18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 In that state he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
Dig Deeper
Water is an amazing substance. It can be a soft landing spot for someone jumping from a high dive, allowing them to enter into a pool from heights that would kill someone if they hit normal ground. Yet, it can be used at such pressures that it will easily cut through the hardest surfaces in the world. A drink of water can bring life to someone on the verge of death and it is possible for someone to drown in just a teaspoon of water. Rain can bring life to an entire region or it can rain too hard and bring floods and destruction.
The truth is when most people think of water baptism, they think of the life that it brings. And, in a sense it does bring Christians to a new life, but that is not really Peter’s point in this passage. As Peter continues the thought of Christ suffering an unjust punishment that he did not deserve for the benefit of humans who did deserve that punishment, he turns to the life-saving aspect of Christ’s suffering. In doing so, he will refer, in one sense to the life-giving qualities of the water of Noah’s flood, water that symbolized the baptism into the life of Christ. More importantly, however, he will stress the death that it brings. In fact this may shock Peter’s modern readers who think they understand what baptism is all about. In the fullest sense, Peter is not saying that the water brings life, in fact quite the opposite. It brings death. And it is only in understanding this that we can truly understand what Christ did for all of humanity.
This section has proven over the history of Christianity to be one of the most difficult passages to interpret. There are numerous difficulties and problems in determining the meaning of this obscure passage, most of which the space of this format precludes us from delving into. It will help though, if we keep in mind Peter’s underlying point in this passage. He basic point is that Jesus was a righteous man that suffered despite the fact that he didn’t deserve it, but was ultimately vindicated and exalted, and if the believers continue to act righteously as Peter has already described, then they too will be vindicated and exalted, despite the fact that they will also likely suffer, all the while acting righteously.
The fact is that Jesus was sinless (1 Pet. 1:19; 2:22) and so no one was less deserving of suffering than Jesus Christ, and yet we know that He suffered deeply. This would completely fly in the face of the erroneous belief that suffering is a result of sin (John 9:2) or that good people shouldn’t suffer. Christ certainly suffered, but He did so willingly for the sake of others and, in fact, God allowed Him to suffer death for the benefit of the entire world (John 3:16). Peter says that Christ suffered once for sins, meaning that he was the perfect sin offering that all of the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament had pointed to. He died once for all (Rom. 6:10) so that no additional sacrifice will ever have to be made (Heb. 9:26). This suffering was the ultimate and only true instance in the history of the world where the completely righteous suffered for the unrighteous. This was all done, says Peter, to bring the unsaved to God. This bolsters Peter’s continuing theme of sacrificing self and acting in out-of-this-world ways in order to reconcile people to God. The motivation for Christ suffering and dying then, was the same motivation for husbands and wives, slaves and masters, and believers in general to act in the best interests of others, using weapons that are completely foreign in the world’s economy.
Peter begins, in the second half of verse 18, his explanation (albeit one that is, at times, difficult to understand) of the vindication and exaltation of Christ despite the suffering he went through. Christ was indeed put to death in the body by the evil powers but things didn’t end there. He was glorified and vindicated by being made alive by the Spirit (Rom. 8:11). His resurrection, through the power of the Spirit, overcame the worst that evil could possibly do. While in that state of being liberated from the restriction of his earthly body so that he could act in the spiritual realm and presumably completely in the form of spirit through the power of the Spirit and before His resurrection, Christ went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.
There are a few passages in the Bible that indicate that Jesus indeed went to Hades during His three days of death. In 1 Peter 3:19-20, Peter says that "he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built." Later, in 1 Peter 4:6 he says, "For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to the spirit." From these verses we can understand that Jesus went to Hades during those three days to preach. In Acts 2:27 Peter assigns these words of David to Christ, "you will not abandon me to [Hades], nor will you let your Holy One see decay." This verse could be interpreted to indicate that Jesus would go to Hades but would not be left there. It is important to distinguish that Hades is different from Hell or the Lake of Fire (Gehenna) which is the final death (cf. Matt. 25:41)
If Jesus was in Hades, what was He preaching and to whom was He preaching? There are certainly different interpretations of Peter’s words here and no one view can be proven conclusively. It seems very probable, however, that Jesus preached both to the unrighteous (represented by the spirits from the days of Noah) and the righteous (represented by "those who are now dead") in Hades. Hades was apparently split between the righteous and the unrighteous (Luke 16:26) at that time. It is very possible then, that Jesus went to Hades to preach the Gospel to those who lived before He did and take those who responded to heaven. Ephesians 4:8 could be referring to this when it says, "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." Whether the unrighteous were given the opportunity to exit at that time in response to Christ or not cannot be known definitively from the Scriptures.
Peter’s point in all of this is that Christ, despite his earthly sufferings, empowered by the Spirit, announced his victory and vindication. In a complex connection of thought, Peter describes Christ announcing this victory to those who were connected the flood, the very event that symbolized the moment of victory for believers to which they are now trying to announce to the world. The connection between the flood and the moment of Christ’s victory in the life of believers is water. But Peter’s point is not that the water saves people, quite the opposite. The eight people in Noah’s ark were saved through the water not by the water. In the same way, those who enter the water of baptism are now saved. Yet, it is important to note that the water does not save. The water killed in Noah’s day and it does for believers as well. In Noah’s day the water killed all except those that were saved in the Ark. Peter’s argument is that the water is not a ritual cleansing that only washes the body. It is the moment when one dies to self and is saved by entering into the ark of the life of Jesus Christ. The TNIV translation likely misses the boat here and shows some historical bias by translating eperotema as pledge. This is a word that clearly means "appeal" or "inquiry." Peter’s point, as he clearly stated in Acts 2:38, is that the baptism of entering into Christ is the time when one’s sins are forgiven and one appeals to God for a clear conscience, which is the forgiveness of sins and the promised heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26) for those in Christ.
Peter completes his thought in this passage when he says that this baptism that allows people to reconcile to God in Christ is made available through the resurrection of Christ, the very moment and act of His vindication. The vindicated Christ has now gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. His exaltation is complete as Christ sits in the highest possible position having suffered and died for the benefit of others and now waits in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-5). Because this is the clear example that Christ has set, Christians should do no less than be willing to suffer and put the interests of others ahead of their own, knowing that in the end, our God will exalt us in and with Christ.
Devotional Thought
If I’m honest, I can get pretty indignant about suffering or being mistreated if I haven’t done anything wrong. It is easy for me to think that I should be treated wonderfully especially if I haven’t done any wrong. How about you? What we must remember is that the opportunity to attract others to the gospel by acting in a godly and patient fashion despite mistreatment is far more important than being treated in a pleasing and pleasant fashion.
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