1 Peter 3:18-20 For Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh… 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 Christ's 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 Christ's 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. Peter's "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 God's 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 God's dealing may have their reconciliation and their justification in this hint of the apostle's — 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.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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: |
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