: (1) "Quickened in Spirit," that is, immediately on His release from the "flesh," the energy of His undying spirit-life was "quickened" by God the Father, into new modes of action, namely, "in the Spirit He went down (as subsequently He went up to heaven, Pe1 3:22, the same Greek verb) and heralded [not salvation, as ALFORD, contrary to Scripture, which everywhere represents man's state, whether saved or lost, after death irreversible. Nor is any mention made of the conversion of the spirits in prison. See on Pe1 3:20. Nor is the phrase here 'preached the Gospel' (evangelizo), but 'heralded' (ekeruxe) or 'preached'; but simply made the announcement of His finished work; so the same Greek in Mar 1:45, 'publish,' confirming Enoch and Noah's testimony, and thereby declaring the virtual condemnation of their unbelief, and the salvation of Noah and believers; a sample of the similar opposite effects of the same work on all unbelievers, and believers, respectively; also a consolation to those whom Peter addresses, in their sufferings at the hands of unbelievers; specially selected for the sake of 'baptism,' its 'antitype' (Pe1 3:21), which, as a seal, marks believers as separated from the rest of the doomed world] to the spirits (His Spirit speaking to the spirits) in prison (in Hades or Sheol, awaiting the judgment, Pe2 2:4), which were of old disobedient when," &c. (2) The strongest point in favor of (1) is the position of "sometime," that is, of old, connected with "disobedient"; whereas if the preaching or announcing were a thing long past, we should expect "sometime," or of old, to be joined to "went and preached." But this transposition may express that their disobedience preceded His preaching. The Greek participle expresses the reason of His preaching, "inasmuch as they were sometime disobedient" (compare Pe1 4:6). Also "went" seems to mean a personal going, as in Pe1 3:22, not merely in spirit. But see the answer below. The objections are "quickened" must refer to Christ's body (compare Pe1 3:21, end), for as His Spirit never ceased to live, it cannot be said to be "quickened." Compare Joh 5:21; Rom 8:11, and other passages, where "quicken" is used of the bodily resurrection. Also, not His Spirit, but His soul, went to Hades. His Spirit was commended by Him at death to His Father, and was thereupon "in Paradise." The theory--(1) would thus require that His descent to the spirits in prison should be after His resurrection! Compare Eph 4:9-10, which makes the descent precede the ascent. Also Scripture elsewhere is silent about such a heralding, though possibly Christ's death had immediate effects on the state of both the godly and the ungodly in Hades: the souls of the godly heretofore in comparative confinement, perhaps then having been, as some Fathers thought, translated to God's immediate and heavenly presence; but this cannot be proved from Scripture. Compare however, Joh 3:13; Col 1:18. Prison is always used in a bad sense in Scripture. "Paradise" and "Abraham's bosom," the abode of good spirits in Old Testament times, are separated by a wide gulf from Hell or Hades, and cannot be called "prison." Compare Co2 12:2, Co2 12:4, where "paradise" and the "third heaven" correspond. Also, why should the antediluvian unbelievers in particular be selected as the objects of His preaching in Hades? Therefore explain: "Quickened in spirit, in which (as distinguished from in person; the words "in which," that is, in spirit, expressly obviating the objection that "went" implies a personal going) He went (in the person of Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," Pe2 2:5 : ALFORD'S own Note, Eph 2:17, is the best reply to his argument from "went" that a local going to Hades in person is meant. As "He CAME and preached peace" by His Spirit in the apostles and ministers after His death and ascension: so before His incarnation He preached in Spirit through Noah to the antediluvians, Joh 14:18, Joh 14:28; Act 26:23. "Christ should show," literally, "announce light to the Gentiles") and preached unto the spirits in prison, that is, the antediluvians, whose bodies indeed seemed free, but their spirits were in prison, shut up in the earth as one great condemned cell (exactly parallel to Isa 24:22-23 "upon the earth . . . they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison," &c. [just as the fallen angels are judicially regarded as "in chains of darkness," though for a time now at large on the earth, Pe1 2:4], where Pe1 3:18 has a plain allusion to the flood, "the windows from on high are open," compare Gen 7:11); from this prison the only way of escape was that preached by Christ in Noah. Christ, who in our times came in the flesh, in the days of Noah preached in Spirit by Noah to the spirits then in prison (Isa 61:1, end, "the Spirit of the Lord God hath sent me to proclaim the opening of the prison to them that are bound"). So in Pe1 1:11, "the Spirit of Christ" is said to have testified in the prophets. As Christ suffered even to death by enemies, and was afterwards quickened in virtue of His "Spirit" (or divine nature, Rom 1:3-4; Co1 15:45), which henceforth acted in its full energy, the first result of which was the raising of His body (Pe1 3:21, end) from the prison of the grave and His soul from Hades; so the same Spirit of Christ enabled Noah, amidst reproach and trials, to preach to the disobedient spirits fast bound in wrath. That Spirit in you can enable you also to suffer patiently now, looking for the resurrection deliverance.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18. Christ also—As well as yourselves.
18. Christ also—As well as yourselves.
Once—Once for all; perhaps also intimating that their suffering might be in like manner, once, or at least that soon they would look back upon it in that light.
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Suffered—On the cross, freely, voluntarily, doing the will of God, and for no fault of his own.
For sins—On account of, or in relation to, sins, that is, in expiation of them. The preposition περι, for, radically signifies around, in the relation of circumference to centre, the action being from above. (See Curtius, 466, 5.) It represents Christ throwing himself down upon and around sins in such a manner that the falling curse of the broken law would surely strike him. In the Septuagint, περι αμαρτιων is used more than sixty times to represent sin-offerings. Its use here shows that Christ made atonement for sins, by suffering in the stead of those for whom he offered himself a sacrifice.
The just—Rather, A just person for unjust persons; one righteous man for a world of the unrighteous. The terms just and unjust express a relation to law, and are exact opposites. Christ, the innocent and guiltless, died as a condemned criminal in the stead of the wicked and guilty. The preposition υπερ, here rendered for, is used to represent a bending over one to protect, defend, and avert injury. (Winer, 47, 5, 50.) Christ did this by letting the injury fall upon himself, interposing between the stroke of justice and the sinner, and receiving in his own person, in the stead of the guilty, a suffering on account of sin. This, surely, was most blessed suffering in well doing; and his followers may well take courage to suffer patiently in his cause. But a still more glorious view is presented, showing the intent of this suffering.
That he might bring us to God— Does this mean that he might bring us, after the final judgment, together with himself into heaven? Or, that he might bring us into a state of reconciliation and communion with God in this world? Dean Alford, quoting Bengel, adopts the former view, as though it were the only possible one; and it evidently accords with his interpretation of what follows. It is true that Christ will bring all saved souls to heaven; but it does not seem to be taught here. We prefer the second view, as bringing the death of Christ into close connexion with its results, as in 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_1:21; 1Pe_2:24; Col_1:21, and elsewhere. It also precisely accords with the use of the noun προσαγωγη, access, in Rom_5:2; Eph_2:18; Eph_3:12; and, further, sustains the parallel in 1Pe_2:21. Indeed, it is what our Lord said, (Joh_12:32,) that if he were lifted up he would draw all unto himself.
Being put to death—Aorist: Having been put to death. The participles θανατωθεις and ζωοποιηθεις are connected with bring us to God, as explanatory of the means whereby we, unjust, alienated, and afar off, are brought into peace with him. Besides the antithesis between them, there is another between σαρκι and πνευματι. The clause literally reads, put to death indeed in flesh, but quickened in, or by, spirit. As to put to death, there is no difficulty.
Flesh—If this word means Christ’s body, then spirit must mean his human spirit, which, as we shall see, the word quickened will not allow; yet the assumption that as only the body died, σαρξ must perforce signify body, has led to the wildest vagaries in both interpretation and theology. The word is a common one to designate our Lord’s entire humanity, embracing both body and soul. “The Word was made flesh.” Joh_1:14. “Of his loins according to the flesh.” Act_2:30. “Of the seed of David according to the flesh.” Rom_1:3. “In the likeness of sinful flesh.”
Rom_8:3. “God was manifest in the flesh.” 1Ti_3:16. “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” 2Jn_1:7. Compare Joh_17:2; Act_2:17; Rom_3:20; Eph_2:15; 1Pe_1:24; 1Jn_4:2, for a similar use of the word. Christ was put to death as a man. Death dealt with him as with any other man, separating, in the usual way, the soul from the body, and subjecting him to all the conditions of dying. No reason appears, therefore, for a specific statement that he died in his body, leaving as true in his special case the universal fact that the spirit did not die. The meaning, then, is, he was put to death in his human nature.
Quickened—The word so translated is used in eleven other places in the New Testament. In seven, Joh_5:21, (twice;) Rom_4:17; Rom_8:11; 1Co_15:22; 1Co_15:36; 1Co_15:45, it refers to the resurrection of the dead; in three, Joh_6:63; 2Co_3:6; Gal_3:21, to giving spiritual life; and once, 1Ti_6:13, to God as the life-giver. In every case it means to make alive, to give life where it before had ceased to be, or had not been, which, indeed, is the exact signification of the word. Those expositors who understand by πνευμα the human spirit, are compelled here to invent new definitions for this word. Some, like Steiger and Bloomfield, understand preserved alive, which the word never means; and which would only make St. Peter record a fact common to all who die, as a singular phenomenon in the case of Christ. Wordsworth says, “His human spirit, being liberated by death from the burden of the flesh, acquired new life by death; it gained new powers of motion,” etc. This is undoubtedly true, and no less universally true of all souls on their escape from the body; but the word never means an increase of life where life already exists. Alford correctly insists that the word means “brought to life;” but he explains, Christ “ceased to live a fleshly mortal life, began to live a spiritual resurrection life,” which, true enough as to the first half, has no foundation in fact for the second half until the morning of the third day. The plain and necessary meaning of quickened is, that something pertaining to our Lord, which had once lived, was restored to life, or that something that had never lived was brought into being and connected with him. Of the latter we have no intimation, and the former was realized in his resurrection from the dead. Any other meaning destroys the antithesis.
The Spirit—This refers (1) to our Lord’s human spirit, (2) to the Holy Spirit, or (3) to his divine nature. As to the first, the human spirit of Christ had not died; it, therefore, was, not made alive. Doubtless on its emancipation from the body by death it became more free and untrammelled; but neither this nor any supposed change in the mode or sphere of its existence fulfils the condition required in made alive. It follows that spirit is not the object of the participle quickened. Nor had Christ’s human spirit any power to raise him from the dead, which, as we have seen, quickened signifies. (2.)
It would not be dogmatically erroneous to understand the word of the Holy Spirit, although no express passage ascribes the resurrection of Christ to him. For, though God raised him from the dead, it is a well-known truth that God’s works are wrought by the Holy Ghost; and we are taught that Christ “cast out devils by the Spirit of God,” (Mat_12:28;) gave “commandments unto the apostles through the Holy Ghost,” (Act_1:2;) and by his Spirit inspired the prophets, chap. 1Pe_1:11. But, (3.) we prefer to understand Christ’s divine nature, partly because it fills out the contrast, and partly because whatever is done by the Holy Spirit is in reality his work. Thus he will raise believers at the last day, (Joh_6:40; Joh_6:44; Joh_6:54;) but St. Paul teaches that it will be done by the indwelling Holy Spirit in them. Rom_8:11. This rounds out the double antithesis: put to death indeed as to his human nature, but made alive by his divine nature. It is urged, (as in Lange,) as a grammatical objection to this view, that the two datives are evidently parallel, and must have the same sense. The reply is, that this is a begging of the whole question that compels quickened to take a meaning which it never has; and that the true rule is, that the force of the datives is fixed by the meaning of the two participles. The resurrection is referred to again in 1Pe_3:21, but in another connexion and for another purpose, namely, to show how baptism saves; and, besides, it is too remote for the present inquiry as to how the suffering of Christ brings us to God. Our Lord was put to death, and thus made atonement, but his dying simply expiated sin. As God-man he was dead; and, though his human soul still lived in union with his divine nature, while held in the bonds of death he was powerless to apply the benefits of his dying. By his resurrection he became “Lord both of the dead and living,” (Rom_14:9,) and won that power. An exact parallel is, “Was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” Rom_4:25. Thus St. Peter and St. Paul agree.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins]…
18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins] As in the previous chapter (1Pe_2:21-25), so here, the Apostle cannot think of any righteous sufferer needing comfort without thinking also of the righteous Sufferer whom he had known. And here also, as there, though he begins with thinking of Him as an example, he cannot rest in that thought, but passes almost immediately to the higher aspects of that work as sacrificial and atoning. Every word that follows is full of significance—“Christ suffered” (better than “hath suffered,” as representing the sufferings as belonging entirely to the past), once and once for all. The closeness of the parallelism with Heb_9:26-28 might almost suggest the inference that St Peter was acquainted with that Epistle, but it admits also of the more probable explanation that both writers represent the current teaching of the Apostolic Church. The precise Greek phrase “for sins” (literally, “concerning, or on account of, sins”) is used in Heb_10:6; Heb_10:8; Heb_10:18; Heb_10:26, and in the LXX. of Psa_40:6, and was almost the technical phrase of the Levitical Code (Lev_4:33).
the just for the unjust] The preposition in this case means “on behalf of,” and is that used of the efficacy of Christ’s sufferings in Mar_14:24, Joh_6:51, 1Co_5:7, 1Ti_2:6. It is used also of our sufferings for Christ (Php_1:29), or for our brother men (Eph_3:1; Eph_3:13), and therefore does not by itself express the vicarious character of the death of Christ, though it naturally runs up into it. In the emphatic description of Christ as “the Just,” we have an echo of St Peter’s own words in Act_3:14; in the stress laid on the fact that He, the just, died for the unjust, a like echo of the teaching of St Paul in Rom_5:6.
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that he might bring us to God] This, then, from St Peter’s point of view, and not a mere exemption from an infinite penalty, was the end contemplated in the death of Christ. “Access to God,” the right to come boldly to the throne of grace (Heb_4:16), was with him as with St Paul (Rom_5:2; Eph_2:18; Eph_3:12), the final cause of the redemptive work. The verb, it may be noted, is not used elsewhere in this connexion in the New Testament.
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit] The change of the preposition and the mode of printing “Spirit” both shew that the translators took the second clause as referring to the Holy Spirit, as quickening the human body of Christ in His resurrection from the dead. The carefully balanced contrast between the two clauses shews, however, that this cannot be the meaning, and that we have here an antithesis, like that of Rom_1:3-4, between the “flesh” and the human “spirit” of the man Christ Jesus, like that between the “manifest in the flesh” and “justified in the spirit” of 1Ti_3:16. By the “flesh” He was subject to the law of death, but in the very act of dying, His “spirit” was quickened, even prior to the resurrection of His body, into a fresh energy and activity. What was the sphere and what the result of that activity, the next verse informs us.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–20 (18) For Christ also.—This gives a reason for thinking…
(18) For Christ also.—This gives a reason for thinking it no such formidable thing to suffer when one is innocent. It has been tried before, and the precedent is encouraging. “It is,” says Archbishop Leighton, “some known ease to the mind, in any distress, to look upon examples of the like or greater distress in present or former times . . . As the example and company of the saints in suffering is very considerable, so that of Christ is more than any other, yea, than all the rest together.” If King Messiah (note that he does not call Him Jesus) could endure to be cut off (but not for Himself), was it for any one who clung to the promises to shrink from the like test?
Hath once suffered.—Even if we retain the verb, it should be suffered, not “hath suffered,” it is all past now; but much the better reading is died, which leaves no doubt about the meaning of “suffering” in 1Pe_3:17. And this He did “once.” In this significant word St. Peter strikes out the main argument of a great portion of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb_7:27; Heb_9:27; Heb_10:10). The thought that Christ suffered or died “once” conveys comfort to these Christians for several reasons: (1) because His death has, once for all, taken all terror from an innocent death; (2) because no Christian will have to die more than one death; (3) because one death, so soon over for ever, contains the further idea of happiness and peace beyond. The word “to die” in Greek is often used in a penal sense—“to be put to death”—and is to be so taken here.
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For sins.—When the Apostle says “Christ also,” he raises a comparison between Christ and the Christian martyr. Now the parallel does not merely consist in the fact that both “suffer” or are put to death. Both are put to death but once. Both are put to death innocent: the martyr “while well-doing,” Christ acknowledged to be “just.” But this does not exhaust the likeness. The Messiah is said to be put to death “for sins.” Now this expression “for sins” (literally, in connection with sins) is that which is used to mean “as a sin-offering.” (See Rom_8:3; Gal_1:4; Heb_10:6; Heb_10:8; Heb_10:18; Heb_10:26; Heb_13:11; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:10.) If, therefore, “Christ also was put to death as a sin-offering,” it is implied that, in a sense, the Christian martyr is also a sin-offering, and (though in an infinitely lower degree) dies, like Him, “just for unjust.” This is a fresh encouragement to St. Peter’s first readers to meet death bravely. In what sense they can be sacrifices for other men’s sins we shall consider presently.
The just for the unjust.—That preposition “for” contains a volume of theology. Though it is not so weak a word as the one which occurs in the phrase “for sins,” it does not express the notion of substitution. (Comp. Note on 1Pe_2:21.) It is simply “on behalf of.” As a substitute for the unjust, we make bold to say that (according to Holy Scripture, and the primitive fathers, and the conscience of man) neither the martyrs nor Christ Himself could have made atonement; “on behalf of” other men, the martyrs could very easily be said to die. It is, perhaps, a pity that the definite article has been inserted in our version. Though, of course, our Lord is the only human being who can in strictness be called just, St. Peter means the word here to cover others besides Him; “Christ also died, a just man on behalf of unjust men.”
That he might bring us to God.—Or, better, bring you; though it cannot be stated peremptorily in this case that such is the reading. (See Note on 1Pe_1:12.) The substantive derived from this verb appears as “access” in Rom_5:2; Eph_2:18; Eph_3:12. A most important doctrinal passage. St. Peter says not a word about the Atonement in its effect upon the mind of the Father towards man. Though there is, no doubt, some deep truth in the phrase which occurs in the second of the Thirty-nine Articles—“suffered . . . to reconcile His Father to us”—it is a side on which the New Testament writers do not much dwell. It is too high a mystery for our minds to reach. The phrase is itself not Scriptural. The New Testament, as has been well pointed out, never even speaks of the reconciliation as mutual. The quarrel is treated as one-sided, so far, at least, as in connection with the Atonement. When, then, our Lord was put to death as a sacrifice for sins—a righteous man on behalf of unrighteous men—St. Peter explains these terms by the expression “in order that He might bring you to God,” not “in order that He might bring God to you.” The voluntary death of a righteous man upon the cross, in the calm calculation that nothing else would so attract sinful men to Himself, and thus to the Father who sent Him (Joh_12:32—this is the aspect of the Atonement which St. Peter sets forth. Perhaps on another occasion he might have set forth a different aspect; but now he is still thinking of the effect of Christian conduct upon the outer world, and his object is to make the Christians feel that they too can, in their measure, bring the unjust, the persecuting heathens and Jews, to God by innocent and voluntary deaths. Thus their deaths are carrying on the work of reconciliation; and what Christ did for them (“died for you”) they do for others. Well then may they be called blessed when they suffer (1Pe_3:14).
Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.—The interpreters of this sentence may be classified in two groups, according as they understand the fact referred to in the second clause to be (1) the resurrection of Christ, or (2) something which took place between His death and His resurrection. Now, if we could accept the translation in the English Bible, “by the Spirit,” it would be pretty obvious to accept (1); and we should point to such passages as Rom_1:4; Rom_8:11, to show that the resurrection of Christ was due to the action of the Holy Ghost. It would not be possible to follow Oecumenius, Calvin, Beza, and Leighton, in taking “the flesh” to mean generally the human nature of Christ, and “the Spirit” by which He was quickened to mean His own divine nature; for Christ has a human spirit as truly as a human body and soul, and it would be heresy to call His divine nature His spirit, as though it occupied in Him the position which is occupied in men by the human spirit. But, as a matter of fact, we cannot translate it “quickened by the Spirit.” It is literally, killed indeed in flesh, but quickened in spirit. Now, how can “quickened in spirit” be a description of the Resurrection? It cannot be answered (with Huther) that the “spirit” here means the resurrection body; for though that is indeed a spiritual body, yet it is playing fast and loose with words to identify “spirit” and “spiritual body.” If the resurrection body be only spirit, where is the resurrection? Neither would the antithesis be correct between “flesh” and “spirit,” if by “spirit” is meant the new form of body given at the Resurrection. Or, again, taking “spirit” in its true sense of the inward incorporeal self, could the Resurrection be described as a quickening of it? True, the spirit itself will gain in some way by its re-incorporation (2Co_5:4); but as the spirit has been alive all along, but the flesh has been dead, the contrast would be very forced to express death and resurrection by “killed in flesh, but quickened in spirit,” instead of saying rather “killed in flesh, but soon quickened in the same.” Thus we are driven to (2). As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the words to suggest an interval between the quickening and the killing. They both are parts of the same act, and both are used to explain the word “died.” It is a kind of apology for having used the word death at all (for we have seen that St. Peter’s object is to help the future martyrs to despise death, 1Pe_3:14): “Died, do I say? yes, killed in flesh, it is true, but actually quickened to fresh energies in spirit by that very act of death.” (Comp. our Lord’s charge to the Twelve, Mat_10:28.) But how can His death be said to have been a quickening of His human spirit? Some take the word to mean simply “preserved alive,” a word almost identical, being used apparently in that sense in Luk_17:33, Act_7:19. The notion, however, would be too weak here; some energetic action seems required to balance “being killed.” That St. Peter is speaking of something not altogether peculiar to Christ, but common to men, may still be inferred from his saying “Christ also.” The doctrine, then, seems to be (as Bengel and others say) that the spirit, set free from the body, immediately receives new life, as it were, thereby. To purely spiritual realities it becomes alive in a manner which was impossible while it was united to the flesh. The new powers are exemplified in what follows immediately. So long as Christ, so long as any man, is alive in the flesh, he cannot hold converse with spirits as such; but the moment death severs flesh and spirit the spirit can deal with other spirits, which Christ proceeded forth with to do.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv18–20 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins; rather,…
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins; rather, because Christ also once suffered. Two of the oldest manuscripts read died; " but "suffered" corresponds best with the previous verse. The connection is It must be better to suffer for well-doing, because Christ himself, the All-innocent One, thus suffered, and they who so suffer are made most like unto him. The apostle refers us again to that transcendent Example which was ever before his eyes. (compare the close parallel in Heb_9:26-28) Christ suffered once for all (apax); so the sufferings of the Christian are soon over" but for a moment." For sins (peri); concerning sins, on account of sins; he, himself sinless, suffered concerning the sins of others. The preposition peri is constantly used in connection with the sin offering in the Septuagint (seexousi) Lev_6:25, Sfa ta periav; comp. Lev_5:8-11, etc.; also. (Heb_10:6, Heb_10:8, Heb_10:18, Heb_10:26) The Just for the unjust; literally, just for unjust. There is no article. The apostle began to speak of the death of Christ, both here and in 1 Peter it., as an example; in both places he seems to be led on by an instinctive feeling that it is scarcely seemly for the Christian to mention that stupendous event without dwelling on its deeper and more mysterious meaning. The preposition used in this clause (uJper) does not necessarily convey the idea of vicarious suffering, as aJnti (Mat_20:28; Mar_10:45; comp. also 1Ti_2:6) does; it means simply "in behalf of," leaving the character of the relation undetermined; here the context implies the particular relation of substitution. (comp. Rom_5:6; also St. Peter"s description of our Lord as "the Just," in Act_3:14) That he might bring us to God. The Vatican and other manuscripts read "you." St. Peter opens out one of the deeper aspects of the death of Christ. The veil that hid the Holiest was then rent in twain, and believers were invited and encouraged to draw near into the immediate presence of God. The verb used here is prosagein; the corresponding substantive (prosagwgh) occurs in Eph_2:18 Eph_3:12; also inmati Rom_5:2. In those places it is rendered "access we have access to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ. Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. The Greeks words are, Qanatwqeiv men sarki zwopoihqeiv demati, the article tw inserted before pneu in the received text being without authority. We observe the absence of any article or preposition, and the exact balance and correspondence of the two clauses. The two datives must be taken in the same sense; it is impossible to regard one as the dative of the sphere, and the other as the dative of the instrument; both are evidently datives of "the sphere to which a general predicate is to be limited" (Winer, 31:6. a); they limit the extent of the participles. (comp. 1Co_7:35; Col_2:5) Thus the literal translation is, "Being put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit." For the antithesis of "flesh" and "spirit," common in the New Testament, comp. Rom_1:3, Rom_1:4, "Made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness;" and 1Ti_3:16, "Manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit;" see especially the close parallel in 1Pe_4:6, "That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." It seems to follow, from the opposition of flesh and spirit, and from a comparison of the passages quoted above, that by pneuma in this verse we are to understand, not God the Holy Ghost, but the holy human spirit of Christ. In his flesh he was put to death, but in his spirit he was quickened. When the Lord had said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;" when he bowed his head, and gave up the spirit; then that spirit passed into a new life. So Bengel excellently says, "Christus, vitam in semet ipso habens, et ipse vita, spiritu vivere neque desiit, neque iterum coepit; sed simulatque per mortificationem involucre infirmitatis in carne solutus erat, statim vitae solvi nesciae virtus modis novis et multo expeditissimis sese exserere coepit." Christ, being delivered from the burden of that suffering flesh which he had graciously taken for our salvation, was quickened in his holy human spirit quickened to new energies, new and blessed activities. So it shall be with those who suffer for well-doing; they may even be put to death in the flesh, but "if we die with him, we shall also live with him." It is far better (pollw mallon kreisson) to depart and to be with Christ, to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. They that are Christ"s shall, like their Master, be quickened in the spirit; they pass at once into the new life of Paradise; their works follow them thither; it may be, we cannot tell, they will be employed in blessed work for Christ, being made like unto him not only in some degree during their earthly life, but also in the intermediate state of rest and hope.
Vers. 18-22.
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Consider Christ.
I His SUFFERINGS.
1. Their cause. Even he suffered. The universality of suffering is a common topic of consolation. "Man is born to trouble." But the thought of the suffering Savior is a source of sweeter comfort and holier patience. A great saint has said, "They feel not their own wounds who contemplate the wounds of Christ." He endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy that was set before him. If we, in our sufferings, look unto Jesus, sacred thoughts of his cross will fill our heart more and more, and prevent us from dwelling overmuch on our own afflictions. He is the transcendent Example of suffering for well-doing. But his death is unique; it stands alone in its unapproachable glory; it is surrounded with an atmosphere of awful and yet most blessed mystery. He is not simply a martyr for the truth; he suffered, indeed, for well-doing, but he suffered also on account of sins. Sin was the cause of his death, but not his sin; he was absolutely sinless. He was just, the Just One; but he gave himself in his wondrous love to suffer for the unjust, for their sake, in their behalf, that he might do them good. Their sin caused his death; if man had not sinned, there had been no need that the Son of God should die. The sin of the world was a burden that none but he could bear; he took it upon him. As the high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel on his shoulders and on his breast, so Christ the great High Priest bore the names of his chosen in his heart, and the tremendous burden of the world"s sin upon his innocent head. And this he did of his own free will, in his own generous love; we must think of him when we are called to suffer, especially when we suffer for well-doing.
1. Their purpose. It was "that he might bring us to God." Our sin had separated us from God; we were afar off from him. "But now hath he reconciled us by his cross, having slain the enmity thereby." He has suffered our punishment; therefore, if we are his, we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Apart from God there can be no holiness, no happiness, no true life. Separation from God means darkness, misery, spiritual death. Christ suffered that he might bring us to God; then we must follow him by the way which he trod, the way of the cross. He himself is the Way; and we can walk in that way only by imitating him; if,
2. then, we would come to the Father by the new and living Way, which is Christ himself, we must learn to imitate Christ, always in patient submission to the will of God, sometimes in patient suffering for the truth"s sake.
3. Their extent. Christ"s sufferings extended even unto death; they could reach no further. "He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." It was his own free act; he laid down his life of himself; none could take it from him. The heathen thought it a good omen when the victim came quietly to the altar. No victim ever came with such entire consent of will as the Lord Jesus Christ; for he knew with perfect foreknowledge all the circumstances of his bitter Passion, and at each moment of that long agony he submitted himself of his own will to the tortures inflicted by those poor weak creatures whom he might by one word have swept into utter death. He set us the example of obedience unto death. Let us learn of him. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life." The Lord was quickened in the spirit; so shall it be with his chosen. From the moment of death they are blessed; for they shall be with him in Paradise. From that moment they are quickened in the spirit; the spirit is filled with a new life, with new powers and energies; the life of departed saints is "far better" than this earthly life; indeed, they are absent from the body; they have not yet reached that perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul, which can be realized only in God"s everlasting glory; but they are with the Lord; they rest from the labors of this anxious, restless life; their works do follow them; they are quickened in the spirit to a new life of love and blessedness, and, it may be, of holy work for Christ. That work will be full of happiness; there will be no more suffering, no more weariness. The natural tendency of goodness is to produce happiness; those tendencies are marred and impeded here; there they will have their perfect work; perfected holiness will issue in perfected happiness.
II HIS WORK OF PREACHING.
1. The Preacher. It was the Lord himself, the Word of the Father. He is the Word: "God has spoken to us by his Son." He preaches the Word, the Word of eternal life. He preached all the years of his earthly ministry; and when his holy body lay in the grave, after he had been put to death in the flesh, still he preached in the spirit. The ministers of God"s holy Word and sacraments must]earn of the great Preacher; they must preach faithfully, diligently, for his sake, for the love of the souls whom he loved; they must count it not a labor, but a high and holy privilege, to preach the gospel of
2. salvation. He preached in the spirit; then we may be sure that the spirits and souls of the righteous do not sleep idly in the intermediate state. Even Dives in torment prayed for his five brethren; can we doubt but that departed saints pray still for those whom they loved on earth, for whom they were wont to pray? It is full of sweetness to believe that they still think of us; that they are witnesses (Heb_12:1) of our heavenward course; that they help us with their prayers; that as the number of the blessed who have died in the Lord increases in ever vaster multitude, so a fuller volume of prayer rises from Paradise up to the glory-throne. They pray, we may be sure; it may be (for St. Peter throughout this passage is speaking of Christ as our Example) they also spread the glad news of the gospel among the kingdoms of the dead.
3. The listeners. They too were absent from the body; but they were not in Paradise, on the happy sides of Hades; they were in prison. They were in some dreary place, apart from the souls of the blessed; for they had once been disobedient through unbelief. There had been a preacher among them then Noah, a preacher of righteousness;" but they heeded him not. They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the very day that Noah entered into the ark. Noah and his sons ate and drank too; but his main work was to preach righteousness, and to build the ark according to the word of God. Still God"s ministers preach; still the Church, which is the ark, bears witness to the mercy and long-suffering of God, and bids the world to escape from the wrath to come. And still, alas! vast multitudes live on in unbelief, eating and drinking and spending their whole time in worldly pursuits, as if eating and drinking were the end of life, as if this world with its vain pomp and glory were to abide for ever. So it was with these unhappy men; the long-suffering of God waited many years while the ark was a-preparing; as, blessed be his holy Name, it is waiting now till the number of his elect is complete. Then few only were saved; now, alas! it is the few who find the strait and narrow path. The "prison" must be the end of unbelief and disobedience; the word suggests fearful thoughts and dark unsatisfied questions. The Lord preached even there; he brought, we may be sure, the glad tidings of salvation: may we not venture to trust, in humble hope, that some who had not listened to Noah, the preacher of righteousness, listened then to Christ, the Preacher of salvation?
III THE BAPTISM WHICH HE ORDAINED.
1. The outward and visible sign. It is water wherein a person is baptized." Water once saved the world, water cleansed it from that wickedness which was bringing down the wrath of God; the world passed then through a baptism of water which was death unto sin, but a new birth unto righteousness; there was a new beginning, new possibilities, new hopes. And water saved the few that had entered into the ark; it bore up the ark, and saved those in it from the wrath of men and from the contagion of surrounding pollution. Yet one of those few brought upon himself his father"s curse. So baptism, the antitype of the water of the Flood, is now saving those who by it are admitted into the ark of Christ"s Church. It is saving us, for it is the beginning of our salvation, bringing us, as it does, into covenant with God. But it is only the beginning; still the Lord adds daily to the Church those who are being saved. (tounouv Act_2:47) But that salvation has to be worked out by the grace of God who worketh within his chosen.
2. The inward and spiritual grace. Ananias said to St. Paul, Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins." But mere outward washing cannot cleanse the soul. The conscience must be good, the heart must be sprinkled from an evil conscience. The inward and spiritual grace is a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness; the conscience will bear witness whether this, the inner meaning of our baptism, is realized in our life. Conscience, Leighton says, is God"s deputy in the soul: "Its business is to sit and examine and judge within; to hold courts in the soul.... Not a day ought to pass without a session of conscience within; for daily disorders arise in the soul, which, if they pass on, will grow and gather more, and so breed more difficulty in their trial and redress." The good conscience will inquire after God, will be ever seeking God. If we have not that good conscience, we are not abiding in the grace of our baptism, and then the holy sacrament ordained for our salvation loses its saving power.
3. The connection between them. Baptism becomes a means of grace through the appointment of the risen Savior. His people could not rise with him in baptism save through the power of his resurrection; that resurrection is the pledge of new life, new energies, new hopes, to all who are baptized in one Spirit into the one mystical body of Christ. He can give grace through the sacraments, for all power is given unto him; he is at the right hand of God, ever interceding for us, able to save us to the uttermost. There is no guardian, no helper, like unto him, for all the highest spiritual intelligences are made subject unto him; the elect angels are his ministers; he gives them charge over his chosen; the evil angels are under his control; he can restrain their malice, he can baffle their devices.
LESSONS.
1. Christ suffered in his flesh; let us take suffering patiently.
2. He suffered, "the Just for the unjust." Sometimes God"s holiest servants are called to the greatest suffering; they will not complain; they are being made, in their poor measure, like their Lord.
3. He suffered to bring us to God; let us come in faith and love and gratitude.
4. He preached to the spirits in prison; may we listen while we are in the flesh, on the earth!
5. Let us strive by his grace to realize the deep meaning of our baptism, the death unto sin, the new birth unto righteousness.
Sacrificial sufferings.
To Peter, the memory of his Lord"s Passion must have been peculiarly pathetic and peculiarly precious. He could not but connect the Master"s constancy with the servant"s unfaithfulness, and the servant"s penitence with the Master"s grace and pardoning favor. The woe he had witnessed could never be long absent from his recollection. And the bearing of Christ"s sufferings upon human redemption and upon Christian consecration must have constantly occurred to him when communicating Divine truth, and inspiring his fellow-believers to devotion and endurance. In this verse, compact with precious fact and doctrine, we have set before us
I THE FACT OF CHRIST"S SUFFERING.
II THE CHARACTER IN WHICH CHRIST SUFFERED. It is here that the mystery of the fact is to be found. The Sufferer was the Righteous One, blameless in character, upright in conduct, beneficent in ministry. Yet he suffered, notwithstanding all this. That the unrighteous should suffer, this appears to us natural; they eat of the fruit of their doings; they reap as they have sown. But in the agony and death of Jesus of Nazareth we see the undeserved sufferings of" the Holy One and the Just.
III THE PERSONS FOR WHOM CHRIST SUFFERED. This consideration increases the mystery and enhances the interest of the Passion of our Redeemer. At first sight it seems as though, if undeserved sufferings are to be endured, this must be at least on behalf of the virtuous, the meritorious, the pious. But it was otherwise, it was exactly contrary, with the sufferings of Christ. He died for the unrighteous, for those who had violated the laws of God and the laws of man!
IV THE CAUSE BY AND FOR WHICH CHRIST SUFFERED. He was brought to the cross by the sins of men; and it was on account of those sins that he deliberately and graciously consented to die. The connection between sin and suffering is obvious in God"s providential treatment of men; it is equally obvious in God"s merciful redemption of men by his Son Jesus Christ.
V THE INTENT AND AIM WITH WHICH CHRIST SUFFERED. Nothing more sublime in itself, or more welcome to the sinner"s ear, can be found than the statement in this verse of the purpose for which our Lord Jesus accepted the death of humiliation and shame it was "that he might bring us to God." Surely the simplest and yet the grandest statement of Immanuel"s voluntary and sacrificial death!
VI CHRIST"S SUFFERING OUR EXAMPLE AND MOTIVE. Let Christians see to it that, if they suffer, it be not for ill-doing, but (like their Lord) for well-doing. Such endurance may be wholesome discipline for them, and it may be the means of good to others. J.R.T.
Vers. 18-22.
The remembrance of our Lord"s atonement a help to persecuted Christians.
We omit for the present the clause in the nineteenth verse, and will consider that afterwards. "For Christ hath once suffered for sins," etc. The death of Christ is not only the purchase of our redemption, it is also the power by which we enter into what redemption means. Christ"s cross is not only the secret of pardon, but also of holiness. Christ alone will not avail us; it must be Christ crucified, every step of the way, till what has been the inspiration of our spiritual life down here, of every duty, every conflict, every joy, every hope, will be the inspiration of our song up there: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." Let us see how Christ"s sufferings bear on the conduct of his persecuted people.
I THE SUBSTITUTIONARY SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. "Christ hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
1. A plain statement of the substitutionary character of our Lord"s sacrifice. How does Christ save? By substitution. In that word is the explanation of our Lord"s sacrifice and of his sufferings; they were endured by him as our Substitute, in our stead. They were undoubtedly the expression of his perfect consecration to the Father, the great proof of his obedience; they were also the great revelation of God"s love and mercy to the sinful, of his yearning for the restoration of the lost; but they were this, without which they would have been in every other respect unavailing, they were the endurance in the stead of the sinner, of that which alone makes his righteous forgiveness possible. But it is said that Jesus was simply revealing what God was willing to bear for man"s redemption, and that it is by this revelation of love he saves us. That is not what Scripture says. "God made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him;" "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree or, "to the tree," and left them there." But, says another, Christ saves by his holy example, leading us to holiness, and not by his cruel sufferings. So far from that, the apostles, in their teaching, gave weight to the death of Christ as the world"s hope. "In him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins," "We are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ;" "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." Others say that this was a mere Jewish mode of expression; the apostles were only meeting Jewish prejudice when they spoke thus. But we
2. find they use the same words in writing to the Gentiles to the Churches at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, etc. It is also said that there is an element of injustice in the idea of substitution. Is it not unjust to inflict the punishment incurred by one on another who is innocent? But that is not the case here. Jesus was God this was God himself making the atonement necessary for our forgiveness by shedding his own blood.
3. The necessity for such a sacrifice is implied in its design. What was its design? "To bring to God," says the text. But there are two great obstacles to our coming back to God one on his part, and one on ours. How can he receive us sinners? How can we dare to come? How can God receive us? "Cannot I," says a father, "forgive my child just because I will?" No, you cannot, if, like the great Father, you have been compelled to declare what the penalty of transgression must be. That is God"s position. He can only forgive if he forgives righteously. How shall he do that? The substitution of Christ is the answer. Apart from that, how could we dare to go to him? Some say Christ saves by revealing God"s love, by alluring us to follow his example of self-sacrifice. If that is all the gospel you have for me, I am condemned the more; for I am conscious of the unutterable distance between what Jesus was and what I am. I dare not go to God, and I must pass into the unseen hopeless. But when we follow the meaning of these words, "Christ hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God," we can go hack to God then, and are welcomed for Christ"s sake.
II THE RESULT OF THIS TO HIMSELF.
1. Quickened spiritual power. "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." It should read, "in the spirit," not "by the Spirit." There is no reference here to the work of God the Spirit, to whom elsewhere the resurrection of Christ is attributed; it is here simply a contrast between Christ"s flesh and his spirit. His spirit did not die; it was raised by the death of the flesh into new energy, and he became able to do what before was impossible. He had often thought of this: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
2. Influence on spirits in prison. This subject we will leave for the present.
3. Ascension to heavenly authority. "Who is gone into heaven," etc. What see we now? "I looked, and behold in the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain." Redemption enthroned. All things required to glorify redemption. Devils restrained by the Redeemer"s will; angels his swill winged messengers; providences, his servants; history, the unfolding of his purpose; the kingdoms of this world become his kingdom; and he ever living to secure this glorious consummation. But this had been impossible apart from the atonement; it was only through the cross that Jesus changed the throne of heaven from that of almightiness and mercy to that of redemption.
III THE BEARING OF THIS ON PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS.
1. It sets forth Christs claim on our suffering for him. There surely is nothing like a remembrance of his cross to constrain us to take up ours.
2. It reminds the persecuted of the spiritual quickening that may come through the suffering. For what was true of Jesus is to be as true of us: "Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit." The storm which shakes us to the center sends our roots down deeper, mooring us the faster to the Rock of Ages. Suffering has a rare tendency to send us down to the foundation of things, a rare tendency to send us home to the Life of all, and closer contact with him means more life from him.
3. This points to the glorious end of the suffering of the saints. First the cross, then the crown. Jesus once suffered, then heaven and the right hand of God, and "angels and authorities and powers subject unto him. C.N.
Vers. 18-20.
The mission of our Savior.
I The CHARACTER Of the mission of the Savior.
1. His mission was one of suffering. He "suffered." Christianity is not the worship of sorrow, according to the cavil of some; but it is the worship of One who had much to do with sorrow, touched it at its every pore.
2. His mission was one of innocent suffering. Many suffer wrongfully, he absolutely innocently. "The Righteous.
3. His mission was one of vicarious suffering, "for," i.e. on account of, the unrighteous.
4. His mission was one unconquered by suffering. "Being put to death in the flesh, he was quickened in the spirit.
II The PURPOSE of the mission of the Savior. "That he might bring us to God." Implying:
1. We are away from God. Not
(1) locally, but in
(2) estrangement of heart. That is the "far country.
1. We can be restored to God. The great gulf is not fixed. The golden wind of the gospel is "reconciliation.
2. God himself brings us back by Christ. No mutual quarrel; God always pitiful. "Long suffering," etc. Guthrie well says, "The central truth of the Bible is not that God loves us because Christ died, but that Christ died because God loves.
III THE EXTENT OF THE INFLUENCE of the Savior"s mission. The literature of ver. 19 is a library. But apart from any confusion created by that literature, is it not clearly taught?
1. That Christ had a mission to disembodied spirits after his death. Killed in the flesh, in the spirit he triumphed, and in the spirit went on that wider, deeper mission.
2. His mission to disembodied spirits was in harmony with that of all his life. He "preached." Some read it, "He sealed with the curse of damnation." Is it not rather, as everywhere, "proclaimed repentance, pardon," "heralded love and mercy and hope"?
3. This mission was to disembodied spirits in a state or place of misery. "Prison." Some change the word to "Paradise." Dare we do that? It is rather the abode of the guilty, the disobedient, of whom the apostle gives a dark specimen (ver. 20). Dean Alford says, "This throws a blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of Divine justice." Yet mark, there is no light view of sin here. It is awful for spirits to be in prison, and in prison for twenty-four centuries. U.R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v18 Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
1Pe_3:18-20
Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
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The great atonement
I. The glorious person who suffered for sin and sinners.
II. The sufferings by which he made atonement for sin.
1. Sin was the procuring cause of them.
2. His human nature was the immediate subject of them.
3. They were the sufferings of a Divine person.
4. They were not imaginary but real.
5. The sufferings of Christ were necessary.
6. Vicarious.
7. Grievous.
8. Voluntary.
9. By them the justice of God was fully satisfied.
10. Though they are long since finished, they have the same merit and efficacy that ever they had.
III. The end of Christs sufferings.
1. How, or in what respects, sinners may be said to be brought to God. Their being brought to God-
(1) Implies their being brought into a state of reconciliation and favour with God.
(2) It implies their having access into the gracious presence of God.
(3) It implies their being admitted to communion and fellowship with God.
(4) Sinners are brought to God when they attain to likeness and conformity to God.
(5) Sinners may be said to be brought to God when they forsake the service of sin, and cordially engage in the service of God.
(6) Sinners are brought to God, in the fullest sense, when they are brought to the full enjoyment of Him in heaven.
2. What influence the sufferings of Christ for sin have on the bringing of sinners to God. By the sufferings of Christ all grounds of controversy between God and sinners were legally removed (Col_1:20). (D. Wilson.)
The sufferings of Christ
I. Their reality. Christ suffered from-
1. Privation.
2. Satanic hostility.
3. Unkindness.
4. Misunderstanding.
II. Their atoning nature.
1. The character of Christ.
2. The doctrine of substitution.
3. The solitariness of the sacrifice,
(1) Nothing more is needed.
(2) Nothing more will be given.
III. Their design. That He might bring us to God-
1. In penitential sorrow.
2. To obtain mercy and peace.
3. With entire self-surrender.
4. Unto Gods immediate presence.
Lessons:
1. There is hope and help for all.
2. Christ is the way of access to God. (M. Braithwaite.)
The saints coming home to God by reconciliation and glorification
The scope of the apostle in this place is to fortify Christians for a day of suffering. In order to their cheerful sustaining whereof, he prescribeth two excellent rules.
1. To get a good conscience within them (1Pe_3:16-17).
2. To set the example of Christs sufferings before them (1Pe_3:18). The sufferings of Christ for us is the great motive engaging Christians to suffer cheerfully for Him.
I. The sufficiency and fulness of Christs sufferings intimated in that particle [once]; Christ needs to suffer no more, having completed that whole work at once.
II. The meritorious cause of the sufferings of Christ, and that is sin, Christ once suffered for sins; not His own sins, but ours.
III. The admirable grace and unexampled love of Christ to us sinners. The just for the unjust; in which words the substitution of Christ in the place of sinners is plainly expressed. Christ died not only for our good, but also in our stead.
IV. The final cause or design of the sufferings of Christ. To bring us to God.
1. What Christs bringing us to God imports.
(1) That the chief happiness of man consisteth in the enjoyment of God: that the creature hath as necessary dependence upon God for happiness, as the stream hath upon the fountain.
(2) Mans revolt and apostasy from God (Eph_2:12).
(3) Our inability to return to God of ourselves; we must be brought back by Christ, or perish forever in a state of separation from God (Luk_15:5).
(4) That Gods unsatisfied justice was once the great bar betwixt Him and man.
(5) The peculiar happiness of believers above all people in the world: these only shall be brought to God by Jesus Christ in a reconciled state; others, indeed, shall be brought to God as a Judge, to be condemned by Him. All believers shall be solemnly presented to God in the great day (Col_1:22; Jud_1:24). They shall be all presented faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
2. What influence the death of Christ hath upon this design.
(1) It effectually removes all obstacles to it.
(2) It purchaseth (as price) their title to it. (John Flavel.)
The Saviours mission
I. The character of the Saviours mission.
1. It was one that involved Him in suffering.
2. It was one of innocent suffering.
3. It was one unconquered by suffering.
II. The purpose of the Saviours mission.
1. We are away from God.
2. We can be restored to God.
(1) In thought.
(2) In will.
(3) In resemblance.
(4) In filial fellowship and friendship.
3. God Himself brings us back by Christ.
III. The extent of the influence of the saviors mission. (U. R. Thomas.)
Christs sufferings
I. The due consideration of Christs sufferings doth much temper all the sufferings of Christians, especially such as are directly for Christ. It is some ease to the mind in any distress, to look upon examples of the like or greater distress, in present or former times. It diverts the eye from continual poring on our own suffering; and when we return to view it again, it abates the imagined greatness of it. The example and company of the saints in suffering, is very considerable, but that of Christ is more so than any other, yea, than all the rest together. Therefore the apostle, having represented the former at large, ends in this, as the top of all (Heb_12:1-2).
1. Consider the greatness of the example; the greatness of the person Christ. There can be no higher example. Since thus our Lord hath taught us by suffering in His own person and hath thus dignified sufferings, we should certainly rather be ambitious than afraid of them. Consider the greatness and continuance of His sufferings, His whole life was one continued line of suffering from the manger to the Cross. Art thou mean in thy birth and life, despised, misjudged, and reviled, on all hands? Look how it was with Him, who had more right than thou hast, to better entertainment in the world. But the Christian is subject to grievous temptations and sad desertions, which are heavier by far than the sufferings which the apostle speaks of here. Yet even in these, this same argument holds; for our Saviour is not ignorant of those, though still without sin. If any of that had been in His sufferings, it had not furthered but undone all our comfort in Him.
2. Consider the fitness of the example. As the argument is strong in itself, so, to the new man it is particularly strong; it binds him most, as it is not far fetched, but a home pattern; as when you persuade men to virtue by the example of those that they have a near relation to.
3. Consider the efficacy of the example. He suffered once for sin, so that to them who lay hold on Him, this holds sure, that sin is never to be suffered for in the way of strict justice again, as not by Him, so not by them who are in Him. So now the soul, finding itself rid of that fear, goes cheerfully through all other hazards; whereas the soul perplexed about that question, finds no relief in all other enjoyments: all propositions of lower comforts are troublesome to it.
II. Having somewhat considered these sufferings, as the apostles argument for his present purpose, we come now, to take a nearer view of the particulars by which he illustrates them, as the main point of our faith and comfort. Here are two things to be remarked, their cause and their kind.
1. Their cause; both their meritorious cause and their final cause; first, what in us procured these sufferings unto Christ, and, secondly, what those His sufferings procured unto us. Our guiltiness brought suffering upon Him, and His suffering brings us unto God.
2. We have the kind of our Lords sufferings: Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. Put to death. This is the utmost point, and that which men are most startled at-to die; especially a violent death. In the flesh. Under this second phrase, His human nature and His Divine nature and power are distinguished. But the Spirit here opposed to the flesh, or body, is certainly of a higher nature and power than the human soul, which cannot of itself return to re-inhabit and quicken the body. Put to death. His death was both voluntary and violent. That same power which restored His life could have kept it exempted from death; but the design was for death. He therefore took our flesh, to put it off thus, and to offer it up as a sacrifice, which, to be acceptable, must of necessity be free and voluntary; and, in this sense, He is said to have died even by that same Spirit, which here, in opposition to death, is said to quicken Him; Through the eternal Spirit, He offered Himself without spot unto God. And yet it was also expedient that His death should be violent, and so the more penal, to carry the more clear expression of a punishment, and such a violent death as had both ignominy and a curse tied to it, and this inflicted in a judicial way; that He should stand, and be judged, and condemned to death as a guilty person, carrying in that person the persons of so many who would otherwise have fallen under condemnation, as indeed guilty. Quickened. For all its vast craving mouth and devouring appetite, crying, Give, give, yet was the grave forced to give Him up again, as the fish to give up the prophet Jonah. The chains of that prison art strong, but He was too strong a prisoner to be held by them. That rolling of the stone to the grave was as if they had rolled it towards the east in the night, to stop the rising of the sun the next morning; much farther above all their power was this Sun of Righteousness in His rising again. That body which was entombed, was united to the spring of life, the Divine Spirit of the God-head that quickened it. (Abp. Leighton.)
The sufferings of Christ
Suffering is universal in the world. It comes from the first wailings of the infant to the last enfeebled cry of old age. It is found in the silent endurance of weakness and in the bold struggle of strength. It is in every station and rank of life. It is so various in its manifestations, that it seems as if we took a new lesson in it every day. To pass it by, to try to deny it, to make the ignoring of it a victory over it, is very short-sighted policy; it is what we would do with no other fact of like universal significance and power. And therefore, when Christ begins His gospel with the fact of suffering, we are at a loss whether to admire most the wisdom or the love of the method; together the boldness and the reasonableness of what He does startle us into asking the secret of One who could thus utilise the worlds greatest enemy, and turn in defence of mankind the very weapons which have so long wrought their destruction. The man who taught to his fellow men the uses of destructive fire was the hero of ancient mythology; the men who have bridled the lightnings, and chained the forces of air and water, are the great names of modern civilisation. But what shall we say of Him, who stopped not with the powers and material of the earth, but, going into the heart and life of man, found there the fact of suffering, and out of that formed the cornerstone of His kingdom? who, out of the cries and groans to which we close our ears, made the praises of God resound through the world? In this bold action the first element of strength is, that all suffering is traced to one source. Suffering is made to flow from sin. Christ suffered for sin, suffered as a criminal, suffered because of sin, under the weight of sin. The wisdom of Christ, the singleness of His purpose, the central power of His action, start out before us then; and we feel that He was indeed one who was fitted to deal with the great fact of human suffering, as He could thus put His finger on the very place whence it all flowed. It is only by getting at the true nature of a difficulty that we are able to conquer it; the new and deeper knowledge opens ways of approach unthought of before. There stood in proud seclusion the steepest peak in the Alps. Men looked at it, and said that human foot could never scale its heights. Bolder spirits tried every way which they could devise, approached it from all sides but one; and they succeeded in reaching certain points, but still there towered above them that inaccessible point. At length a wiser, more experienced eye was turned to that very side which had been pronounced evidently impossible; and, as he thus faced what had seemed the most despairing side of the problem, he saw that the strata of the earth below, broken sharp off in the upheaval of that majestic peak, furnished a series of steps which made the passage possible directly to the summit; and now every year even unexperienced feet make their way over the path thus opened. If any of us stand wondering how the mountain of our own or the worlds suffering shall be conquered, and have never seen the path opened on the side of mans sin, have tried every way but the fight against sin, have shed tears over every calamity but the depravity of our nature, have done everything but confess our sins in the sight of God, nay, have dismissed that as too dark and hard a side of the problem for us to face, now let the way opened by One who knew the secrets of our nature and of the generation of that mountain of suffering,-let that way be the one for our feet to follow. One of our greatest troubles, under the suffering which we feel ourselves or see in the world, is, that it does not seem to come upon the right people. But when this great Master approaches this very fact of suffering, as the one which He will use in His work, we have reason to expect a word of authority from Him on this most distressing feature of it. And it is here; the just for the unjust, Christ suffered. That runs through all His life, the thought that it was the very sinlessness of His life that made Him able to do the work for sinful men, that made Him able to take up the load of sin. The fact that He came from the Father, and was ever bound to the Father, was the very thing that made Him able to call men back to the Father. It is the privilege of strength to suffer for weakness. As it does so, strength is glorified; it conquers weakness, it spreads the power of its own life, it becomes strength in its right place. Only the mighty can help; and, as He thus helps, we look to His might as the reason for it, and through the work for us we find our Saviour. It is not gratitude alone-that, indeed, moves us as we think of what He did for as-but it is the opening of the source of strength by which He was able to do it. We come to Him through gratitude; and, as we reach Him, we find Him one who is mighty to save, because He could bring us near to God. This shows us the meaning and power of the last clause of our text. The apostle has been saying that Christs sufferings were so like the sufferings of the disciples, that they could feel the sustaining power of them. But here it is not likeness, it is dependence, that is brought out. These sufferings were to bring to God the very men who were now exhorted to imitate them. Never were they to forget that they had been brought to God by those sufferings. They had opened His love. They had drawn to Him who was able to reveal God to them. They had made the world a different place, one that had the power and presence of God as well as of man in it; never were they to forget that. But, as they remembered it, it would affect their lives, and change the whole character of them. The mystery of lifes power would be made theirs. They, too, would have but one object-to bring men to God. Never was there a time when the suffering of the world was so keenly felt as it is today. A philanthropic age needs the Cross, men anxious to alleviate the sufferings of the world need to have their own hearts broken for their sins, and all of us need to cling to these events of the suffering and death of Christ, and to feel that they contain the very power of our lives within them-the power of forgiveness and redemption, the power of happiness, the power of true labour, the power of the life eternal for this world and for the world that is to come. (Arthur Brooks.)
The unrepeatable sacrifice
The sufferings of Christ were in many respects peculiar:
I. They were officially undertaken and endured. The designation by which the Redeemer is here distinguished, and the emphatic statement whereby He characterises His sufferings must be taken together-Christ once suffered for sins. Suffering is no uncommon thing; Man is born to trouble. But Christ was not an ordinary man. Here then is a marked distinction between His and all merely human suffering. Man was not made man for the purpose of suffering; on the contrary, it is the result, the penalty, of his sin; but the very end for which the Christ became man was that He might suffer. In this sense, therefore, it may be said that He once suffered-the entire of His sufferings from the very first lay before Him. To us it is a merciful provision which leaves us in ignorance of future ills. Christ once suffered. His sufferings stand alone. Where can we find a just comparison for them? Here then is another peculiarity. The statement is that Christ suffered for sins. Were His sufferings the consequence of His own desert? Had this been so, His bitter enemies would not have failed to convict Him of sin; but His challenge in this respect was never answered. The sufferings of Christ were expiatory, substitutionary and vicarious. What was the doctrine of atonement under the law? Was it not that the innocent suffered for the guilty, and that on account of this suffering the guilty might go free? Hence the care in selecting the sacrificial victims that they might be without blemish or defect. How far from satisfying the requirements of such language as this is the view that would reduce the death of Christ to the mere result of a life of disinterested and self-sacrificing benevolence employed in turning men to righteousness; the seal of His doctrine, and a distinguished example of passive virtue!
II. To set forth the design of Christs sufferings, and to aim at its accomplishment in bringing men to God. Let us reflect upon the connection between sin and suffering, as viewed in relation to Christs suffering for sins.
1. Apart from personal interest in the sufferings of Christ, suffering regarded as the result of sin-suffering for sin-is a fact, the most terrible and unrelieved in the experience and history of our world. Men may quarrel with the suffering while they hug the sin, but the connection is there. Science may be invoked, and art and artifice may be employed to make sinning physically safe; but all this cannot remove or alter the fact-the goads are there.
2. To those who have a personal interest in His sacrifice, Christs suffering for sin takes away the sting of suffering.
3. The removal or lessening of sin must ever be the most effectual way of removing or lessening suffering. That is a spurious philanthropy which seeks to depreciate the gospel. (J. W. McKay, D. D.)
The sufferings of Christ
I. The character of the sufferer, and of the persons for whom he suffered.
1. Christ hath suffered, the just for the unjust. The expression intimates the perfect purity of His nature. But the expression, the just, intimates not only the perfect purity of His nature, but also the perfect purity of His life. His life was as pure as His nature. He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.
2. He suffered for the unjust. As the term, just, expresses the perfect purity, both of the nature and of the life of the Saviour; so the term, unjust, must express the impurity, both of the nature and of the life of those for whom He suffered.
II. What he who is the just hath done for the unjust, he hath once suffered for their sins.
1. This language intimates, that Christ the just One hath suffered. He suffered in His body. He was wounded, bruised, scourged, crucified. He suffered in His character. Crimes were laid to His charge which His righteous soul abhorred. He suffered in His soul. Satan tempted Him; His friends forsook Him; God hid His face from Him.
2. The language intimates that Christ the just One, hath suffered for the sins of the unjust. Why, then, if Christ had no sin in His nature, no sin in His life-why did He suffer? Why did not His perfect sinlessness screen Him from all evil? To answer these questions, we must have recourse to the doctrine of the substitution and atonement of Christ, and then to such questions it is easy to give an answer.
3. The language intimates that the just suffered only once: Christ hath once suffered for sins. The expression once, denotes the perfection of His atonement.
4. The language intimates that Christ suffered once for sins voluntarily. He is the just One, the equal of Jehovah, and who could have compelled Him to suffer? Or, if it had been possible to compel Him, His sufferings would have possessed no value.
III. The design of the just suffering for the unjust, that he might bring them to God. (Wm. Smart.)
Christs sufferings; or, the basis of evangelism
I. They were endured once. He hath once suffered. The word once, is capable of being taken in two senses. The sense of actuality: that is, the mere expression of the fact that He had suffered. Or, it may be taken in the sense of onlyness. Once for all:-never again, as Bengel has it, to suffer hereafter (Heb_4:28). Taken in this sense, two ideas are suggested:
1. That nothing more for the purpose is needed. His sufferings are sufficient.
2. That nothing more for the purpose will be vouchsafed. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.
II. They were endured by a just person. The Just. Christ was without sin. He was at once the foundation, standard, and revelation, of eternal rectitude.
III. They were endured on behalf of the unjust.
1. This is a proof of His amazing love. Scarcely for a righteous man will one die, etc.
2. This is an encouragement for the greatest sinner. The unjust of all grades and types of wickedness.
IV. They were endured to bring the unjust to God. That He might bring us to God.
1. Legally: They remove all governmental obstructions to reconciliation.
2. Morally: They remove the enmity of the human heart, and are the means of uniting the soul in love to its Maker.
3. Locally: Although God is everywhere, yet in heaven He is specially seen and enjoyed.
V. They were endured to the utmost extent. Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit.
1. Here is the death of His human nature;-the flesh. He suffered even unto death.
2. Here is the revivication of His human nature by the Divine Spirit:-quickened in the Spirit. The subject furnishes-First: Encouragement to suffering Christians. Secondly: A rebuke to those who limit the provisions of the gospel. Redemptive mercy is not for a favourite few:-it is for the unjust. Thirdly: A lesson to the impenitent. What ingratitude is yours! (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Christs sufferings
I. The highest instance of undeserved persecution.
1. We see that suffering is not necessarily a mark of sin.
2. We see that sufferings are not necessarily the sign of a bad cause.
3. We see that sufferings are not always a sign of defeat.
II. We have a distinct and direct statement of Christs substitutory sacrifice.
III. We have a reference to the object of Christs accomplishing this object-To bring us to God. We can only appreciate this suggestion by realising what is implied in being away from God. For man to be away from God is as if a flower were separated from its root, a babe from its mother.
IV. We have the great mystery of Christs death alluded to-Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit. Our Lords soul could not die; no more can mans soul die. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)
The sufferings of Christ our atonement and our example
I. Our atonement. Christs sufferings.
1. Unique (ἄπαξ), once for all.
2. Propitiatory. For sins.
3. Vicarious. The just for the unjust.
4. Effectual. That He might bring us to God.
II. Our example. (F. Dobbin, M. A.)
The sufferings of Christ
I. The sufferings of Christ are here asserted.
II. The meritorious cause of them is assigned.
III. A material circumstance relating to his sufferings is taken notice of.
IV. The opposite characters of Christ, and of those for whom he suffered, are laid down.
V. The great design of his sufferings is declared.
1. The ends of Christs sufferings are various.
(1) That He might set us an example of patience and resignation to the Divine will, under the troubles and difficulties of this life.
(2) To teach us self-denial and mortification.
(3) That He might exercise tender compassion towards us, under our trials and sorrows.
2. But the great end of His suffering for sins, the just for the unjust, was to bring us unto God.
Application;
1. Our hearts should be greatly affected with the representation which has been made unto us of the love of Christ.
2. How should we hate and abominate sin!
3. Let us draw nigh to God.
4. All our approaches to God should be through Jesus Christ. (S. Price.)
The design of Christs sufferings
I. The person who suffered. It was Christ, the just.
1. His official character. The word Christ properly means one anointed or consecrated to some sacred office.
2. His personal character-the just.
II. The sufferings He endured. For Christ also hath once, etc.
1. The nature of His sufferings. Christ suffered, being put to death in the flesh.
2. The period of His sufferings.
3. The object of His sufferings.
4. The issue of His sufferings. He was quickened by the Spirit.
III. The design He accomplished. That He might bring us to God.
1. The natural state of fallen sinners.
2. The personal efficacy of Christs atonement. It brings us to God. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
The just for the unjust.-
The just suffering for the unjust
I. The nature of Christs sufferings.
1. Intense.
2. Ignominious.
3. Voluntary.
II. The purposes of Christs sufferings. That He might bring us to God.!
1. By His atoning sacrifice, thereby removing every obstacle in the way of the sinners access to God.
2. By the operations of His Holy Spirit.
3. By the prevalency of His intercession. (W. J. Brock, B. A.)
Christs sufferings for us
We accept the life and the death of Christ as an atonement, as a substituted suffering, the just for the unjust; but we do not feel that He was a sufferer only when He was on earth, and that His suffering then was all the suffering that was needful to the salvation of the world. It was the nature of Christ to suffer for sinners. He was embodied in the physical form that we might judge of what that nature was in the past, and what it was to be in the future, for the atoning nature of God existed from all eternity, and is going on to all eternity. The Lamb was historically slain in the time of Christ; but long before the coming of Christ there was the Divine atoning love, there was the vicarious suffering of the Saviour. And now, although no longer humbled in the flesh, Christ has not lost that peculiar element and attribute of the Divine nature-namely, substitution, imputation, vicariousness. Still He suffers in all our sufferings. He is afflicted in all our afflictions.
1. Sin becomes exceedingly sinful when judged by such a test as this. There is nothing that the whole world revolts at more than at flagrant ingratitude.
2. It is the presentation of such a Saviour as this that makes confession easy to pride. There are a thousand things that hinder men that have done wrong from forsaking their wrong-doing. But if God be for you, who can be against you? If the bosom of Christs love is open, and is a refuge to which you may fly for safety, why should you not avail yourself of it?
3. When we stand, at last, in Zion and before God, and look back upon our past career, how inevitable will it be that every one shall turn disgusted from the thought of his own strength, and that we shall take our crowns and cast them at the feet of Christ, and say, Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the praise of our salvation! The patience of God, the gentleness of God, the forgiveness of God, the sufferings of God for us-these will stand out in such illustrious light in that day that every one wilt be filled with joy, and gratitude, and triumph, and new pleasure in the consciousness that it was of God that he was saved, and not of himself. (H. W. Beecher.)
Christ the substitute
I. The need of pardon, suggested by the word in our text-sins. Unless you come to know and feel your need of a thing, you will never desire or welcome it. If I wished to convince you that you needed pardon, from your father, for instance, in an ordinary matter, I should first have to show you your offence. I am afraid many young people do not feel their need of pardon in a far higher sense. I wish I could write the word sins on your hearts today. This is one of the greatest words in all the Bible-in all the world. It tells about our offences against God-about our breaking of His holy law-about the evil we have done against our loving Father in heaven. And when once we come to get a sight of our sins as against God, we never can rest until we have got His pardon.
II. The gospel way of pardon. Some people think it is enough to ask pardon. Others think the way of pardon is to be sorry for their sins. Others think the way of pardon is trying to be as good as they can-saying their prayers, and striving to do what is right. Now the gospel way of pardon, though it might be said to include all these, is yet different from them all. It is very simple. It is very shortly told. I have heard an esteemed Edinburgh minister tell of his visiting an aged Christian man on his deathbed, and saying to him, Is it not a happy thing that we have the gospel set forth in so few and in such simple words? The old man looked up and said, One word, sir! His friend said, What is the one word? He replied, Substitution! The whole gospel in one word-substitution! If anyone were to ask me, What is the way of salvation? and I wanted to put it as shortly and as fully as possible, I would say, It is the immediate, present acceptance of Christ as the substitute on the authority of Gods word and offer. There is a touching story told regarding a body of men who had taken part in a rebellion, and were sentenced to have every tenth man of their number shot to deter others from doing what they had done. Among these were two, a father and son. We can fancy we see the men drawn up in a long line. Fixing, perhaps, on the first man by lot, he is marked out for death, and every tenth man thereafter, counting from him. The father and son stand together, and as the son runs his eye along the line he discovers that his father is a doomed man. He realises what it will be to have their family left without a head, his mother a widow, the old home stripped of its light and joy, and, quick as thought, he steps in where his father stood, and falls in his stead. He becomes his fathers substitute, and, if you ask the father in after years how he was saved, with the tear in his eye and a quivering voice, he will tell you he was saved by a substitute-that substitute his most loved and loving son. This, then, is what I want to bring out as the most important thing. The gospel way of pardon is by substitution-by One taking the place of another, by the Just taking the place of the unjust-the Good taking the place of the evil-the just Jesus, the good Jesus, taking the place of the unjust and the evil. God is just and holy, as well as merciful and loving. He is a King and Judge, as well as a Father. The authority of His law must be maintained. His justice must be vindicated. The law in its precept and penalty must be satisfied. It must be perfectly obeyed; and in the event of disobedience, the penalty of the broken law-death-must be suffered, either by each man himself, or by another in his room. We have all disobeyed, and so there is no hope for any one of us, except in the obedience and death of Christ. I would come to each of you and say, You are lost, and unless you get pardon you will be lost forever. The Lord Jesus Christ is willing to be your substitute now and here, and in Gods name and on the authority of His own Word I offer Jesus Christ to be your substitute. Here is One willing to take your place. Will you have Him? If you take Him you are saved, you are pardoned. When visiting our Jewish Mission Schools at Pesth, the capital of Hungary, a few years ago, I heard the truth on which I have been dwelling strikingly brought out by one of the pupils. The lesson was about the crucifixion of Christ, and the teacher asked, What connection have we with the work and death of the Lord Jesus? A young Jew held out his hand, as being prepared to give an answer, and said, It is just as if we had the merit; it is just as if we had been crucified!
III. The results of pardon-that is to say, the consequences of being pardoned through the substitution of another-through the Lord Jesus taking our place.
1. The first thing that follows gospel pardon is safety. There is no more danger. There is no condemnation to them who are thus in Christ Jesus.
2. There is happiness.
(1) This is the secret of happy living. A young friend, who had been in much anxiety about her soul, was shown into my study one night. Her face was quite radiant. It was such a change from what had been before that I could not help asking, What has happened tonight? The brief but expressive answer was, I have taken Him to be my substitute! That explained all.
(2) This is the secret of happy dying. Dr. Carey, the great Indian scholar and missionary, tells of his visit to one of the wards in an Indian hospital. On a bed, in a corner of the room, lay a dying soldier. Stepping gently up to him, he knelt at his bedside, and whispered into his ear, My dear brother, are you afraid to die? Looking up with a smile, the dying man answered, Oh, no, sir; I have died already! He meant that Jesus, his substitute, had died for him, and he had not to die, but only to fall asleep in Jesus.
3. There is gratitude-thankfulness.
4. There is love.
5. Lastly, there is service. It is told of the Duke of Orleans (Philip Egalite), father of Louis Philippe, the last king of the French, that on one occasion he was out riding, followed by his servant, who was also on horseback. The Duke had crossed an old bridge over a rapid stream in safety, but when his man servant was following, the bridge gave way, and horse and rider were thrown into the river. In a moment the Duke leaped from his horses back, plunged into the stream, and with considerable difficulty succeeded in saving the drowning man and bringing him to land. Need I describe the scene that followed? All dripping as he was, you might have seen the grateful servant prostrated at his masters feet, promising the gratitude and service of a lifetime, and asking what he could do to serve one who had done so much for him. You know the story of The Heart made Captive-the slave bought with British gold, who vowed he would never serve his purchaser. But when he learned that the stranger had bought him to set him free, there were no bounds to his love and gratitude, and no limits to his service. When asked as to the secret of his constant and devoted service, there was but the one answer, He redeemed me! he redeemed me! Such is the secret of all right-hearted service done for Christ, as well as of all holy living. He is my substitute. He suffered for me. He died for me. Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits unto me? (J. H. Wilson, D. D.)
The just for the unjust
I. That Christ suffered should make suffering Christians patient. Not that I would make light of trials; far from it. I know they are often bitter and so long continued as to put a sore strain on clinging faith. Remember there is a ministry of suffering. The very trials of our life are ordered by a wiser will than ours, and are parts of a Heavenly Fathers discipline. As the stress of the storm strains the ship and shows where the weak parts are, so by our trials God would show us the weak points in our character, that we may strengthen what is weak and supply what is wanting.
II. Christs sufferings were for his people and on account of their sins. A man leaps overboard from the deck of a steamer on the broad Atlantic, and you think him a fool or a madman. But wait a little; why did he do it? He saw a sailor on the bulwarks overbalance himself and fall over the ships side, and he, a strong swimmer, leaped overboard to save him. And if you found that that drowning man had in time past often reviled the one who in his sore need risked his own life to deliver him, how could you find words to express your sense of the nobleness of such self-sacrificing conduct? And do you not think that the man thus plucked from the jaws of death would be heartily ashamed of his past reproaches, and would nevermore cease to love his deliverer? Is not this something like the case of the sinner and his Saviour Christ?
III. Consider now the object with which the saviour suffered. It was that He might bring us to God. This plainly implies a state of alienation and estrangement. O man, how far off hast thou wandered! How deep the enmity, how dire the distance between thee and thy God! How shall the awful gulf be bridged which thy sins have opened between thy God and thee? You now see how false is the common notion which many have of religion. They regard it as a thing to be turned to when one comes near to die-as a sort of desperate remedy to be taken when one can do no better. On the contrary, religion is a walk of fellowship with God; a thing for the daily round of duty; a life of obedience flowing from love and gratitude for redemption; a life unselfish, Christ-like, God-glorifying. (Wm. McMordie, M. A.)
Put to death in the flesh, but quickened by [in] the Spirit.-
The quickening influence of suffering
The main idea is of course a comparison between the experiences of our Lord and those of His suffering followers. The sacred writer was striving to the utmost to sustain and comfort them under the severe stress of persecution through which they were passing. Take heart, he seems to say; your sufferings are not exceptional; they run in the Divine family; even our Master was not exempt from them; He also suffered in the flesh; but His sufferings did not stay His blessed ministry; nay, they even augmented His sphere of usefulness; He was quickened in spirit, in which also he went forth to herald His accomplished work in regions to which, but for death, He had not obtained access. So shall it also be with you. Your sufferings shall not clip your wings, but add to your powers of flight. The things which happen to you shall fall out rather to the furtherance of the gospel; and it is through death that you must pass up to share His glorious resurrection and imperial power. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The resurrection of Christ
No man ever yet came out of a great work the same as he went into it; he has always lost something, and gained something. A great effort for a noble purpose taxes a mans strength; but it builds up character, confidence, and reputation. A great effort for a selfish purpose drains a mans moral resources, he has to surrender nobler considerations and higher purposes; but it leaves him better off in the things of this world, with a larger fortune, and a greater command of earths luxuries. It is this process of gain and loss to which our attention is called in the review of Christs death and resurrection. It was a great transaction, nothing less than the attempt to overthrow the reign of sin and suffering in the world. The character and success of the great work would be largely indicated by the effect on Him who undertook it; the question which all must ask is, What part of Him gained, and what part of Him lost? As that is known, it ought to determine whether it is a work in which we wish to join. Flesh and spirit were both strong in Christ through all His life. Then came the contest with sin and suffering, and the body succumbed. It suffered, and went down into the grave. When its work was through, the spirit, which had never been daunted, which had relied upon the Father in its darkest moments, had an opportunity to show its strength. It was the spirit of the Son of God. It belonged to Him who was the incarnate Son of God; and it must take that same body, and show its own power, and do what the flesh had been unable to do. The spirit must assert itself: it must be seen to be the lifeguard of the body; it must be evident as the great protecting, rescuing power. And when that was once done, there was no defeat. What had been lost by the flesh had been more than made up by spirit, and the great transaction was a victory. Can we wonder, then, at the Christians joy at Easter? It is not as a single event by itself that the resurrection stirs our hearts: it is because it is connected with the whole nature of our being, with the whole work of Christs life, and with the mysteries of our existence, and of the world forever. We see spirit triumphing over flesh everywhere; not always, but on every side and in all departments, giving us the hope and key to this great fact. A poor weakened body labours under pain and disease for years; but the mind grows brighter day by day, and the spirit becomes more refined. It sometimes seems as if spirit could do anything; and it can, if it is the right spirit. It is its duty to animate the flesh, and it shows itself able to do it; and time after time it manifests its ability far above and beyond all the powers of flesh, making that flesh do things for which it has seemed to have no capability. Now let it be the perfect spirit, the spirit of the Son of God, and directly in a line with all our experiences is that resurrection from the dead. We find no hope of the resurrection but in the greatness of Christ, in His intimate and personal connection with the Father. It was the Fathers witness to His being the Son of God; in that He has raised Him from the dead. Spirit is nobler than flesh. Place two men side by side, one of whom has always lived for the flesh, the other of whom has always tried to find the spiritual side of everything, and of every event with which he has come in contact. The former weighs you down with his grossness. His talk of the pleasures of the table, his gossipy narration of things that have taken place, his dull, unimaginative dealing with all that happens, his narrow interests and selfish aims, they are dreadfully unsatisfying and wearisome. The other always seems to be buoyant with joy and hope of something better. He hates all grossness enough to drop it out of his life; and yet, with a sympathy with all souls, he finds gleams of hope in those of whom the world can say nothing but evil. You know the two types of men, and of the approaches to them in every degree and form, from your daily experience with those about you; you know it still more from the experiences within you. Every transaction upon which you enter has its two sides-it can exalt the flesh and kill the spirit, or it can kill the flesh and exalt the spirit. You may come out of a successful business or social career with all that the flesh can possibly give you, and find that the virtues of the spirit-the unselfishness, the purity, the honour, the thought of better things have been put out of existence; you are quickened in the flesh, you are put to death in the spirit. Here again we see that the resurrection of Christ was not an isolated fact, and did not stand alone. It gathers to itself all the words of the Sermon on the Mount, all the exhortations of nobleness of life, and living above this world, which had been dropping from Jesus lips ever since He began His ministry. They cannot stand alone; they ask a great completion, a victory on their side, that they may have power, and not meet with discouragement. It seems as if Christ would say, I appreciate how great a weight of conduct I have put upon you; I would help you bear it. I know how the forces of the flesh press on every side; a greater force of the spirit shall be with you through Me. See what the spirit can do to the flesh, and be encouraged in every battle. The power of a risen Saviour is to show itself in spiritual lives. Do you say that this may demand the giving up of certain things? Then let them go; be put to death in the flesh, if you can but live in the spirit. That was Pauls desire: If by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. It was a matter of present attainment in the triumph of the spirit day by day; and for that we too are to labour, if our Easter joy and songs do indeed mean all that they say. We saw that this greatest feature of Christs resurrection was based on the fact that no man comes out of a transaction the same as he went into it. The same fact can lead us to the most complete participation in that resurrection, to which our minds are always turned. Are we to rise as He did? Had it hope for victory to any beyond Himself? We never come out of the great transaction of life the same as we went into it. We begin with spirit in the infant body, so unable to provide for itself. Then the flesh grows and asserts itself, until at length its hour of weakness comes, and, in the failure of disease or of old age, it loses its power, and sinks once more into the earth. What happens then, we ask? We never have any doubt as to that question about Christ. We find a clearer view and statement of His nearness to the Father coming out each day, as His life goes on. More and more He is bound to Him, until at last, in the great occasion of His death, it is not surprising that the trained and strengthened spirit conquers and raises Him. We can all tell of lives that have so followed Him, have so learned of Gods presence and love in the world through Jesus Christ that at every step in life their spirits have grown stronger, and without effort, nay, of necessity, our hearts include them in the Easter rejoicing, because we know which side of them the great transaction of life strengthened. (Arthur Brooks.)
He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.-
The gospel preached to the dead
Who is here spoken of? He. The form of the expression resembles that in our Creeds. He suffered and was buried. He descended into hell. The text does not say that the flesh of our Lord was put to death nor that His spirit was quickened. It states that He was Himself put to death qua flesh, and Himself quickened qua spirit. The flesh denotes His living body and animal soul; the spirit denotes here not the Holy Spirit nor the proper Deity, but the higher principle of the human spirit life, which was especially united to the Deity of Christ. He who is very God and very man, one person in two natures, did suffer death-in which nature?-not in His Divine nature-that is impassible-but in His human nature, which is passible. In the whole of His tripartite humanity? Not so: in a part of it, even in the flesh, and having there suffered death He, the same person, was quickened in the life, which never for a moment was quenched, of His own spirit. In that highest compartment of His human nature He experienced a transition to a new mode of existence, which issued in the resurrection of His incorruptible body. Meanwhile in the intermediate state-between the crucifixion and the resurrection, He, the Lord of Life, neither slumbered nor slept. His activity of philanthropy never ceased. Through the gates of death in the new life of the disembodied spirit He went, He made a journey. He the Crucified One, His body still hanging on the tree, passed away from the Cross of Calvary to the place of custody, where the souls of the departed were in confinement. These spirits in prison are they who, when they were in the flesh, in the midst of a universal apostasy saw not the signs nor felt the shadow of the coming judgment, nor heeded the voice of the righteous preacher, and therefore perished in their sins and in the flood. Their bodies were buried in the deep of the Deluge, and their spirits were carried into the deeper abyss of Hades. To these imprisoned souls was revealed in Hades the presence and the form of one like unto the Son of Man, clothed in human spirit. Thus disembodied and spirit ensphered the Son of God to the departed souls of the antediluvian world made a journey-and made a preachment. What was that preachment? Did He, in whom death could work no moral change, speak in His disembodied spirit to disembodied spirits, as He spake in the flesh to men in the flesh? Did He, the Apostle on earth of His Father in heaven, continue to pursue His Divine mission in Hades? There is a palate in this same Epistle which, rightly considered, makes it evident that St. Peter believed that to the dead in Hades the gospel itself had been proclaimed. To what class or classes of the dead it was proclaimed he does not specify; by whom it was proclaimed he does not specify; but, if we compare the two statements in the same Epistle-
(1) that Christ went and preached to the spirits in custody, and
(2) that to the dead also the gospel was preached-we must conclude that, according to St. Peter, our Lord in the world of spirits, between His own crucifixion and resurrection, announced glad tidings of great joy.
It is certain that the offer of salvation formed a part at least of His Divine message. And it is likely that this offer was made to all. Why not? Was not this their first opportunity of hearing of the great salvation wrought for all believers? There are some who have thought that the substance of our Lords preaching in Hades was of two kinds-that to some He preached salvation, to others perdition; that to the irreclaimably lost He preached a concio damnatoria. Surely this could not be; such a theory could never be in harmony with what we know of His Divine mission. Far better, and far more true, is it to suppose that He preached Himself, the One Saviour, to all alike. Not that all to whom He preached were alike susceptible of the message of glad tidings; because the multitude of the antediluvian unbelievers had indeed died in their sins, but still had so died in a very unequal measure of sin. To the class of incorrigible sinners the preaching of Christ in Hades would, we may believe, be in vain. They had sinned away their receptivity of the Divine message. They listened, indeed, from their sullen prisons to the heavenly Herald of mercy, and, as they listened to Him, they learned that He had died for the sins of the whole world, that He had died even for their sins, but at the same time they knew of themselves that He was not their present Saviour but their future Judge. Thus they would stand before the Preacher self-convicted and self-condemned. I conclude by mooting the question whether this interpretation of the text after all involves any abnormal teaching; whether, in fact, it is an exception to the general rule of Christian doctrine. It seems to me that there are some few passages in Scripture which indicate the broad theory that all men of all ages, who in this life never had the opportunity of hearing of Christ and of His salvation, will not perish hereafter for lack of that opportunity given some time, but failing this world will find that opportunity in the world to come; and if they are equal to it, if by patient continuance in well-doing here they are able to meet it, then they will embrace the gospel, and become par takers of the kingdom of heaven, if not as princes and rulers in Israel, yet as subjects. From this interpretation of the text an inference may be drawn. If Christ, through all His several stages of existence, was a forerunner and pioneer to His apostles and faithful followers, it may be that as the Personal Head of the Body Mystical did in that unseen world preach the gospel to departed spirits, so some or many of His living members, as they have disappeared one by one behind the veil, have also in their turn, and after His example, preached the same gospel there. If this idea is akin to truth, then it is possible that through the ages all along the gospel which St. John calls the gospel of the ages has not been hidden, but preached to such departed spirits as never heard, nor could hear, the glad tidings when they were in the flesh, and that it is not from lack of opportunity that any soul perishes. (Canon T. S. Evades, D. D.)
The spirits in prison
St. Peter is urging his readers to endurance under suffering. He sets before them the example of Christ. He suffered not only unjustly but for the unjust. That He might bring us to God-us, the erring and straying, the sin-bound and self-exiled. This is the starting point. St. Peter expatiates in the field thus entered. He bids us contemplate the effect of Christs suffering upon Himself. He bids us contemplate the two parts of His humanity-the flesh and the spirit. Death dissolved the compound. He was put to death as regards the one; He was made alive as regards the other. It is as though the dropping of the one gave new energy to the other. He had spoken in the days of His flesh of being straitened till the great baptism was accomplished. There was a compression in that enclosure of flesh and blood which would be taken off instantly by its removal. While the lifeless body was hanging for its last hour on the tree, He, the living spirit, was using the new liberty in a special office and mission-He was on a journey-He was making Paradise itself a scene of activity-in the spirit, St. Peter says, He went and preached to the spirits in prison. St. Peter defines with great precision the objects of this unearthly visitation. They are spirits in prison-they are dead men fast holden in Divine custody, as guilty aforetime of a great disobedience, which sealed their fate here, and swept them promiscuously into a condition which men must call judgment. These spirits were disobedient once-and the tense suggests an act of decisive and definite disobedience-at the time when the long suffering of God was waiting in the days of Noah. They were judged for their disobedience to this call-men, from the side of flesh and time, could not say otherwise than that these men had died in their sins-but a miracle of mercy sought them out, after long ages, in their prison house-the three days of Christs sojourn in the heart of the earth were used, of special grace, in their evangelisation-in the sight of men they lie still under judgment, but in spirit, according to God, they have been quickened into a supernatural life. Let us see if there is anything elsewhere in Scripture that will help us in bearing up under the weight of this remarkable disclosure. Yes, St. Paul has something very like it in his discourse on the communion-where he says that, for dishonouring this holy sacrament, many of the Corinthians not only are weak and sickly, but even sleep-have been, as he goes on to say, judged of the Lord, not only with divers diseases, but with sundry kinds of death-and goes on to explain to them that, when thus judged, punished even with death itself, they are chastened lest they should be condemned-death itself, judicial death, may be but a chastening to save from that condemnation which yet (the same verse says) is for the world. What is this but St. Peters judged, according to men, in flesh, yet living, according to God, in spirit?-a judgment, not of condemnation, but of chastening unto salvation? Before we pass to our last words of counsel, let us throw the light of St. Paul and St. Peter upon some of those darkest passages in the history of the Old Testament which seem to consign to a disproportionate doom men of a single sin, or men sinning half under compulsion. Take such an instance as that of the disobedient prophet-a man lied to by another prophet-and failing, under that persuasion, to keep the safe rule, what God has said to thee thyself is more true, for thee at least, and more concerning, than that which God is said to have said, in correction of it, or in repeal of it, to another. That man, for that yielding, is executed, within the day, under Gods death warrant. But is there any man to tell us, on the word of God, that the disobedient prophet is among the lost-that his is so much as one of the spirits in prison? Judged according to men in flesh-judged so far as the body, and the life of time, goes-for is it not judgment to be cut off hastily from this life of the living, and by a sentence written for evermore upon the page of God?-not necessarily condemned with the world-living possibly all the time, and to live, according to God the Judge, and in that higher part of the man, which is spirit. How many of the supposed injustices of Gods dealing may have their reconciliation and their justification in this hint of the apostles-in this more profound study of the Scriptures! Use the text thus, and it has life in it. Let it open to thee just a glimpse of realities out of thy sight! (Dean Vaughan.)
Christ in the flesh and in the spirit
Christ dealt with the living in the body, with the spirits in the spirit. (A. J. Bengel.)
Spirits in prison
I. That there are human spirits actually in the prison of hell.
1. A prison is a scene of darkness. Impurity, remorse, despair, constitute the blackness of darkness forever.
2. A prison is a scene of guilt.
3. A prison is a scene of bondage. Chains of iron confined the miserable culprit.
4. A prison is a scene of thoughtfulness. Hell is a dark realm of thinkers. But there are two features connected with hell that distinguish it from all the prisons on earth.
(1) It is self-erected. Each prisoner constructs his own prison.
(2) It is spiritual. The spirit is in prison. Earthly prisons cannot confine the soul.
II. That there are human spirits who have been in the prison of hell for centuries. Christ preached to them, by Noah, when on earth. Peter speaks of them now as being in hell. What period of time has elapsed between this lengthened suffering, however, impresses me with two considerations-
1. The fearful enormity of evil.
2. Mans capacity for endurance. Diseases soon break up the body; time withers the patriarchal oak, crumbles the marble; and the waters wear away the stones of the mightiest rocks; but, through ages of agony, the soul lives on!
III. That there are human spirits who have been in the prison of hell for centuries, to whom the gospel was once preached. Christ was in the world before His incarnation. The fact that there are spirits in hell to whom the gospel was once preached suggests two very solemn considerations:
1. That there is no necessary connection between hearing the gospel and salvation. He that heareth My words, and doeth them not, etc.
2. That the final misery of those who have heard the gospel must be contrary both to the disposition and agency of Christ. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The spirits in prison
I. Their state.
1. Disembodied.
2. Immortal.
II. Their condition.
1. A prison is a place of gloom.
2. A place of restraint.
3. A place of punishment.
4. A place of confinement for trial.
III. Their history.
1. They had the gospel preached to them.
2. Gods long suffering waited for them.
Applications:
1. Let not disobedient men doubt the certainty of future punishments.
2. Let not sinners question the justice of future punishment.
3. Let not the wicked be emboldened by numbers.
4. Let not the righteous be discouraged by their fewness.
5. Let not those who are alarmed despair. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The longsuffering of God waited.
The patience of God
The term applied here to the Almighty represents Him as we are not very apt to think of Him, i.e., as having before Him all the evil, of every kind, in His children, and bearing it; our ingratitude, our disobedience, our folly, our fickleness, our obstinacy, our selfishness, our wilfulness, our sensuality, our irreverence, our vanity-the whole dark and diversified mass of our sin. The catalogue of its shapes and degrees is well-nigh inexhaustible, yet it does not exhaust His patience. We have, it is true, as men and women, our disapprobations and even our little indignations at wrong-doing. But what marks a special contrast between them and the Divine displeasure is this, that as they gain in strength our human antipathies toward transgression are apt to grow hot and hasty. We want to see judgment against evil works executed speedily, forgetting that it was only just now that we began to see them to be evil works. Our brother trespasses against us, and, not considering that he is our brother, moulded of just such clay and subject to just such infirmities as ourselves, we cry out for the magistrate and the prison, if not the lash; and sometimes because there is no lash in the jailers hand, we take one up with our tongue. This is the impatient spirit that vitiates so many of our remonstrances against our neighbours crimes. Let us give a little wider reach to the treatment of the subject by contemplating the patience of God in its sublime delay, its slowness as men count slowness, in bringing about the most beneficent ends. He shows us this patience first as the Maker of things. You find it in the unhurried order of the natural creation; the slow building and furnishing of the outer worlds; the slow succession of geologic ages; the slow procession in ascending ranks, one only so little above another, of the races of plants and animals, affording an epoch for a reptile or a fern; the slow preparation of the planet for its final purpose in the rearing of an immortal family, the revelation of the spiritual glory of the Divine Man in the flesh, and the manifestation, by that incarnation, of a new earth with the sons of God for its kings and priests. We rise from the physical to the moral world. Take the broadest divisions of the human family-races and nations. From their beginnings in the East, as an eastern shepherd leads out his flocks, the Everlasting Father has brought His tribes out of their native sheepcotes and stationed them here and there over the globe. Vast territories, with fertile soils and blooming vegetation, with the wealth of navies and harvests in their bosom, were waiting to receive them: and some are waiting still. God waited His own good time for occupying them with human industry. Nor is this the chief exercise of His patience. One after another these nations have broken away from their Creators commandment. For each one of them He kindled the light of conscience or of revelation, to show them the way, and they shut their eyes upon it. Every national life has grown corrupt. No sooner have they come to prosperity than they have come to luxury, idleness, and the beginnings of decay. They have tempted and betrayed each other; cheated, fought, enslaved, murdered each other. Very seldom has He come to them with sudden judgments or wide spread desolations. He has waited till they would destroy themselves. He has tried them again and again. When one has gone down He has set up another, and waited patiently for that. Even the one people that He chose out of all the rest for His own, folding and guarding them, turned itself into the bitterest offence against Him. But His long suffering waited, and waited not only in the days of Noah, as the text says, but waited through the age of the patriarchs, waited through the age of Moses, and of the judges, and of the kings, waited till the captivity, waited and brought them back after it, waited till the fulness of time. But we can bring the doctrine home much closer to our personal feeling than this. We all know well enough what those things are that try and irritate us, in the common intercourse of life, and where our patience gives way. We know what the provocation is, when our motives are misjudged, or our self-respect is insulted; when mean calculations take advantage of our friendship; when our children are forgetful or wilful, our pupils dull, our servants careless, our neighbours arrogant, our beneficiaries unthankful or impertinent. We all know the sting that hurts us in contempt, in estrangement, in forgetfulness. Now, all these hateful things, in every instance, are known to God. They are full in His sight. Just so far as they are real offences at all, they are offences against Him before they are to us. He does not overlook them, but looks directly at them all. He sees the tyrants, the traitors, the hardened profligates, living out their many days, and some of them dying natural deaths in their beds, the Alvas and Torquemadas, small and great, of every age-His judgment seat not moved forward one hairs breadth to meet them this side the grave. Some one says, God is patient because He is eternal; and so we make excuses for our impatience. God is patient because He is good, as well as because He is strong and wise. He waits for men that they may return to Him. He spares them that they may spare each other. And then, if we could look far into the heart of God, might it not: appear that He has-considering their light, their calling, their privileges, and promises-quite as much occasion to let His patience have her perfect work in the inconstancies of Christians as in the crimes of unbelievers? the cold affections, lifeless prayers, halting steps. He has to wait even for His own people that He has redeemed-the Church that He has purchased with His blood-in her backward and worldly living. It is quite noticeable that one of the apostles of our Lord dwells on this grace of patience with peculiar earnestness, returning to it as if it had a special power to his conscience and a special sacredness to his heart; and this is St. Peter, from whom my text is taken. Have we not a reason for this, and at the same time a deeper look into his warm heart, when we turn to his personal character and history? His was just one of those impressible, impetuous temperaments, with great faults and great virtues, which lay a heavy tax upon the patience of friends, and yet inspire, beneath all that, a lively interest. So he must have felt how repeatedly and bitterly he had tried that one Divine Friend. Nor is the whole Scripture less clear and strong as to the practical value of this virtue in the Christian standard of character. Thus it shows us the kneeling suppliant at his lords feet crying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. It pronounces its blessing on those that bring forth fruit with patience. It casts in a beam of light on the dark mystery of our sufferings by telling us that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, bidding us rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Nay, further yet; by one true and deep interpretation of it the Cross of our Saviour is but the symbol of this doctrine. Patience and passion are but varied forms of one word; the sacrifice of long suffering. In the Son of Mary the patience of God comes down among men, and we behold His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, in the face of Jesus Christ giving His life for the world, and waiting for its faith. (Bp. Huntington.)
While the ark was a preparing.-
Safety in the ark
I. In the first place, we see by the parallel drawn between the faith of a Christian and the preservation of Noah in the deluge, that we must look for a deluge answering to that which then came upon the world. Who can seriously think of the world blaspheming its Maker, rebelling against Him, and then proudly contending that there is very little evil in that rebellion, and not see that some signal proof from the Governor of all, that that rebellion shall not be tolerated? The deluge of wrath, then, will come, like the deluge that swept away the millions of mankind in the days of Noah.
II. But then, as there was an ark which Noah constructed for his preservation and that of his family, we have an ark too, built not by our own hands, but built by our great Creator and Redeemer. Christ is to His people now the one Ark. There is one Shelter from the coming deluge of Gods wrath, one only Ark, for a lost soul; unless we are saved by that, we perish. Christ is the only thing between us and eternal destruction.
III. But as Noah was saved, not merely by understanding its construction and not merely by looking at its fair proportions and its massive timbers, but by entering within the ark and being shut within it by God, so the disciples of Christ are saved by entering into their Ark; and the one thing by which they enter in is faith. So that unless we come to Christ as our only hope, we are excluded from that Ark. It is built by the hand of God, it will float in safety over the deluge, and whoever is in it will be gloriously saved; but we must get within it. We may talk as Christians, we may belong to a Christian church, we may think ourselves safe; but unless we have climbed into the true Ark by faith, and have been shut in by the hand of God, we have no more possibility of safety than a person could have been saved by walking round the ark which Noah had constructed, or examining with surprise and admiration its massive construction.
IV. But there is another similarity between the disciples of Christ and Noah and his family. That similarity is in the water of baptism, as compared with the water of the deluge to Noah. Anti-typical to which, the apostle says, Baptism doth now save us. And therefore, just as the water bore up the ark of Noah, and it was when the waves dashed upon the ark in which he floated that his preservation was completed, so it is by baptism that the disciples of Jesus Christ are likewise saved. The water of baptism could no more save the baptized man, of itself, than the water of the deluge could save the antediluvian sinners who were outside the ark. It was the ark which saved; and then the water completed the salvation, by bearing up the ark upon its flood. And the water of baptism is the antitype of that water of the deluge, because it completes the figure which makes the person safe in Christ, who is the only Ark of the soul from the deluge to come. That this was the apostles meaning is further manifested by the expression which he used himself, to correct the imagination which might arise in any mind, that the external rite had in itself any such efficacy. He adds, Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh; external washing cannot save anyone; but it is the inquiring after God of a good conscience, it is the seeking God with the heart and with the soul-it is this which is the essence of the baptismal profession. There are two more points of comparison on which I must dwell. In the days of Noah there were multitudes that disbelieved, and but few that believed, the warning God gave; eight only out of the millions of mankind believed. The millions disbelieved. And so it is with the threatenings of God now; there are few that credit them, and millions that disbelieve them; which are right, the few or the millions? Christians! hold fast the truth, even if you were much fewer than you are; and never let your opinion be in the least shaken by any allegation of the presumption, the enthusiasm, or the folly of entertaining the opinions which are against those of the great mass of mankind. Hold them fast, and it will be for your happiness. And lastly, there is one final comparison between the two cases. The multitudes of those who disbelieved, in Noahs days, perished, and the few that believed were saved. Oh! that a warning voice could reach the millions of this world! (B. W. Noel, M. A.)
Baptism doth now save us.-
The two baptisms
It is questionable whether we would have had skill enough to discover that the two facts mentioned in the text contained essentially the same revelation, if the union had not been expressly pointed out to us in Scripture. The wild flood that destroyed the ancient world, and the gentle waters of baptism in Christian times-these two at first sight seem to have little in common. The connection is by no means so obvious as in some other types; but it is net less real.
I. The salvation of Noah and his family by water. As long as you think merely of Noah being saved from death by drowning, you miss the grand design of God in bringing the flood upon the earth. If the purpose of the Supreme had been to preserve the lives of those eight, it could have been accomplished by preventing the flood from coming, better than by constructing an ark to float on its surface. What object did the Almighty Ruler contemplate in those stupendous arrangements? To preserve His truth, and the earthen vessels that contained it, not from the flood of water, but from the flood of sin. The water flood, so far from being the source of danger, was the instrument employed to save. God employed one flood to wipe away another. The salvation which God works for His own, both in its whole and in its several parts, is a twofold operation. It is deliverance by destruction. In the Old Testament times, this principle of Divine government was exhibited in acts and ordinances of a more material kind. Christ had not yet come; and the personal ministry of the Spirit had not yet been fully developed. The providential dispensations and religious rites in which the principles were embodied, accorded with the infant state of the world and the Church. In form the manifestation was childish; but even in form all that was childish has been done away, and the self same truths are set forth in the ordinances of a more glorious ministration.
II. The salvation of Christians by baptism is like the saving of Noah by the waters of the flood.
1. The danger. In Gods sight the ailment of humanity is sin. Sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Find the way of making an end of sin, and the sting of death is instantly taken away. If it were not for sin we should have nothing to fear. We could smile at death, and at him who hath its power, if we were free from sin.
2. The deliverance. It, too, is like Noahs. We are saved by a flood. We are saved by baptism. And what is meant by baptism? In the first place, it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh. It is not the out ward act of washing with water that can save a soul from the dangers that surround us. It is not a corporal and carnal thing. Not this; but the answer of a good conscience toward God. It is the cleansing of the conscience from its guilt, so that when God makes inquisition for blood, He finds no spot or wrinkle there; so that the conscience, when put to the question, answers peace to the challenge of the Judge. Baptism doth now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is by being in Christ that we may get our sins purged away, and yet be ourselves saved. He stands before God to receive what is due to His peoples sins. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished, That baptism to which He looked forward from the first of time, and which He met on Calvary, was none other than the wrath of God against sin, which He had in covenant engaged to bear. The Messiah met that deluge, and emerged from it triumphant. From that baptism He rose again. The salvation of believers lies not in meeting God for themselves, when the vials of His wrath for sin are poured out; but in being found in Christ, when He receives His peoples due. It is the part and privilege of a believer to be baptized into Christ, and specifically to be baptized into His death (Rom_6:3; Rom_6:5). Our baptism is into Him, and He meets the baptism for us which would have carried us away. We have received the baptism, when in our Substitute we have received it. As Noah remained safe, shut up within the ark, while it received the surges of the deluge; so we, in Christ our refuge, are unhurt, while He meets and exhausts in our stead the justice due to sin. As the flood saved Noah, by destroying the wicked that swarmed on the earth, while he escaped by being shut within the ark; the baptism wherewith Christ was baptized saves Christians, by destroying sins and sinners, so that they who are found in Him in the time of visitation shall step out with Him upon a new earth, under a new heaven, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (W. Arnot.)
Baptism: helpful
The apostle speaks of baptism as saving us; that is the point that concerns us most. Of course the question starts, How does baptism save us; in what way is it helpful to us in our Christian life and career? If you look at the passage you will see that the apostle guards himself carefully. He says, Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh. We cannot too distinctly assert that there is nothing saving in baptism itself. In what way, then, you may ask, does baptism save us? How can it be made helpful to us in the cultivation of Christian character and in the living of Christian life? The apostle tells us, But the answer of a good conscience toward God. The Greek term here translated answer means a question or interrogation. It is used to signify the mutual return of question and answer, which implies compact. You know that when two parties present themselves to the minister for marriage he requires them to say certain words after him; those words form what we may call the marriage oath, or declaration, or compact. When that declaration or compact has been made by both parties the man puts the ring on the finger of the woman as a sign or evidence that such declaration has been made. Now, what the wedding ring is to the married couple and society, baptism is to the believer and Christ. It is the sign, token, symbol of the covenant, compact, which the believer has entered into with his Saviour. In this sense it has an element of salvation in it, and it may be made helpful to you in the cultivation of Christian character and life by reminding you of the terms of that covenant.
I. That you have repented of your past life and conduct. There are some in whom the process or change we call repentance is not very marked or great. In some, from their natural temperament, or from the advantages of early surroundings, the religious life seems a gradual development. As the lovely bud opens under the genial influence of the springs sun, so their hearts open under the genial influence of the heavenly Fathers love. In others, as in the case of the prodigal, there is a time, sharp and distinct, when reflection arrests them in their course of sin and folly. Now, baptism is a standing perpetual reminder of that solemn crisis-that solemn resolve in your history. Hence Paul writes: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into His death? etc. (Rom_6:3-13). The act of baptism is an open public renunciation of sin, of sinful pleasures, of the follies of the world.
II. That you have accepted Christ as your Saviour. The compact you now make with Christ, and of which your baptism will be the standing sign and symbol, is that you accept, believe in Him as your Saviour. In accepting Christ as your Saviour you promise Him that you will give yourself up to Him. When tempted to relax or disobey, you will answer your tempter, I have placed myself in the hands of Christ; I am not my own. I have His prescription, and, unless I attend to that, I cannot expect spiritual healing or health. You will point your tempter to your baptism as a standing symbol of your covenant with Christ; and in this way your baptism will be helpful to you, and will save you.
III. That you have consecrated yourself to Christs service. The wife sees the ring on her finger, and she says, I am married; I am no longer my own. I am pledged to give my husband as much real pleasure and joy as lies in my power, to abstain from everything that would grieve or displease him, to make any and every sacrifice if necessary to contribute to his comfort and well-being. In the same way, remembering your baptism, you will say, I am married to Christ; I have pledged myself to His service as the great purpose of my life.
IV. That you sustain the most honourable relation to Christ, I wish I could, so fire the hearts of our young men and women that they could adequately realise the dignity and the honour of the relation they sustain to Christ, and of which baptism is the standing sign and seal. You know how the soldier is fired with the sense of his dignity as a soldier. There are many things that he would not do because it would disgrace his profession. And so I would that you should be ever conscious of the dignity and honour of the relation that you sustain to Christ. Remembering your baptism, the standing seal of that relation, you will say, I am a baptized Christian, one of Christs soldiers. How can I do this mean act, speak that false word, do that great wickedness, and sin against Christ? In this way, too, baptism may be helpful to you, and so save you. (B. Preece.)
Who is gone into heaven.-
Our Lords ascension
The ascension of our Lord was, in one point of view, only a result of His resurrection, and the proper completion of His triumph then achieved. That is, no new work was done by Him after His resurrection which brought about His ascension. It was His pleasure to remain on earth during those forty days, in order to show Himself alone to His disciples, and to establish beyond doubt the fact that He was risen from the dead; but they were only a delay interposed before that triumphant departure whose way was already prepared. First of all, then, the ascension of Jesus was the seal of the accomplishment of redemption. His work which He wrought in our nature was the rescuing it from the dominion of sin, and bringing it into union with God. This His glorious state of final perfection of humanity is not His alone. It belongs not to Him any more than His death and resurrection belonged to Him, as man individual. It belongs, in its actuality and in its effects, to our whole nature, which He bore on Him and bears on Him at this moment. In, and as accomplished in, that humanity thus glorified, does the Father behold all His creatures and all His purposes; in Him it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell, and that all things in heaven and in earth should be summed up. O how blessed an encouragement is this, in all our difficulties and under all our troubles. Thou feeble Christian, who believest and prayest and strivest, but hast never laid firm hold on the hope set before thee, who day by day art conning over thine own imperfections, turn thine eyes from looking inward, and look upward on Him where He is. That human Body, pierced but glorified, marred above measure, but also exalted above measure, let that be thy one object of contemplation. There is thy safety; there thy guarantee of Gods favour; on that blessed Form falls no frown of the Fathers countenance, but an everlasting smile of approval, and under that smile thou, His lowly and fainting member, art included. Fix thine eyes on Him and fear not; in Him thou hast all; through Him thou shalt rise after all thy falls; shalt enter into the kingdom after all thy doubts; for he that hath the Son hath life. I want in my belief which is to sustain me, which is to renew me in holiness, something as present to me as the world and the flesh and the devil are present with me; not only a past fact, however gracious and glorious; but a present fact, which I may look upon as part of this moment in which I live and struggle onward. And I can find this only in the glorified form of my Lord, now in heaven at Gods right hand, holding together this world, creating, blessing, vivifying, governing all things. This is no past matter. Far above this earth with her living tribes and her waving blossoms, far above these bright stars which bound the vision of the outward eye, I see that form of Him in whom I live; there is He who is made to me wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption; His life is my obedience; His blood is my ransom; His resurrection is my justification. Earth and hell may combine against my weak nature; but there I see that nature standing in the Godhead glorified, and I know that I am safe. Outward appearances may discourage me to the utmost. Both the Church and the world are summed up in and ruled by that glorified One, who reigns above them both. Besides being the seal and pledge of our accomplished redemption, He is, in this His glorified state, our continuing High Priest and Intercessor. There, in the centre of the Fathers glory, He rests not idle, nor is He unmindful of those whom He came to save. They are ever borne on His thoughts, and not the least of their cares or wants is forgotten by Him. Through Him, not as an unconscious medium, but as the living and conscious offerer, all prayer is made. Again, our glorified Saviour is the giver of the Holy Spirit. From Him all spiritual influence comes direct, and without union with Him no man has the Spirit of the Lord. And this is a most important consideration. For men are apt to imagine of our blessed Lord as withdrawn from His Church; and the participation of spiritual gifts and spiritual life to be derived from a long succession of secondary instruments, and ordinances of grace; whereas it is by direct contact of every believing soul with Himself in glory, that all spiritual grace and gifts are derived, and means and ordinances are but helps to lifting the soul by faith into realisation of His person and office, and into communion with Him. (Dean Alford.)
Our ascended Lord
I. The circumstances.
1. They begin thus-Who is gone into heaven. He is gone: that sounds rather dolorous. Yet we dare not raise a monument to Christ as one who is dead. Let us complete the sentence-who is gone into heaven. Now you demand the trumpet, for the words are full of soul-stirring music, and create intense delight. Still, there are the words, He is gone: He is gone away from you and from me; we cannot now embrace His feet, nor wash them, nor lean our head upon His bosom, nor look into His face. Henceforth we are strangers here because He is not here. He intends us to remove, for He has removed. We are not at home on earth. He seems to say, Upwards, My brethren, upwards from off this earth; away from this world to the glory land. I am gone, and you must be gone, This is not your place of resting, but you must prepare yourselves for a time when it shall be said of each one of you, He is gone. Now let us consider that He is gone into heaven. What does this signify but, first, that He is gone out of the region wherein our senses can perceive Him? But then we know that our Lord, as man, is gone into a greater nearness to God than ever; He is gone into heaven, where is the throne of the great King. Let us joy and rejoice that our covenant Head is now in the bosom of the Father, at the fountainhead of love and grace, and that He is there on our behalf. In going into heaven there is also this thought, that our Lord is gone now into the place of perfect happiness and of complete glory. The Lord Jesus is filled with ineffable satisfaction, which is the reward of His passion and His death. Thinking this over, let us reflect that nothing could stop His going there. He is gone up into heaven, despite all who raged against Him. But I beg you to remember that He is gone up into heaven as our representative. Jesus does nothing by Himself now. All His people are with Him. He says, Behold I and the children which God hath given Me. They are always in union with Him. This is the best seal that our faith could desires the resurrection and ascension of Christ being practically the resurrection and the home bringing of all His redeemed.
2. Secondly, His sitting at the right hand of God: Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God. Remember that this being on the right hand of God relates to the complex person of our Lord; it relates to Him not as God alone, but as God and man. It is His manhood that is at the right hand of God. Wonderful conception! The next being to God is man. Infinite leagues must necessarily lie between the Creator and the created; but between God and man in Christ Jesus there seems no distance at all, the man Christ Jesus sits at Gods right hand. What meaneth it that Christ sits at the right hand of God? Does it not mean, first, unrivalled honour? To sit at the right hand of God is the highest conceivable glory. Does not it also signify intense love? When Solomon would describe the love of the King to his bride, he said, Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. It means also communion and counsel. We speak of a person with whom we take advice as the man of our right hand. God taketh counsel with the man Christ Jesus. When you have a friend at court, you hope you will do well; but what a friend have we in the Kings courts; even Him who is the Wonderful Counsellor! Does it not also signify perfect repose? Jesus is gone up to the right hand of God, and sitteth there. O restful Saviour, we labouring, come to Thee and find rest in Thee; we also sit down expecting the time when Thou shalt put down all our enemies, and we shall tread even Satan under our feet.
3. The third fact is, His dominion: Angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him. Angels are subject to Him whom they nailed to the Cross, and at whom they wagged their heads. This is one of the wonders of heaven. Men in countless myriads are in heaven white robed, praising God; and one Man is actually on the throne of God, vicegerent, Lord over all; having every knee to bow before Him, and every tongue to call Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
II. The lessons of these circumstances.
1. The religion of Christ is true. Our doctrine is not sentiment, and view, and opinion, but fact.
2. Christs cause is safe. Let not His church tremble, let her not think of putting out the hand of unbelief to steady the ark of the Lord. The wheel will turn, and they that are lowest now shall soon be highest; they that have been with Him in the dust shall be with Him in His glory.
3. Now I can sea that His saints are safe; for if Jesus has risen and gone into His glory, then each individual in Him shall be safe too.
4. This explains the way in which Jesus deals with sinners. That which took place in His own person He makes to be a picture of what takes place in the men whom He saves. If you come to Him you can only get to know the fulness of His gracious power by being buffeted with conviction and repentance, and by having self, especially self-righteousness, crucified and slain.
5. I think, since Christ has gone into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, it shows which way we ought to go. I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. He draws them to the Cross, and you may be sure He will draw them to the crown. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ at home
I. His residence.
1. He has gone there as to His proper abode.
2. To prepare for His disciples.
3. To attract the hearts of His disciples.
II. His position. On the right hand of God. The figure implies-
1. Might. Christ is at the fountainhead of power.
2. Dignity.
III. His authority.
1. Co-extensive with the universe.
2. Exercised for the promotion of moral excellence everywhere.
3. Specially contemplates the good of His followers. (Homilist.)
Angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.-
All angels subject to Christ
Both good and bad; the good willingly, the others against their will.
I. For the good angels.
1. If such glorious creatures be subject to Christ, then-
(1) How great a one is He, and how glorious is His kingdom.
(2) The greater honour and dignity our Head hath, the more joy and comfort may we have, who are His members.
2. In that He appoints them to watch and guard us-
(1) What a great honour is this to us.
(2) How may we hereby be comforted and encouraged against Satans malice.
(3) We must keep within com pass, and walk carefully in Gods ways.
II. For the evil angels.
1. All these are subject to Christ, and He hath triumphed over them.
2. As it is no small honour to Him our Head to have all these under Him, so the meditation hereof cannot but be comfortable to us, both in regard of Him and ourselves.
3. Those evil angels cannot do that evil they would, and if they cannot, much less can their instruments. (John Rogers.)
Christ the King of angels
We indeed are but little able to enter into the thoughts of apostles when they saw Him in His crucified body, ascending up into heaven. But we may understand that this was a part of their feelings; that now One, who is true Man as we are, who can enter into our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears, He is set in the highest place, over all created things. And He carries with Him there the same tender love towards the meanest of His faithful servants which He ever vouchsafed to exercise here. It was, in some sort, as if ones nearest and dearest relation were made absolute king of the country. If persons who care for earthly things would rejoice in such a change as that, and consider their own fortune made, how much more joy to those who care for heavenly things, when we set our hearts to consider that He who laid down His life for us, He is made the great King in heaven and earth, and has all the treasures of grace and glory put forever into His hand. In this we see at once is included every good thing. But for the present there is one blessing in particular. It is the subjection of the spiritual world to our Saviour, Angels and authorities and powers were made subject to the Son of Man when He went into heaven, and sat down off the right hand of God. We naturally think, even from our childhood, a good deal of the spiritual world; of beings out of sight, who yet, for aught we know, may often be very near us, and may have great power to do us good, or to hurt us in body and soul. And the thought of our Lord gone up into heaven, and sitting on the right hand of God, is a thought of great power to set us right in our feelings towards both sorts of angelic beings. Consider, first, what a thing it is to know that the good angels are on our side, that they camp about us to deliver us. This certainty of angelical aid, so far as we are on Christs side, we have by His exaltation into heaven, and the subjection to Him of angels, authorities, and powers. But those words, doubtless, mean the evil angels as well as the good; our unseen enemies, as well as our unseen friends. Let us not try to put out of our minds the notion of the bad angels being around us, until we have turned in serious prayer to Him who for our sake holds them in chains. Imagine Christ our Lord on His throne, how His eye is ever fixed, both on you in your helpless slumbering condition, and on your adversary waiting to hurt you. And be sure, that if before you lay down you seriously and reverently committed yourself to Him in prayer, with sincere penitence for all your sins, He will not let the roaring lion devour you. You may, without presumption, imagine Him, then, saying to some of His good angels, Here is one who lays down to rest, desiring to dwell under the defence Of the Most High; he hath set his love upon Me, and tried to know My name; therefore do you, My good angels, take charge of him, and keep him from the evil that walketh in darkness. (Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times.)
The ascension
Who is gone into heaven. It is the correction of all that is carnal and all that is superstitious in our religion. It is the Christian application of God is spirit. It bids us not to rest in forms; not to multiply services as services, not to rest in sacraments as sacraments, but to look through all to One who is not here, but ascended; and to be sought therefore as one deeply sympathising with human infirmity, but exercising that sympathy not in weak indulgence but in transforming strength. Who is gone into heaven, and therefore can fill all things. Such is St. Pauls argument in his Epistle to the Ephesians. He reminds us that the Saviour Himself, remaining below, must have been confined by earths conditions. It is ascension which makes Him the Omnipresent. Gone into heaven. There then seek Him, There, when you have found Him, with Him dwell. (Dean Vaughan.)
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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv18–19 18–22. For Christ also suffered. Even Christ, the Holy…
18–22. For Christ also suffered. Even Christ, the Holy One, our example, once suffered on the cross. Once. Once only. He suffers no more. Being put to death in the flesh. He was put to death by the wounds inflicted on his fleshly body. His natural, earthly life was ended. Quickened in the spirit. Put to death in the body his spirit was quickened. Having life in himself, as soon as the body failed through weakness the power of the indestructible life began to show itself.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v18 The Apostolic Fathers all believed that the human soul…
ARGUMENT 16
THE DESCENSION OF CHRIST INTO HADES
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The Apostolic Fathers all believed that the human soul of Christ was in Hades, while His body hung on the cross and lay in the sepulcher. The old versions of the Apostles’ Creed have the clause, “He descended into hell.” In the English both Gehenna and Hades are translated “hell.” In the Revised Version, Gehenna only is translated “hell,” hades being transferred, as we have no synonymous word. Hades is from alpha, not, and eidoo, to see. Hence, it simply means unseen, i.e., the invisible world, including both heaven and hell. The rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16) both went to Hades, the former to burning Tartarus, and the latter to Abraham’s Bosom, i.e., the Intermediate Paradise, in which all of the Old Testament saints accepted the translated abode till Christ “led captivity captive.” The Greek and Roman poets and philosophers (who had descended from the house of Noah) all corroborate Luke in the location of both the good and bad in the lower world, the latter in the fire of Tartarus and the former in Elysium, which means a place of unmingled bliss. The Old Testament recognizes all, both good and bad, as descending into hades. When King Saul failed to destroy Agag, i.e., to get sanctified, like all others, he utterly apostatized. In his desperation, sorely pressed by the Philistines on the battlefields of Mount Gilboa, forsaken of God, who answered him no longer in dreams, or visions, nor by urim nor thummim, he strolls away in the night to consult the Witch of Endor, who, in her panegyric of bringing up Samuel from the dead, pursuant to Saul’s request, exclaimed aloud, “I saw God ascending out of the earth.” 1Sa 28:13. Thus at that moment God brought up Samuel to deliver his final prophecy to Saul, “And tomorrow thou and thy sons shall be with me” (1Sa 28:19), thus abundantly confirming the conclusion that in the old dispensation all the dead, good and bad, went to Hades, the former to Paradise, and the latter to fiery Tartarus. Samuel was God’s holy prophet, and of course had gone to Abraham’s Bosom, the Intermediate Paradise. He tells Saul, the hopeless apostate and suicide, that he and his unconverted sons shall be with him after they are slain in Mount Gilboa, i.e., they would all be in the same place, Hades, like the rich man and Lazarus; Samuel in Paradise and Saul in Tartarus. Jesus said to the dying thief, “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” That Paradise was not heaven, for Jesus testified to the women on the Resurrection morn, that He had not yet gone up to His Father, whereas He had met the thief in Paradise on the preceding Friday. While Paul lay dead under the shower of stones at Lystra, he ascended up to the third heaven, (i.e., to heaven proper, as the firmament is the first heaven, astronomical worlds the second, and the home of the glorified the third). This third heaven is also Paradise 2Co 12:2-4. Of course the thief did not go to this Paradise, but to Abraham’s Bosom, the Intermediate Paradise. Act 2:31 :
“Foreseeing he spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ, that He may not be left in Hades nor did His flesh see corruption,”
thus revealing most unequivocally that our Savior’s human soul was in Hades while His body lay in the sepulcher, He ascending out of Hades to receive His body instead of descending down from heaven. Eph 4:8-10 vividly describes the descension of our Lord “into the lower parts of the earth,” which never could mean the sepulcher in which He was deposited, which I have frequently visited. It is not in the lower parts of the earth, but on the surface, excavated out of a great rock in the mountain side, and entered horizontally. No grave is in the “lower parts of the earth,” much less our Savior’s sepulcher.
18. “Because Christ died once for Sins, the just for the unjust, that He may lead us to God, indeed being put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit.” Spirit here in the Greek does not begin with a capital as in the English, since it does not mean the Holy Spirit, but he human spirit of Christ. This is evident from the antithesis with flesh, which is utterly destroyed by the English translation. Our Savior is perfect God and perfect man. His perfect humanity consists of a perfect human soul and body. While His body was put to death on the cross, His human soul received a powerful quickening by the Holy Ghost;
19. “By which also having gone, he proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” On this transaction the Roman Catholic purgatory has been utterly erroneously founded, as well as other false dogmata, promising sinners a second probation. The English translation “preach,” which is utterly untrue, has been made the pillar of these heretical superstructures. The Greek is erkeeruxen, which does not mean preach the Gospel at all, but proclaim as a herald; euangelein being the word, which always means to preach the Gospel.
20. The Revised Version should have corrected this error, having “proclaim” instead of preach. Of course these wicked antediluvians were with the devils in hell. Rest assured there is not a ray of hope for disembodied sinners in this passage. When our Savior came on the earth in a human body, all hell was stirred as never before. Satan and his myrmidons in their utter spiritual blindness, despite their transcendent intellects, leaped to the conclusion that if they could kill the man-Christ they would put finale to a four thousand years war, defeating the plan of salvation, achieving ultimate victory, winding up the conflict and adding earth to hell. Therefore Satan lays under contribution all the powers of the pandemonium to kill Jesus as quickly as possible. When they succeed in the seduction of Judas, a black courier wings his flight to hell with the joyous news. Meanwhile all hell is jubilant over the victory even now in sight; another courier arrives with the thrilling news of his condemnation by the grand Sanhedrin and the signature of his death warrant by Annas, the Roman high priest, and Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest. While the pandemonium is roaring and reverberating with jubilant shouts, another fiend sweeps in on black pinion, vociferating the ravishing tidings, “Both Herod and Pilate, our loyal servants, the chief autocrats of all the land, have signed His death warrant. Hence no power in all the earth can deliver Him out of our hands.” Never in all the ages was Tartarus so vociferous with shouts of victory. Now King Diabolus, encumbering his ebony throne in the great Stygian palace, orders ten thousand tall demons mounting up to superscribe in glowing candles around the pandemonium, “Victory.” Meanwhile other fiends arrive with the news, “He is nailed to the cross, bleeding and dying.” Beelzebub now arrives, testifying, “It is done. I stood by the cross and saw it all done. The grim monster has Him in his dark grip. He is dead!” and millions of devils vociferate the regions of woe with shouts of victory. Hark! A stentorian thunder-clap shakes the pandemonium from center to circumference! A light above the brilliancy of ten thousand noonday suns sweeps in from the portal, revealing all the dark, dismal dens of hell’s gorgon horrors. It is none other than the human soul of Christ; having evacuated the crucified body on the cross, He has come down, the herald of His own victory in all the regions of woe. The light radiant from His glorified soul reveals Him to every devil in the abyss. Paralyzed by panic they fall and acknowledge Him conqueror. With His own hands, as around the dark walls of the pandemonium, moving with the tread of a conqueror, He pulls down the prophecies of four thousand years’ successful warfare, and treads them beneath His feet. Now He proceeds to Satan, tremulous and quaking, on his throne, seizing him by the throat, dragging him down, puts His foot on his neck, verifying the first promise made in Eden, i.e., “the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” Having triumphed over all hell, He crosses over the deep chasm, chasma, impassable to all mortals (Luk 16:26), and before midnight enters the intermediate Paradise, called Abraham’s Bosom. Oh, how the thief runs to Him with a shout, “You said you would meet me in Paradise today and, glory to God, here you are!” Here comes Father Abraham with a tremendous shout, and takes Him in his arms. Job comes with an uproarous hallelujah. Isaac, Jacob, Caleb, Joshua, Daniel, and all the prophets, martyrs and saints, who have trodden the earth, shining, shouting and suffering for God the last four thousand years, rally around Him, rending the vaults of paradise with tremendous shouts of glory. Such an ovation that Intermediate Paradise had never known. Saturday passes by amid tremendous rejoicings. Meanwhile He marshals them all preparatory for the evacuation of the intermediate elysium, for the home of the glorified angels and redeemed saints, encircling the throne of God.
On Sunday morning begins that wonderful ascension (Eph 4:8-10), in which He leads captive all the occupants of Abraham’s Bosom, now that the Abramic covenant has been verified, and sealed with His blood, thus opening heaven to all the blood-washed. Wonderful is the rapture of that triumphant ascension, accompanied by all the Old Testament saints. He comes up to the sepulcher and receives His body on the third morn. As this mighty host of Old Testament saints were all disembodied, of course they were invisible to mortal eyes. Jesus, the only one seen, because He only had His body. Meanwhile this mighty host accompany Him in His abiding forty days with His disciples, and constitute His triumphal procession when from Mount Olivet He ascended up to the glorified home of His Father in heaven. Jesus must be the first fruits of them that slept. His glorified body, the eternal confirmation of the redemptive scheme, must first of all enter heaven. Though a number of others were raised from the dead before Christ, we have no evidence that their bodies were transfigured. Hence Jesus was the first one to raise from the dead, receiving the resurrection body. It was pertinent that all the Old Testament saints should be detained in that Intermediate Paradise till the plan of salvation was literally consummated by the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. David (Psalms 24) catches a prophetic vision of this wonderful ascension. Having risen from Mount Olivet with the velocity of lightning, they sweep through ethereal space, passing rolling worlds, glittering sphere, luminous comets and flaming suns, till now the celestial metropolis, in its ineffable glory, bursts upon their enraptured vision. “Lift joyous heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and let the King of glory come.” “Who is this King of glory?” “The Lord mighty to save, He is the King of glory.” The celestial portals all open wide, while millions of angels pour out to greet them with loud shouts: “Welcome home, ye blood-washed.” Now the King of glory entered amid the enraptured songs of the seraphim, the thrilling paeans of the cherubim, the golden harps of the archangel and the tremendous hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts, accompanied by the innumerable procession of the Old Testament saints, on and on they sweep around the clarion jubilations of countless millions, till halting before the effulgent throne, the Son salutes the Father: “Behold, I and the children whom Thou hast given me.” Such a testimony meeting as heaven has never seen now follows. Father Abraham leads the way, followed by Job, Moses, Joshua, Daniel, the prophets, patriarchs, saints and martyrs, to the ravishing delight of the angels.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv18, 20 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v18 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Peter explains how Christ suffered and what Christ accomplished by suffering.
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suffered for us
The word "us" includes the people Peter was writing to. (See: Inclusive "We")
so that he would bring us to God
Peter probably means here that Christ died in order to create a close relationship between us and God. (See: Metaphor)
He was put to death in the flesh
Here "flesh" refers to Christ's body; Christ was physically put to death. This can be stated in active form. AT: "People put Christ to death physically" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)
he was made alive by the Spirit
This can be stated in active form. AT: "the Spirit made him alive" (See: Active or Passive)
by the Spirit
Possible meanings are 1) by the Holy Spirit's power or 2) in a spiritual existence.
By the Spirit, he went
Possible meanings are 1) "By the Holy Spirit's power, he went" or 2) "In his spiritual existence, he went."
the spirits who are now in prison
Possible meanings of the word "spirits" are 1) "evil spirits" or 2) "spirits of the dead people."
when the patience of God was waiting
The word "patience" is a metonym for God himself. Peter writes of God's patience as if it is a person. AT: "when God was waiting patiently" (See: Personification and Metonymy)
in the days of Noah, in the days of the building of an ark
This can be stated in active form. AT: "during the time of Noah, when he was building an ark" (See: Active or Passive)
eight souls
Here the word "souls" refers to people. AT: "eight people" (See: Synecdoche)
translationWords
sin
righteous
righteous
die
flesh
Holy Spirit
preach
prison
disobey
patient
Noah
ark
save
soul
water
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv18–20 3:18-22 As in 2:21-25, Peter again appeals to Christ,…
3:18-22 As in 2:21-25, Peter again appeals to Christ, who was righteous and yet suffered, as an example for believers facing persecution (3:13-17). The unique work of Christ on our behalf reminds suffering Christians that they have a secure foundation for hope and confidence.
3:18 He suffered physical death (literally death in the flesh), but he was raised to life in the Spirit (or in spirit): Flesh and spirit are often contrasted (e.g., Rom 7:5-6; 8:2-11). Here, flesh stands for ordinary human life; the Spirit stands for the new realm inaugurated through Christ’s death and resurrection. Christ died in the old realm and came to life in the new realm.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.