Having decided my approach to and having exegeted the text I now had to work on the point, the meaning of the passage for the people who would be sat before me as I preached.

Why has the Holy Spirit inspired Peter to write this complicated and detailed piece of Scripture? What is the message he wants to get over?

Let’s look at the context:

We’re forced to do that because v18 begins with ‘for’ or ‘because’, which takes us back to v17 and v17 also starts with a ‘for’ or ‘because’ which takes us back to the verses before that – which were the verses we had studied the previous week.

v17 is the hinge, the transition.

Let’s recap on verses 13-16:

v14 – suffering for righteousness’ sake brings God’s blessing

v15 - we need to be ready to explain ourselves to non-Christians as they observe us bearing witness in times of unjust suffering

v16 - we must be conscientious, making sure that if we suffer, we only suffer persecution for good reasons, for living godly lives

v17 then sums up that section and leads into some evidences to back up the statement

Based on this I came up with the following as my theme for the sermon: “Making Sense of Undeserved Suffering” and I had five points of application.

1. Suffering is to be Expected - consider Christ

2. Suffering is Part of the Battle - consider the spirits

3. Suffering is not a Mark of God’s Failure but of his Patience - consider Noah

4. Suffering does not defeat God but serves his purposes - consider the ascended Christ

5. Deserved suffering is all that awaits those who reject God’s offer of salvation in Christ - consider yourself

(mp3 recording of preached message)

Following yesterdays’ post were I shared my approach to this difficult passage, here’s how I went on to share my textual exegesis and tomorrow I’ll post my outline and application.

v18    “For Christ also suffered” – some versions say suffer, some die – dying is, of course, ultimate suffering, but I’m convinced suffer would be the word Peter would opt for.  He uses it 11 times in his letter and it is the main theme of this section of the letter, starting at 3v8

v18    “once for sins” – here is a reference to the atoning, propitiatory work of Christ on the cross, when he died in the place of sinful men and women, taking upon himself and in his body the righteous wrath of a holy God.  The word once, is the Greek word ‘hapax’ which means ‘of perpetual validity’, ‘not requiring repetition’, hence ‘once for all’ as some translations have it – once for all sins and once for all time.

 v18    “the righteous for the unrighteous” – here’s the reality of 2 Cor.5v21: “For our sake he (God) made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 v18    “that he might bring us to God” – here is the specific purpose of Christ’s death – to reconcile us with God.  The idea here is of someone introducing you or giving you access to another person; someone who gives you rights of access; to gain an audience at court.  Jesus died to open up the way to God.

 v18    “being put to death in the flesh” – these words are very strong, indicating violence, execution, a deliberate terminating of the Saviour’s earthly life.  This leaves no ground for any of the ridiculous ideas that perhaps Christ never really dies on the cross.  If sheer logic doesn’t persuade you of the foolishness of that idea, God’s Word leaves you in no doubt.

 v18    “but made alive in the spirit” – now things begin to get interesting and a little less clear.  The issue here is, should spirit have a small ‘s’ or a capital ‘S’, meaning the Holy Spirit.  Translators are split right down the middle on this one.  My own conviction as I have studied this, is that this is not a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit and that we should opt for the lower case spirit.  There are two reasons for this, one of which we will see more clearly in a moment when we look at the next verse.  But in the original, there is no definite article before either ‘flesh’ or ‘spirit’ – it’s simply – ‘put to death in flesh but made alive in spirit’.  Surely if Peter wanted us to see a reference to the Holy Spirit, he would have said, as he does elsewhere, ‘the Spirit’.  Here, ‘spirit’ is in contrast to ‘flesh’. 

You see, when Jess died on cross, he died physically, in the flesh.  Of that there is no doubt. But he also, albeit it briefly, even momentarily, died spiritually.   I think we often overlook this factor in the death of Christ.  As he hung on the cross, butchered and bloodied, the righteous for the unrighteous, bearing in his body the sins of men and women, your sins and mine, becoming the very embodiment of human rebellion and godlessness, God the Father, with whom he had only ever known unbroken fellowship abandoned him, turned his back on him and the torment of the whipping and the beating and the crucifixion was as nothing compared to this – ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’    That’s spiritual death – separation from God.  Jesus experienced on the cross that will happen to all who die without accepting Christ as their Saviour – spiritual death – albeit in his case, temporarily because the sins for which he was dying were not his own. But, because Christ was sinless, and because his sacrificial death was accepted by God as the punishment for sin, he didn’t remain dead, either spiritually or physically.  Physically, we know, he was raised to life on the third day but as soon as the price for sin had been paid, Jesus was made alive spiritually –‘in spirit’.

v19    “in which he went and proclaimed…..water”   Now, if you’ll pardon the pun, we really are in deep water textually.  This most difficult of verses tells us four things – what Jesus did, to whom, where and why

what – in his resurrected spiritual nature, Jesus went somewhere. The word is very definite; it cannot mean anything other than going from one place to another.

to whom – “the spirits (who were) in prison because they formerly……”   there is a very deliberate use of words here “the spirits”, only ever used in this particular way when not referring to humans.  These are not human beings to whom Jesus is going but spirits, fallen spiritual beings.    Specifically, they are spirits who disobeyed in the days of Noah.  Reference here is to the second most disputed passage in Scripture, Gen.6vv1-4.  No time to analyse in depth, but let me give you the situation described for us.  This was a time of heightened, extreme Satanic influence, possession and rebellion; the climax of demonic activity which ultimately exhausted God’s patience and brought about the flood, vv5-8.   Here was a generation of people who were so corrupt and evil that they were either literally demonic or behaved as if they were demons themselves, led astray by hosts of marauding fallen angels or demons – the very elite of Satan’s hosts.    During the long 120 years in which Noah was building the ark, probably employing many of the unbelievers around him, Noah preached righteousness, both by his words and actions.  He explained what he was doing and why; he warned of the flood to come an pleaded with men and women to repent and be saved with him; but such was the depravity of the human heart at that time that not one person outside of his own family responded and was saved, and all that time, says Peter, God was patient.  One writer says, “Noah’s contemporaries were notoriously wicked and served as agents of demonic spirits in their rebellion against God.   There is no other time in history in which the contrast between faith and unbelief, obedience and disobedience, was as pronounced as in the days of Noah.   The rebellious spirits seemed to control the human race with the exception of Noah and his family.”   It is to these demons, these spirits, that Jesus goes.

where – these spirits from Noah’s day are, says Peter, in prison, and the word can only mean a specific place, not just a concept of being restrained or bound.   Revelation tells us that God has a place called Hades, or the Abyss, where certain fallen angels, because of the heinousness of their sin, are being imprisoned and held, awaiting their final sentence and punishment in the lake of eternal fire.   Look at Judevv6-7 and at 2 Pet.2vv4-5

why? – Jesus went to these most fallen of fallen angels and preached to them.  The word here is not ‘euangelizo’ – to evangelise; but ‘kerusso’ – to herald, to proclaim, to declare, to preach.   This wasn’t a Gospel message pleading for repentance. This was a heralding of triumph, a declaration of the victory he had just won over all the powers of sin and death and hell and Satan.   Perhaps – demons were actually in midst of celebrations – just seen their arch enemy put to death; their Master, Satan, had won; perhaps now they would soon be released; suddenly Jesus, in his eternal spirit appears and declares his victory.

Let me give you my take on where we are at at the moment;

At some time after his death and probably before his bodily resurrection, Jesus passed through the place where God has imprisoned the worst of the fallen angels and proclaimed his victory over them.

Now, the mention of Noah and the flood, leads Peter to draw in an analogy, that of baptism and salvation, although he’s not primarily thinking of water baptism, though he does have it in mind.  Here’s the parallels he is making:

·         the very judgement which brought death and destruction to the rest of humanity, brought deliverance to Noah and his family who were “brought safely through” (v20). Not saved from, but brought through.

- the  purpose of the ark was two-fold; a visual object lesson to the unbelievers of the impending judgement on the world and a mans of rescue and salvation for Noah and his family

-         as the flood immersed all in judgement, so Christ’s final judgement will immerse all, but as some were saved

·         just as Noah and his family were saved through the flood by means of the ark, so believers are saved through judgement by Christ, as symbolised in baptism

·         it wasn’t the ark that really saved Noah, any more than water baptism saves men and women.  The ark as a visible symbol of Noah’s faith in the promise of God that is he trusted in the ark he would be saved.  So baptism is an outward, visible symbol of the believer having put their faith in Christ as the only one who can save them from the flood of judgement that will one day sweep the world away

 You see, it’s not the baptism that saves it’s the “appeal to God for a good conscience”.  This is a technical term, used in making contracts.  Here the believer comes to God and agrees to meet certain conditions before God will place them in the ark of Christ –the conditions are a desire to be cleansed – to have a good conscience – which comes through repentance and faith.

In Rom.6vv3-3 Paul tells us that all true believers have been baptised by the Holy Spirit into Christ – in his death and resurrection and this is what effectively saves us – in the same way as the ark saved Noah and his family through the Old Testament flood.

I don’t plan to make a habit of this but from time to time I thought it might be helpful to others and to myself to post an exposition I have recently been engaged with and encourage comments and input from others. At Harper Memorial Baptist Church, Glasgow, where I am on the preaching team, we are working through 1 Peter on Sunday evenings and shortly before Christmas it fell to me to preach on 1 Peter 3vv17-22, one of the most disputed passages of Scripture. I have preached through 1 Peter myself before but in a 5 day conference where you don’t have the chance to get into too much detail, and when I looked up my notes for that I realised that I had only given a cursory glance at these verses.

One of my main concerns was how to be honest about the numerous areas of uncertainty that surround this passage without undermining my hearers’ confidence in the reliability of Scripture or in their own ability to read and interpret it for themselves. Allied to that was the question of how to deal with that aspect of things without becoming totally sidetracked and missing the pastoral application of the passage itself. What good would it be even if I managed to carefully exegete the text and work through the minefields without concentrating on the spiritual nd pastoral application to those God would bring under his word on this occasion.

As I considered how to approach these verses I decided I would do so in a somewhat different way from normal.

1. I decided to take the issues head on and use them as an opportunity, albeit brief, to teach the congregation about the nature of the original biblical text - all in upper case, no word, let alone verse, divisions and no punctuation - and how this afforded plenty of opportunities for differences of interpretation and understanding.

2. I would also take pains to assure them that though such differences existed they affected, in reality, a very few portions of God’s Word and never in an area that was crucial for salvation, essential doctrine or godly living.

3. All of the above would take up no more than five minutes of my preaching time which averages at about 50 minutes.

4. I would on this occasion share my fairly detailed exegesis with the congregation - something I don’t believe we should normally do. I would work through the passage, highlighting the key points and textual difficulties and giving my convictions about the text.

5. On this occasion I would use PowerPoint in my preaching - again something I almost never do. I decided this for various reasons. Almost certainly in the congregation there would be at least half a dozen different English language translations in use, and I wanted them to see the text I was working through - the ESV. I have recently moved over to the ESV for my preaching and teaching and anyway, for this passage of Scripture, I believe the ESV has made the right call on most of the disputed issues. I would put the text on PowerPoint and highlight each phrase or word in turn as I dealt with it.

6. I reckoned that this part of my preaching would take up another 10-15 minutes which, with the 5 minutes for tackling the issue of textual differences and another 5 for setting the pasaage in the context of our current series and recapping on last week’s ministry, would leave me the best part of 25 minutes for my exposition and application.

Tomorrow I’ll post my exegetical discoveries and then the next day my outline and application. If you can’t wait and want to hear the mp3 of the message, you can find it here.