"If any man speak, [let it be] as oracles of God; if any man minister, [let it be] as of the ability which God giveth." In fact, it's worse than that; it is --it's almost condemning to me. The unbelievers who heard Christs preaching did not obey in the days of Noah (1 Peter 3:20) and are now suffering judgment (they are spirits in prison, v. 19). But they both suppose an open door for ministry among Christians in the Christian assembly. It comes, first, from the sense of creatureliness. It is the constant and notorious source of the difficulties that one has continually to contend with, because feelings are roused by this all sorts of jealousies and wounded feelings are created by a position so false. The speaker should be God's mouthpiece for making His mind known there and then. It is not a description of all that died in unbelief, but of a generation favoured with a special testimony and smitten by a particular stroke of judgment. They, like the fallen angels, were then "spirits in prison." It is implied in the expression, as already remarked, that he did this himself; that it was the Son of God who subsequently became incarnate, and not the Holy Spirit, that did this; though the language is consistent with the supposition that he did it by the instrumentality of another, to wit, Noah. The times of the Gentiles are still in course of accomplishment. besides, the text says not one word of the delivering of these What is the reason for it? In 1 Peter 3:18-22 he cited Jesus resurrection and ascension into glory, the "missing links" in the previous record of Jesus experiences. Amplified: If you are censured and suffer abuse [because you bear] the name of Christ, blessed [are youhappy, fortunate, to be envied, with life-joy, and satisfaction in God's favor and salvation, regardless of your outward condition], because the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of God, is resting upon you. "There are as many ways to the stars as there are men to climb them." After this episode which has to do with men here, not in the unseen world, he returns to the relative duties of Christians, and exhorts them to watchfulness with sobriety, to fervent love, and also to "use hospitality one to another without grudging." were when the apostle wrote: from whence we learn, that Christ For it is hardly necessary to say to any intelligent believer, that whatever may be the new privileges, and consequently fresh duties which flow from them, there are certain unchangeable moral principles to which God holds throughout all time. If you yield to nature, you gratify it; but if you suffer in refusing its wishes, then "he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." 1 Peter 1:12. He went and preached Commentators with a theory to uphold make a big thing out of the went," encountering innumerable difficulties when they suppose that he went "while dead and buried"! The identity of the "spirits in prison" is problematic. There was the best and weightiest reason for this, because the nature thus produced in them is this holy nature that comes by grace from God Himself. There are those who constantly think and speak of sanctification as practical holiness, and exclusively so. But besides this, the gospel, instead of putting a man under blood as a threat or imprecation of death in case of failure, the awful sign of his doom before his eyes if he disobeyed, puts him under the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, which assures him of plenary forgiveness. No such idea is traceable in the word of God. Women did not share in the worship of the Greeks and the Romans. (1-2) The heart of a godly wife. Noah faced the same type of opposition in his day that Peters original readers did in theirs and we do in ours. Roman matrons were prohibited from drinking wine, and Egnatius beat his wife to death when he found her doing so. Verse 19. What, then, must have been the problems of the wife who became a Christian while her husband remained faithful to the ancestral gods? . (ii) Peter calls baptism the pledge of a good conscience to God ( 1 Peter 3:21). prison of hell, so the Syriac version renders it, (lwyvb) , "in hell", see ( Revelation Baptism becomes a beautiful symbol of that. And he talked of the difficulty of the converting of a Moslem because for a Moslem, it is a capital offense to convert to Christianity. Such is the suited and striking preface with which our apostle commences, contrasting the portion of the believer in Christ with that of the Jew, as it stands in their own sacred books, which we as well as they acknowledge to have divine authority. And was not this before he knew all the comfort and blessing of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus? This had nothing at all to do with atonement a supposition which only arises from people closing their eyes to other truths in the Bible, to their own great loss even in the truth they hold. She is a fellow-heir of the grace of life. 1 Peter 3:19-22New International Version. All rights reserved. gain access to 50+ premium resources to enhance your study of Scripture. Peter has just laid down the duty of wives; now he lays down the duty of husbands. The apostle Paul pressed on the Christian slave the beauty and responsibility of obedience; but Peter insists on it whether a man be a slave or not. Couple of Sundays ago, she was throwing clay pots out on the patio railing. of happiness; nor such a gracious manifestation so properly And when He ascended out of hell, He brought with Him those who had been captive. It is practical; and holiness costs suffering in this world. He really experienced death, and rose again. Thus neither faith had its adequate and suited sphere, nor had hope its proper character till Jesus went away. 3. Hence, if any received the gospel, they were delivered from judgment, and lived according to God in the Spirit. Although he is of the people of God, instead of getting an earthly character by Christianity, on the contrary he becomes a pilgrim and stranger. Jesus went to the cross and died there for your sins. 1P iP i Pet). He did so to strengthen their resolve to rededicate themselves to follow Gods will wholeheartedly and confidently. This attitude--and it is that of some very great New Testament interpreters--believes that Peter is indeed saying that Jesus went to Hades and preached, but that he by no means preached to all the inhabitants of Hades. It means that the work of Christ is infinite in its range. And "he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to his own soul, not discerning the Lord's body" ( 1 Corinthians 11:29 ). saints, who were (en The saints are chosen through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience. (i) Peter begins by insisting on a passionate love of goodness. It may be that we will never agree in our theories of what exactly happened on the Cross, for, indeed, as Charles Wesley said in that same hymn: "'Tis mystery all!" The purpose of the cross is to put away our sin, which had separated us from God. These things were always true in principle, and never can be touched while man lives on earth. Having a good conscience; that, whereas they may speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good behavior in Christ ( 1 Peter 3:16 ). Because of their "former" disobedience, they are presently "in prison.". (c) It is argued that Christ preached only to those who had been righteous and that he led them out of Hades into the paradise of God. and sat in darkness, and the shadow of death, and, as it were, at and continuing so, a flood was brought upon them which destroyed They speak what is somewhat more probable, who say, that the redemption obtained by Christ availed the dead, who in the time of Noah were long unbelieving, but repented a short time before they were drowned by the deluge. But. "Baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh . But none of these wonders of grace could have been, unless by redemption we receive the end of our faith meanwhile, namely, soul-salvation. To restrict yourself to it would be a wrong, not so much to your own soul as to God's grace; and if there be any difference, especially to Him who suffered all things for God's glory and for our own infinite blessing. A cultivated Greek believed that it was the mark of an intelligent man that he was able to give and to receive a logos ( G3056) concerning his actions and belief. These were insisted on in the Old Testament, particularly in the psalms and the prophets. Gods saving of Noah and his family by means of the ark illustrates the salvation of believers. For Christ also died once and for all for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. That very system of reason that makes so much of the will of man, and is not a little proud of it, would deprive God Himself of a will, and under penalty of man's accusation of injustice forbids its exercise according to His own pleasure. point here, but if possible a deeper thing; and for the simple reason, that practical holiness must be relative or a question of degree. Luke's gospel, the sixteenth chapter, Jesus describes what hell was like prior to His death: Two compartments, no capacity of crossing from one to the other. The word of God, prayer, the use that we make of the opportunities that His goodness affords us, both public and private, all the means that teach and exercise us in the will of God no doubt contribute to this practical holiness. He has everlasting life now, and is a heavenly person even while upon the earth. In short, one may find here and there a truly excellent man, and, we will suppose, a number of godly people. Now all this is here judged and set aside as quite wrong The elders are exhorted and warned. So here we find that the Christian Jews, who might have exonerated themselves from the burden laid on them by their heathen masters, are earnestly exhorted by the apostle Peter to do their bidding for the Lord's sake. And this is what Peter immediately enlarges on. If you suffer for evil doing, you've got it coming. Once again, where infant baptism is the practice, we must take these great conceptions and apply them to the time when we enter upon full membership of the Church. In other words, Peter is not preaching something he didn't practice, but he did this very same thing himself. The Christian is the man to whom God and Jesus Christ are the supremacies in life; his relationship to God in Christ is life's greatest value. "He," it is said of Christ, "gave them gifts, to each man according to his several ability." It is the foundation for it; and every one who rests on the blood of Christ is surely a Christian; but I repeat that, both for position before God and intelligent perception and power of soul, we need and have much more. Clearly nothing less than acceptance in righteousness before God; and this is precisely the position that baptism does set forth. All unbelief therefore will be shown plainly to be of the flesh, not of the Spirit, and never excusable. It may seem strange that Peter's advice to wives is six times as long as that to husbands. But if the word prison be preferred, it would not be unsuitable; for, as while they lived, the Law, according to Paul, (Galatians 3:23,) was a sort of prison in which they were kept; so after death they must have felt the same desire for Christ; for the spirit of liberty had not as yet been fully given. Thus the Lord Jesus, being already come and about to come again, brings before us two of these stages, while the mission of the Holy Ghost for the gospel fills up the interval between them. Shall we turn now to First Peter chapter three as Peter addresses himself to the wives? Likewise ye wives be in subjection to your own husbands that if any obey not the word they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives 1 Peter 3:1 Hebrew Bible 1 Peter 3:1 Aramaic NT: Peshitta "Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you." They were the worst of all sinners and yet they were given another chance of repentance; therefore, the worst of men still have a chance in Christ. Somerset Maugham's mother was a very beautiful woman with the world at her feet but his father was unhandsome. And the high priest asked them, Acts 5:27 The captain and officers just went to collect the apostles but without any violence. When the suffering is part of the human situation, it still cannot despoil him of the most precious things in life. We do honour to the world and shame to this our place by seeking its favours. The modern parallel is entering upon full membership of the Church. 1 Peter 4:6 For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. Their attitude is that anyone who does not agree with them is either a fool or a knave and they seek to ram their beliefs down other people's throats. He must be considerate and sensitive to the feelings of his wife. in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. Just really railing on me. (iv) Fourth, Peter sets compassion. of the Vulgate before me, the clause is thus: In quo et his qui in carcere erant SPIRITU venient praedicavit; "in which, coming by the Spirit, he preached to those who were in prison." That is to say, it is not simply the blood of Christ, which indeed is never the meaning of baptism; still less is it the life of Christ: baptism means nothing of the sort. 1 Peter 3:19 in all English translations. situation, because they were intent upon the hope of promised a. Let a man so act that his conscience is clear. It does not seem to be of such prime importance that much need be said. They did not think in terms of heaven and of hell but of a shadowy world, where the spirits of men moved like grey ghosts in an everlasting twilight and where there was neither strength nor joy. I do not think it requires much argument to show whether under the gospel the Jews or the world are in such a condition as the prophet describes, or whether there, is anything in progress that is intended or calculated to bring about such a result. One of the legends was that Enoch, though a man, acted as "God's envoy" to the angels who sinned by coming to earth and lustfully seducing mortal women ( Genesis 6:2). spirits out of prison, only of Christ's preaching to them: add to For Christ communicated a new nature which loves to obey God's will, which accordingly is given us from conversion, before (and it may be long before) a person enjoys peace. "If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar" ( 1 John 4:20). The Jewish conception of the world after death was of this grey world of shadows and forgetfulness, in which men were separated from life and light and God. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it. The word used here would be appropriate to such a message as Noah brought to his contemporaries, or to any communication which God made to people. But if a wife became a Christian while her husband did not, she was taking a step which was unprecedented and which produced the acutest problems. How little, it seems, the Old Testament prophets understood their own prophecies! Thus he loves to bring out again confirmatorily the new relationship in which they stood to God. by all sorts of circumstances, and above all by the evil of our old nature that surrounds it, in Him, as we know, absolutely perfect and without mixture. Sir John Seeley said, "No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue safe which is not enthusiastic." Being sanctified of the Spirit, we are called to obey as Christ obeyed. If Enoch is the person who makes the proclamation to the spirits, then the transition from 3:18 to 3:19 is abrupt in the extreme. It is plain that, if God foreordained it, He at the same time took care to act on it, and this is long before either Judaism or the law. None eau find it in Scripture. I can't believe that; you're saved by believing in Jesus Christ. "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations." Monday, 7 March 2022 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. (v) When we go beyond these two verses, further into the passage, we can add two more great truths to Peter's view of the work of Christ. They consider that, because God is unchangeable, He has not a will of His own. May 11, 1986. vvvv RP 1 Peter 2:1 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits This is founded on the very principle of Christianity itself; that is, doing good, suffering for it, and taking it patiently. Others believe it happened during His ascension to heaven. Please enter your email address associated with your Salem All-Pass account, then click Continue. In divine things it is precisely what shows the power and special character of a Christian's faith. Those spirits had led people to rebel against God (as, for example, in the time of Noah; see Genesis 6:1-8), but Christ has now conquered all sin and rebellion. They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. Certainly this mode of speaking would be most unsuitable. Of speaking would be most unsuitable season, if any received the gospel, they are presently quot! The just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God ( 1 Peter 3:21 ) Peter baptism. Open door for ministry among Christians in the psalms and the dead has not a will of his 1 peter 3:19 greek prison.... No such idea is traceable in the worship of the cross is to put away sin... 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