I hope you have a Bible and you turn with me to I Peter 3, because I think it will be especially helpful to have the text in front of you. We’ve been studying this letter written by the apostle Peter section by section, and we are entering what most find to be the most difficult section to understand. In other words, what it sounds like it’s saying many find hard to accept or fit with their theology. There have been some who have even said this is the most difficult section in all the New Testament.
I’d like to start by just reading the text, I Peter 3:17-22, “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, 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 as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through 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.”
Now, Peter wrote two letters. In His second letter He says something toward the end I find a little humorous. He says, “Our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you about these things… In his letters there are some things hard to understand…” Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me. He says Paul wrote some stuff hard to understand, and then he gives us this.
What’s this bit in verse 18 and 19 about Christ dying but living in spirit and going and preaching to the spirits in prison. Who were these spirits, what exactly did He preach to them, and when and why? Then this business in verse 21, “Baptism now saves you…” That’s a very strong view of baptism, a very high view of baptism, which we don’t find too difficult to understand because that fits with our view of baptism. But most Christian denominations find that to be a difficult verse. And how is all this connected? Why do we go from talk about suffering, to Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, to spirits in prison, to Noah and the flood, to baptism?
It kind of reminds me of the Church of Christ preacher, who had a hobby of preaching on baptism. Baptism was kind of the main point of every sermon every Sunday. So the elders decided to ask him to just preach through the Bible, section by section, beginning in Genesis. So the next Sunday the preacher stood up and said let’s open our Bibles to Genesis 1. Let’s read here beginning at Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surfaces of the waters…” which brings me to the subject for this morning, baptism. And Peter could do the same; he could go from talking about suffering for righteousness and turn it into a lesson on baptism.
Well, that’s not a fair accusation against Peter. I think he had good flow of thought here, it’s maybe just hard for us to see at first.
There are certain rules we need to apply in interpreting the Bible.
The first is, you have to study it.
I mean not just read it. There’s a lot of truth in the Bible that you will not obtain through just a casual reading. II Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed accurately handling the word of truth.” It takes diligence and work often to accurately handle the word… to understand it correctly and apply it appropriately. Ezra 7:10, the good hand of God was upon Ezra, because he “had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statues and ordinances in Israel.” God’s word is designed to be not just read but studied, read and reread slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, humbly, prayerfully. And it is like a gold mine, you have to dig and work at it. But the more you do, the more you will discover.
And another rule for understanding the Bible is to take the Bible in its plainest, simplest meaning.
Even if it seems a bit strange to you, don’t try and twist the words around. Don’t try and look for some hidden meaning. Just take what it sounds like it’s saying as what it means and see where that leads you. The apostle Paul had to tell this one time to the Corinthians. From the contents of II Corinthians we can see Paul was being accused of a lot of stuff in Corinth and one of the things seems to be that he was not straightforward in his letters; that he writes in sort of a cryptic and purposely ambiguous sort of way. So Paul says in II Corinthians 1:13, “We write nothing else to you than what you read and understand and I hope you will understand…” In other words, “I don’t write in a secret code. I don’t write so that only those who have the special key can unlock what I’m saying. What it sounds like I’m saying that’s what I’m saying.”
With about any passage of Scripture you can explain it to say whatever you want it to say. You can assign various meanings to the words. You can take it figurative or literal or a mixture of both. You can say it’s employing sarcasm or hyperbole or adjust the punctuation because the original text did not have punctuation. You can say the author assumed his readers would understand this and or that; it’s between the lines. You can do all kinds of things to any passage to make it say what you want. That’s why Bible teachers with very different theologies, very different views of God and His will and salvation and so forth, can teach through the whole Bible verse by verse and explain every verse in a way that fits their theology. I had a Jehovah Witness guy tell me one time, “the reason I’m a Jehovah Witness is because they can explain every verse of the Bible in a way that’s consistent with their doctrine.” Well, so can I and so can the teachers of most denominations, though they have opposing doctrines. But what we are supposed to do with the Bible is not see if we can interpret it in a way that we’re comfortable with, that fits with how we already think. What we’re supposed to do is humbly listen to it; be open to correction and change, and accept the most straightforward meaning.
Another rule is, look at the context.
Whenever you come upon a verse that could be interpreted in various ways by itself, you have to read the verses that come before and the verses that come after. Try to see the flow of thought. What is the subject the author is talking about? What’s the point he’s making? What’s his argument? What’s he trying to prove or explain? What interpretation of this verse fits with the flow of thought in the passage?
A fourth rule is, never use one text to contradict another.
All scripture interpreted correctly will be in harmony. But we need to be careful with that principle. I think it’s an all too common mistake that we reject the straightforward way of taking the passage because we too quickly assume it would contradict other passages. What we really need to do is carefully, humbly reconsider those other passages and see if there really would be contradiction.
Well, there are other rules and principles for interpreting the Bible, but I wanted to remind you of those few because they’re especially important here. And I’ve tried to apply these principles to my study of this passage.
Did you notice in what we read and what we’ve studied so far in I Peter that…
Peter is concerned about these Christians compromising their commitment to the Lord in the face of persecution?
You can see in I Peter 4:4, these Christians live among people who think they’re weird because they don’t run with them and do the same things and they’re being maligned for it; which means these Christians have neighbors saying some really ugly things about them. They went from being in the “in crowd” to outcasts in society. They see people whispering about them. They’re probably losing business if they have a business, or they’re the butt of office jokes at the office. This new faith and way of life is already hurting and costing a little. And we know from our vantage point in history, that it was about to get worse. The Roman government was about to step in and make Christianity illegal and severely persecute Christians. So Peter is writing to give them perspective that will make them strong, to keep doing what is right even if the mistreatment they’re suffering intensifies.
His main point in what we read I think is found in verse 17.
“For it is better if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”
When you anticipate being attacked for doing the right thing, you’ve got two options. Option 1 is do what is right and suffer for it. Or option 2 is do what is wrong and suffer for it. You don’t avoid suffering by doing what is wrong. You just postpone it. There’s a measure of suffering either way. But suffering for doing what is right is a much better option.
Is it really? Is it really worth losing your friends because you won’t run with them in the things you used to do with them? Is it worth going to church when your relatives roll their eyes and shake their head when you tell them where you’re going? Is it worth losing some business by going to church and by being totally honest with customers, or open about your faith? I see a lot of people who don’t care at all what the Lord says; they live how they want, and they seem happy. They seem to enjoy life. Many of them are wealthy and healthy and at ease. When you cannot foresee any earthly benefit, when it just looks like it will hurt you socially or economically or physically, is it really still better to do what is right?
Peter first reminds us of…
The suffering of Jesus
Jesus is the greatest example of undeserved suffering that there has ever been. Some ancient manuscripts, in verse 18, say He “died” for our sins, others say He “suffered”. I think suffering is right. Peter is wanting to remind us of the suffering of Jesus. The just man, the righteous man, the perfect man, and at the age of about 33, He went through the most horrible suffering: stripped naked, flogged to within an inch of His life, nailed to beams of wood, stood up to hang, exposed to the heat of the sun, His body gradually dehydrated until His tongue cleaved to the roof of His mouth, and for hours He had to constantly choose between the pain of suffocating and the pain of pushing himself up on the nails to breathe easier. O He suffered and totally undeserved.
Was it worth it?
Peter says look at what resulted for others and look at what resulted for Jesus Himself. Concerning others, it saved millions from perishing and brought them to know God and love God and into friendship with God. Peter has told us earlier in the letter, likewise when we suffer mistreatment and yet we just keep loving the people anyway and continue to do what’s right, we may attract those who caused us suffering to God.(2:12, 15; 3:1-2) On a small scale, like Jesus suffered for us to bring us to God, we can suffer for people to bring them to God.
And then Peter says consider what happened to Jesus after His suffering. To all human appearances, it was all over for Him. But, the end of verse 18 literally says, “having been put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit.” Often in scripture, “in flesh” and “in spirit” are two different modes of existence. And at death, we go from one to the other. Physical death is a separation of your spirit from your body. At death you continue to exist without your body as a spirit. Like God is a spirit and angels are spirits. You exist as a spirit.
So Jesus departed His body. Then what?
I used to domesticate verses 19-20. You know what I mean? What it sounds like it’s saying is kind of wild and crazy and was hard to contain in my understanding of things. So I tried to tame them, explain them in a way that was easier to manage for me. I used to say this was not talking about what Jesus did after His death, but rather something He did back in the days of Noah before the flood; way back in Noah’s day, the spirit of Christ preached to the disobedient people of the world, perhaps using Noah as his prophet, and those people, now that they are dead, are spirits in prison. You can fiddle with the wording and take it that way. The translators of the NASB sort of did that. They inserted the word “now” into the text. So that version reads, “He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison”. They’re suggesting the interpretation I used to take, that when Jesus preached to these people they were living on earth, but now they are in prison. But you notice, if you have the NASB, the word “now” is italicized which means there was no word in the Greek text for “now”. It’s an added word. The way it reads literally is “having being put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit, in which He also went and preached the spirits in prison.” If Peter wanted to say back in Noah’s day, He preached to people and those people now are spirits in prison, he could easily have said that in a much clearer way. What it sounds like he’s saying, and what every Greek scholar will admit is also what it sounds like in the Greek text: is that after Jesus died, in spirit He went and preached or proclaimed something to other spirits in a prison of some sort, and those spirits he preached to were those that lived on earth back in the days of Noah and were disobedient to God.
The more I learn from the Bible the more I’m seeing that just because it’s weird to us or goes against our traditional understanding of things, is no reason to reject what a verse sounds like it’s saying. I’m often finding weird tradition-challenging stuff in the Bible. So I take this to mean what it sounds like it means.
Now, if you’re like me, immediately you have a bunch of questions about that, what did Jesus preach to them? And who exactly were these spirits? Were they the spirits of people? Some think these were the spirits of angels who had rebelled against God before the flood? Or was it both? Obnoxiously Peter doesn’t answer all our questions here. He leaves us hanging at this point. I decided, so that I have time to get through the rest of this passage, to be as obnoxious as Peter and just bring it up, create all these burning questions in your mind and leave you hanging… until next time. But until then, let me give you a little homework: see if you can find any other passages that say anything about what happened after Jesus died, but before He rose.
Why does Peter mention this preaching to the spirits in prison?
I think for two reasons.
One, he wants his readers to consider what happened to the disobedient. They may have had fun on earth as they disobeyed God, but when their spirits departed their bodies at death they went to prison in the spirit realm. They went to prison for thousands of years. Of course, I don’t know how fast or slow time passes in the spirit realm, but the point is, it would have been better for them to suffer a little to do what is right, rather than the suffering they’ve experienced for doing what is wrong. Jesus on the other hand, when He departed, also went to prison, but not to stay, just to do some prison ministry. He went there to preach to the captives. And then He left and as verse 22 says, He’s gone to the right of God, and was put in authority over all creation even all powerful beings in the spirit realm. That’s why it’s always better to do what is right even if you have to suffer for it in this life. We continue to exist when we leave and the choices we make here determine where we go and what happens to us when we leave.
Secondly, I think Peter mentions these ante-diluvians, these before-the-floodians, because he wants to lead into saying something about our…
Baptism
But why did he want to say something about our baptism in a context where he’s warning and encouraging them to stay obedient no matter what? Two reasons I think.
For one, he wants his readers to have assurance about their salvation. When we were obedient to the gospel in the waters of baptism we were saved like obedient Noah and his family were saved in water. In baptism, we entered the ark, the body of Christ. We’ve come into safety. He wants to give them a sense of security.
But there’s another reason Peter brings up our baptism. He also wants to prevent a false sense of security, prevent them from thinking that because they’ve been converted, because they’ve been baptized, that now they can get away with doing what’s wrong.
There’s a word in verse 21 that is understood in different ways and important to the interpretation of the passage. My version translates it “appeal”. “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you – not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience…” That word in the Greek text has a range of possible meanings. For example, it’s like our English word “field.” What does “field” mean? Well it has a range of possible meanings. It could mean a cultivated piece of land. Or it could refer to a background area, as in, “a flag with a field of blue.” Or a field could be a topic or subject of academic interest, like the field of mathematics. It could be an area where a sport takes place, as in “the players took to the field.” Well, this word had a range of meanings. How do you know what meaning is intended? Context, right? The meaning of this word that I think fits best here is “pledge” or “vow” or “promise”. That’s the way the NIV translates the word.
Here’s what I hear him saying: “Remember in that ungodly world of old how there was an obedient family and they were saved through the water. Sort of like that, baptism now saves you. But do you know why baptism saves you? It’s not because you needed a bath and now that you’re cleaner physically, God accepts you. The reason baptism saves you is that when you’re baptized you’re making a pledge to God to maintain a good conscience. You’re saying to God in the act of baptism, ‘I’m burying my old life. I’m rising to be a new person. I’m going to serve You and do what’s right from now on. I’m going to be obedient and keep a good conscience.” Remember at 3:16 he said, “keep a good conscience…” I think at 3:21 he says that’s what we pledged to do at baptism. And that’s part of why baptism saves.
I see Peter doing sort of like “John the Baptist”, though John was talking to people who wanted to be baptized and Peter is talking to people who have been baptized.
People would come out to John to be baptized in the Jordan River and John would say to them (paraphrasing), “You know baptism is not going to do you any good unless you bear fruits of repentance, unless you actually start doing what is good and right in your life, unless you start being honest and compassionate and pure. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown to the fire.” For baptism to be effective, there needs to be true repentance, genuine commitment to serve the Lord in your life. And I hear Peter in a similar vein telling Christians, the reason you were saved in baptism, was you were expressing your repentance and commitment to the Lord, you were pledging a good conscience. And so now you need to keep your pledge no matter what may happen to you in this life.
Baptism doesn’t guarantee us heaven. It’s more like when you make a reservation at a restaurant. You call them up ahead of time and say, “I’m coming there at 6 o’clock; please have a table for me.” And they say, “Alright, great, we’ll have a table for you at 6.” But that doesn’t mean at 6 o’clock, you’ll be teleported to your table. You actually have to go there. Baptism is how the Lord has told us to connect with God and say, “God, I’m going to follow Jesus to You, please have a spot for me.” And God says, “Great, I’ll reserve a spot for you. And to help you along the way with guidance and strength when you need it, I’ll send you My Spirit to help you.” So we have a spot in heaven when we’re baptized. But then we have to follow Jesus there, even if He leads us through valleys of suffering.
And just to make sure we don’t think we’re accomplishing our salvation ourselves, Peter adds that baptism saves “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God…” If Jesus had been unfaithful and not risen and exalted and given the authority He has, then we would have no hope, our baptism would be useless. It’s because Jesus lives and reigns as king of all, that when we’re baptized in obedience to Him, He grants us salvation. And no force in the universe can interfere with what He decides. And as long as we follow Him, we are headed to blessing and glory and wonders we cannot even imagine.
Here’s the point: it is always better to do what is right, to keep a good conscience, to imitate Jesus, even when you will suffer for it.
-James Williams