This time we’ve reached what are maybe the new testament’s most difficult verses. But of course as part of the Bible they do have their value for us!:
`For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. He was put to death in the body [or, the flesh] but made alive in the Spirit, 19 through whom [or, the spirit, in which] also he went and preached [or, proclaimed] to the spirits in prison, 20 because [or, when] they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared. In it only a few people, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience [or, response of a good conscience; or, as an appeal to God for a good conscience]. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. 4:1 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.`
What does all this mean?
First, I think we can say with some certainty that it’s not referring to the ancient idea of the `harrowing of hell`. In this, after his cry of `It is finished`, Christ went personally and triumphantly to hell and brought out of there the imprisoned old testament believers. (I say ancient, because this idea does go back to the second century.) A case can be made, eg from Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 12:40 that `the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth`, for saying that the OT believers were somewhere other than heaven, probably the `paradise` of Luke 23:43; and that after completing the sacrifice for their sins, and until his resurrection, Christ went to be with them – joyously and wonderfully one imagines! But be that as it may, it’s obviously not what’s referred to here in 1 Peter 3, because what this passage explicitly emphasises is that these spirits had disobeyed. So then there are three main interpretations:
(a) These verses describe Jesus going between his death and resurrection to that part of Sheol (Greek equivalent: Hades) reserved for the dead who are lost, to `proclaim` his triumph to those (human) spirits of the dead who had rejected the preaching in Noah’s time. (It’s worth noting in passing that some interpreters, arguing that there must have been different degrees of awareness of Noah’s message among the vast number drowned in the flood, see the possible translation `preaching` here as a cause to be hopeful about the eventual fate of the more righteous at least among the unevangelized; but again, the point Peter bothers to make here is that they were disobedient.)
(b) Or, the `spirits in prison’ to whom Christ proclaims his triumph could be the fallen angels whose actions (Genesis 6 seems to be saying) played a key role in precipitating the Noachic flood (and whose equivalents are still persecuting the believers). Peter does indeed seem to have these beings in mind in 2 Peter 2:4. But it wasn’t for them that God `waited patiently`.
(c) Or lastly, Peter is giving us a series of examples, of God’s witnesses who underwent Spirit-empowered suffering (cf 3:13-17), that led the salvation-process further and led on to ultimate vindication. Then Christ is the first of these examples, and Noah the second.
Now a key question for us is, Why is all this here? – that is, how do these verses add to or fit into the letter’s overall flow of thought?
And to me this question seems hardest if we see Jesus proclaiming his triumph, between his death and resurrection, to those spirits of the dead, whether human or angelic, who had rejected or opposed the preaching in Noah’s time. That’s quite a common interpretation, and the logical sequence in the passage of allusions to Christ’s dying, preaching, rising and ascending might make it attractive. (Some indeed would see a connection with 1 Peter 4:6; but unfortunately that verse and its implications are also debatable (see PPPS) and may very well not refer to the same events at all. Obviously it doesn’t refer to fallen angels.) However, as Peter Davids notes in his thorough commentary, `made alive` in 1 Cor 15:22-23 (and, Davids argues, elsewhere) means the resurrection, and therefore seems unlikely to mean anything else here in 1 Peter 3. And to this reader at any rate, it is hard to see why Peter should suddenly bring these events up (come to that, why would Christ have given attention before his resurrection to the disobedient spirits from Noah’s time in particular?) And it’s harder still to summarize his thought-flow in a way that makes the illustration integral, and then leads on naturally to baptism.
So the other alternative is to see Peter as giving us a series of Spirit-inspired witnesses who underwent suffering (cf 3:13-17) that led the salvation-process further and led to their ultimate vindication, as his readers’ sufferings will too. (Peter was interested in Noah’s preaching, cf 2 Peter 2:5; and if Noah as a preacher is in view here too, is Peter’s point also that because Noah stood out, refusing to join the `flood’ of debauchery around him (cf 1 Peter 4:4), he was saved (as Peter’s readers will be) when that flood turned into the flood of judgment?) So then Christ was the ultimate example of this faithfulness (v18); the Spirit raised Christ from the dead (v18, cf Rom 8:11); and, by the same Spirit, Christ also preached through Noah in Noah’s time. (Compare how Acts 3:26 or Ephesians 2:17 speak of Christ as preaching through others; and more importantly the reference to preaching through the Spirit here in 1 Peter 1:12, and most especially Genesis 6:3.) Christ, then, is the first of these examples to us, and Noah the second. (Peter alludes again to the flood in 2 Peter 3:3-7; and there his encouragement is again that, if we are despised (as Noah was at that time), and if our message about both our hope (v15) and the coming judgment is likewise rejected, we too will ultimately be vindicated.) Noah too was rejected by the people of the old world (`only a few’ were saved there too, 1 Peter 3:20); but his apparent rejection resulted – as ours will too – in his being `saved’, passing through to the new world.
And then Peter moves on. This salvation-process is what baptism is about, he says. It’s a total breaking with the drowned old world, which parallels (`symbolizes’, v21) Noah’s. (The Chinese writer Watchman Nee has a perceptive and very helpful chapter (ch3) on this in his excellent Love Not the World: in baptism, he says, `You come up in Christ, but your world is drowned.`) And baptism also reflects (cf Rom 6:3-5) Christ’s own triumphant resurrection into the new world (vv21-22); triumph we will one day visibly and gloriously share (cf 2 Thess 1:10) – our `living hope (1:3-4)!
So then, Peter concludes, `Arm yourselves with the same attitude’ of determined faithfulness as Christ and Noah demonstrated (4:1 NIV; cf 3:14-15 and Heb 12:1-3), and set your hearts upon radical distinctiveness (4:2) from the world around you (4:2-4); in view also of the fact that one day we will have to `give account` of our lives to God (4:5-7). (Lord, I pray, please help me in these issues – for I know this is not just an intellectual puzzle, but a matter of my ongoing `salvation’!)
In summary, then, if we write down these verses’ sequence of ideas, it seems to be something like this – including several things we can turn now into worship and prayer:
(i) First we have one of the new testament’s clearest statements of Christ paying the penalty for our sins, the righteous for us the unrighteous (v18). This is vital in itself. But also our example, if we suffer, is Christ suffering for us and then being vindicated (v18 as a whole; following on from vv13-15a);
(ii) In or through the same (Holy) Spirit, another witness, Noah, preached during another time when (just like now, 2 Peter 3:9, 15, 3-7) God’s judgment had not yet been revealed because God was `waiting patiently’; namely the time before the flood (vv19-20);
(iii) That judgment, when it came, also became part of the salvation-process (v20) – just as will the judgment of the second coming that is the theme of most of 2 Peter 3;
(iv) And the flood parallels water-baptism which has a similar role in our own, personal, salvation-process (v21); in that its meaning (which we must never forget as our own baptism recedes into the past) is cutting us off from a doomed `drowned world’, and bringing us through to a new world;
(v) The other side of baptism is that it symbolizes for us also (as we come up again out of the water) the resurrection, whereby, after his suffering, Christ likewise passed, triumphantly, into the other world (v21-22) – as one day we will too!;
(vi) Therefore, says Peter to us: remembering the distinctiveness and holy radicalism of lifestyle (and mockery), and eventual glorious triumph, that Christ endured, and that Noah too must surely have faced: `arm yourselves with the same attitude’ (cf 3:15a); because (4:1, `as a result` 4:2) identifying with such suffering (eg consciously in our baptism; cf Rom 6:3-8), particularly that of Christ, and being open to it if need be, is of crucial value in our own struggles with sin and wrong desires (4:2-4). Set your hearts upon radical distinctiveness (4:2) from the world around you (4:2-4), he says, in view also of the fact that one day we will have to `give account` of our lives to God (4:5-7).
This approach seems to fit the passage’s ideas into the book’s overall flow.
Still, with such a complex section we may feel it is simplest to focus our attention on the flow of thought that is expressed clearly in 3:17-18 and then `emerges into the open again’ in 4:1-2!- because the intervening verses don’t seem to have changed it significantly.
PS This post obviously assumes that `baptism now saves you’ in 1 Peter 3:21 is not presenting baptism as that moment of new birth that is central to the biblical gospel. This seems clear from other parts of Scripture; we are born again in response to the verbal Word (1 Peter 1:23), through heart-repentance and faith (Acts 20:21). Paul makes it very clear that baptism does not form part of his `gospel’ (1 Cor 1:17). Rather, we may understand `saves’ here as referring to the ongoing salvational process that is so much a theme for Peter’s letter. (`Salvation` is a term used in different ways in the new testament; most often it does refer to new birth by faith, eg Acts 16:31; but Paul sometimes uses `salvation’ for the ongoing salvational process, cf Phil 2:12 or 1 Tim 4:16; and indeed Hebrews 9:28 uses it for the moment of final completion of that process at the second coming.) And what primarily saves people here in baptism, as Davids notes, is not the outward washing, but the verbalized `pledge` or `response` of faith made at that time from the conscience; cf Romans 10:9-10.
PPS There’s plenty that’s puzzling and controversial in this post already – so let me make matters even worse! There’s an issue with the biblical understanding of hell. Obviously this word refers to the tragic, agonizing state after death, for those who reject the gospel, of complete separation from God (eg 2 Thess 1:9), and therefore of complete, unimaginable separation from all love, all joy, all peace, and all hope, because all of these have their roots in God; and it’s this horrendous, consequential penalty for sin, this total separation from God with all that that means, that Christ was bearing for us on the cross when he cried out `My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!` Personally, however, I don’t see anything in Scripture to say that this condition (as distinct from its markers and results, like the smoke of destruction in Rev 14:11 and 19:3) is eternally conscious, rather than one where existence does at some stage come to an end (as words like `second death` and the frequently used `destruction` would suggest); so that, as Jesus says in Matthew 10:28, hell is a place where `both body and soul` are [in time] `destroyed`. But I know this is something wiser and godlier people than me see differently – I think for example of such `greats` as John Piper and Don Carson. (See for example ch13 of Carson’s brilliant The Gagging of God.) Alternatively, for the view that immortality is conditional on relationship to God (cf John 17:3) and that therefore the lost simply cease, tragically, to exist at some point, one looks to other evangelical `greats` (and highly effective evangelists!) like John Stott, Michael Green, and Roger Forster. (Fudge’s The Fire That Consumes is a respected statement of this point of view.) The Evangelical Alliance has produced a brief but superb and extremely helpful study of both views titled The Nature of Hell (2000). C S Lewis’ The Great Divorce is also very helpful. Whatever, we must never forget (so easy to say this) that the gospels quote our master Jesus speaking of hell some forty times – `the fiery furnace where there will be weeping`, Matt 13:50. God’s love should motivate us each to do all we can to ensure that nobody, anywhere at all, fails to realise the huge consequences of joining their lives now to Jesus, or not. (Again, so very easy to say…)
PPPS Lastly, I have suggested above that 1 Peter 4:6 is not the key to interpreting our passage. (`This is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.`) I suggest that in this difficult verse Peter describes those believers who were now dead, whether perhaps in the days before Christ or (more importantly) closer to the time when Peter is writing; people who had responded in faith to the preached `gospel` he refers to, and therefore, `in the flesh`, been criticised (4:4) and scorned (`judged` v6, and cf `insulted` v14), maybe even persecuted and martyred; but in their `clear-minded` obedience to God and the gospel preached to them they ended up (and here is another example of Peter’s ongoing theme of suffering and glory) living triumphantly to God – like Jesus in fact (cf the similar wording in 3:18). And as 4:5 (and 4:7) emphasise, there is a resurrection (`in the spirit) and a divine judgment coming which will demonstrate their vindication; such an example is to be followed, which is the theme of 4:1-8 and much of Peter’s culminating section as a whole. More about that next time…
