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1n 1 Peter 3:14-22 Christ is revealed as the body of the shadow of the ark. In the ancient time Noah built the ark, and this ark was a shadow of Christ as the real ark.
Verse 18 says, “Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God.” Christ is the righteous One, yet He died for our sins, the sins of the unrighteous. His death removed all the barriers, particularly the barriers of our sins and unrighteousness. Because His death has removed all barriers, we have a way to reach God. Christ died in order to bring us to God.
It is true that Christ died on the cross for our sins that we might be forgiven and redeemed. But here Peter says that Christ died for the purpose of bringing His believers to God. He not only brought us to God but also into God.
Sins in verse 18 and in 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3, and Hebrews 9:28 refers to the sins we commit in our outward conduct; whereas sin in 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Hebrews 9:26 refers to sin that is in our nature by birth. Christ died for our sins, bearing up our sins on the cross, that we might be forgiven of our sins by God. But He was made sin and took away the sin of the world so that the problem of our sin might be solved. Peter did not deal first with sin in our nature but with sins in our conduct, in our manner of life (1 Pet. 3:16). The emphasis of 1 Peter is that Christ’s death redeemed us from our inherited vain manner of life (1:18-19).
The fact that Christ, the righteous One, died “on behalf of the unrighteous” indicates that Christ’s death was for redemption, not for martyrdom. On the cross He was our Substitute and bore our sins; He, the righteous One, was judged on behalf of us, the unrighteous, by the righteous God according to His righteousness, that He might remove the barrier of our sins and bring us to God. This was to redeem us from our sins back to God, from our unrighteous manner of life back to the righteous God.
First Peter 3:18 goes on to tell us that Christ was “on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” The Spirit in which He was made alive is not the Holy Spirit but the Spirit as the essence of Christ’s divinity (Rom. 1:4; cf. John 4:24a). The crucifixion put Christ to death only in His flesh — which He received through His incarnation (1:14) — not in His Spirit as His divinity. His Spirit as His divinity did not die at the cross when His flesh died; rather, His Spirit as His divinity was made alive, enlivened, with new power of life, so that in this empowered Spirit as His divinity, He made a proclamation to the fallen angels after His death in the flesh and before His resurrection.
On the one hand, Christ was put to death in the flesh; that is, He was crucified on the cross in the flesh. On the other hand, Christ was made alive in the Spirit. Man put Him to death in the flesh, but God made Him alive in the Spirit. While Christ was being crucified on the cross, the Roman soldiers were putting Him to death in His flesh, and the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was making Him alive, strengthening Him, and empowering Him.
In eternity the Lord was the only begotten Son of God. In time He became flesh to be a man, but He was not yet the firstborn Son of God. Romans 1:3-4 reveals when He became the firstborn Son of God: “Concerning His Son, who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” According to the flesh, He is the seed of David, a man; according to the Spirit of holiness, He is the Son of God. He was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead.
First Peter 3:18 also shows when and how the designation was done: “Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” This verse tells us that after He died in the flesh, Christ was still active in the Spirit. In John 12:24 the Lord said that He was the grain of wheat which bears much fruit by falling into the ground and dying. On the one hand, He was dying on the cross in the flesh. On the other hand, He was growing in the Spirit. Verse 23 indicates that this was Christ’s glorification. When the grain is dying, its life element grows. When a grain of wheat falls into the ground, its outer shell dies and decays, but its life within is active. The grain, on the one hand, dies and, on the other hand, lives. When the grain dies, this death gives the life within an opportunity to operate to bring forth tender sprouts. This is resurrection.
When the Lord was buried in the tomb, it was His flesh, His humanity, that died. However, His divinity, the Spirit of holiness, had a great opportunity to work. The Spirit of holiness resurrected the humanity of Christ and, at the same time, uplifted the humanity of Jesus into divinity. It was at that moment that God said, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You” (Acts 13:33). This day refers to the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Hence, it was at the time that the Spirit of holiness uplifted the humanity of Christ and resurrected His flesh that Christ became the firstborn Son of God.
First Peter 3:18 shows that in Christ’s resurrection, His divine part was made alive to impart divinity into His humanity, thus making His humanity divine. Hence, God begot Christ in His resurrection. That begetting equals our regenerating. Christ was begotten, and we were regenerated in the same resurrection at the same time (1:3). This resurrection was a universal birth, a great delivery. In the resurrection of Christ there was a divine birth, a divine delivery, in which all believers were born together with Christ as their firstborn Brother, the firstborn Son of God.
After His death in the flesh, Christ in the empowered Spirit went to the spirits, rebellious angels, in prison to proclaim God’s victory over their leader Satan. This prison refers to Tartarus, the deep and gloomy pits (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6), where the fallen angels are kept. The Lord’s going here indicates and proves that Christ, after dying in His flesh, was still active in this Spirit. Christ’s proclaiming to the spirits in prison was not to preach the good news but to proclaim the victory achieved by God, that is, that through Christ’s death on the cross God destroyed Satan and his power of darkness (Heb. 2:14; Col. 2:15).
Throughout the centuries great teachers of different schools have had varying interpretations concerning the spirits in prison. The most acceptable according to the Scriptures is as follows: the spirits here refer not to the disembodied spirits of dead human beings held in Hades but to the angels (angels are spirits — Heb. 1:14) who fell through disobedience at Noah’s time (1 Pet. 3:20) and are imprisoned in pits of gloom, awaiting the judgment of the great day (2 Pet. 2:4-5; Jude 6). After His death in the flesh, Christ in His living Spirit as His divinity went (probably to the abyss — Rom. 10:7) to these rebellious angels to proclaim, perhaps, God’s victory, accomplished through His incarnation in Christ and Christ’s death in the flesh, over Satan’s scheme to derange the divine plan.
First Peter 3:20-21 says, “In the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared; entering into which, a few, that is, eight souls, were brought safely through by water. Which water, as the antitype, also now saves you, that is, baptism, not a putting away of the filth of the flesh but the appeal of a good conscience unto God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” These verses tell us that through Christ’s resurrection we have been saved by the water of baptism.
In Romans 6:4-5 Paul says, “We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism into His death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life. For if we have grown together with Him in the likeness of His death, indeed we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” A proper baptism causes spiritual growth within the baptized. This is because when we baptize people, we exercise our faith to apply Christ’s death and resurrection. Yet it is erroneous to teach baptismal regeneration. Strictly speaking, we are regenerated not by the water used in baptism, which in itself is ineffective, but by what it signifies — the living Christ with His death and resurrection, both of which are applied to us through the Spirit. Baptism is only a figure; its reality is Christ in resurrection as the life-giving Spirit, who applies to us all that Christ passed through in His crucifixion and resurrection, making these things real in our daily life. Baptism testifies that we have been baptized into the Triune God (Matt. 28:19) and have been organically united with Him through the resurrection of Christ, that is, by Christ in resurrection as the Spirit of life. In this sense, we have been saved through His resurrection by the water of baptism.
In 1 Peter 3:20 Peter says that in the ark prepared by Noah eight souls “were brought safely through by water.” The Greek word translated “brought” means “arrive safe into a place of security through difficulty or danger,” as Acts 27:44 (Darby). The Greek words rendered “by water” literally mean “through water.” Water was the medium through which the saving was accomplished.
In the Old Testament the waters of the flood at the time of Noah and the waters of the Red Sea both typify baptism. The ark saved Noah and his family from God’s judgment, from the punishment of God’s condemnation that came by the flood. But the water saved them and separated them from that corrupted age and brought them into a new age to begin a new life on a new earth.
In the book of Exodus the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea. The waters of the Red Sea were a judgment upon Pharaoh and his Egyptian army. But that same water separated the children of Israel from Egypt, which typifies the corrupted world. Just as Noah and his family were separated from their corrupted generation by the waters of the flood, so the children of Israel were separated from the corrupted world by the waters of the Red Sea. In the New Testament we also have water, the water of baptism. Baptism saves us from the world and separates us from it.
Christians today argue about the proper form of baptism but miss the true significance of baptism. To be baptized is to pass through the judging water to be separated from today’s evil generation. If we see the real significance of baptism, we will never go back to the world after we are baptized. The waters of baptism are the waters that judge the world. We might have loved the world in the past, but we have been saved from the world, not by the ritual, the rite, of baptism but by the reality of the resurrection of Christ.
The phrase which water, as the antitype in 1 Peter 3:21 refers to the water mentioned in verse 20, of which the water of baptism is the antitype. This indicates that Noah and his family’s passing through the flood within the ark was a type of our passing through baptism. The water of the flood delivered them out of the old manner of life into a new environment; in like manner the water of baptism delivers us out of the inherited vain manner of life into a manner of life of resurrection in Christ. Christ redeemed us for this (1:18-19). Christ’s redemption was accomplished by Christ’s death and was accepted and applied to us, in baptism, by the Spirit through Christ’s resurrection. Now our daily walk should be in the Spirit of the resurrected Christ; it should be a walk in which we live Christ in resurrection through the life power of His Spirit (Rom. 6:4-5). This is a new and excellent manner of life that glorifies God (1 Pet. 2:12).
The ark of Noah typifies Christ in resurrection passing through death. When Christ was living on earth, He had not yet died on the cross and therefore had not yet been resurrected. Nevertheless, in John 11:25 He said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” This reveals clearly that Christ, even before His death and resurrection, was both life and resurrection. He was always the Christ of resurrection. The ark of Noah, therefore, signifies this Christ of resurrection passing through death.
If the ark of Noah did not represent the Christ of resurrection, how could the ark pass through the water and come out safely? The ark’s passing through the water and coming out of the water signifies Christ’s resurrection, since the ark itself is a type of Christ. How is it possible for Christ, and Christ alone, to enter into death and come out of it? Christ could come forth out of death in resurrection because He is resurrection and is of resurrection. Because Christ is the unique One of resurrection, He had the strength to pass through death. According to Acts 2:24, death could not hold Christ, but when any other person enters into the realm of death, he is held there. It is not possible for anyone else to come out of it. Christ not only entered into death and passed through it; He even deliberately stayed in the realm of death for three days. When those three days were over, He walked out of death. Because Christ is resurrection, He could simply walk out of death. This is signified by the ark of Noah, which entered into, stayed in, passed through, and came out of the death waters. This is a type of Christ in resurrection.
In His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to come into us (John 20:22) and to impart His resurrection life to us. Now this resurrection life with the life-giving Spirit makes every aspect of Christ’s death real and effective to us in our experience.
First Peter 3:21 ends with the phrase through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This indicates that baptism is through the resurrection of Christ, that is, by Christ in resurrection as the Spirit of life. Without the Spirit of Christ as the reality, baptism by water is only an empty and dead ritual. We appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrected Christ as the reality of baptism.
Apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we could not have resurrection life, and we could not have the life-giving Spirit within us. Through faith and baptism we have an organic union with the Triune God. It is through the resurrection of Christ that we are brought into the Triune God to have an organic union with Him. Now in the Triune God and with the Triune God, we enjoy the divine life and the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, after we have been baptized, we have the divine life and the life-giving Spirit to make the figure of baptism real and living to us in our experience.
Verse 21 emphasizes baptism in relation to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reality of baptism can be realized only by the divine life and the life-giving Spirit. Our basis for saying this is Peter’s word “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” It was in His resurrection that Christ released the divine life so that it could be imparted into our spirit. It was also in resurrection that Christ became the life-giving Spirit to come into our spirit, dwell in our spirit, and exercise all the riches of His divine life. It is through the resurrection of Christ that we genuinely experience with assurance the reality of what is figured in baptism.
First Peter 3:22 tells us that Christ “is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to Him.” Immediately after mentioning the baptism, Peter speaks of the angels and authorities and powers being subjected to Christ. This shows not only the power of Christ but also the authority that He possesses. When we baptize others into the name of the Lord Jesus, we are doing a powerful thing. This is because we are baptizing them into the name of One who is more powerful than the angels, authorities, and powers.
This additional word not only unveils to us the glorious result of the suffering of Christ — His exaltation after His resurrection and the high and honorable position He now holds in the heavens at the right hand of God — but also indicates how glorious and honorable is the organic union we have entered into with Him through baptism, for we were baptized into Him (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27).
Today the resurrected Christ is at the right hand of God. Christ has gone into heaven, and angels, authorities, and powers have all been subjected to Him. Through baptism we have been put into Christ, and now we have an organic union with Him. The Christ to whom we have been joined organically is not only the resurrected One but also the ascended One. Therefore, through the organic union we are brought not only into Christ’s resurrection but also into His ascension and exaltation. This means that, because we are in Christ, the angels, authorities, and powers are subject to us as well as to Him. We are one with the crucified, resurrected, and exalted Christ.
First Peter 3:15-16 says, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, being always ready for a defense to everyone who asks of you an account concerning the hope which is in you, yet with meekness and fear, having a good conscience, so that in the matter in which you are spoken against, those who revile your good manner of life in Christ may be put to shame.” We need to sanctify Christ as Lord first in our hearts inwardly and then with a good manner of life in Him outwardly. This means that first in our hearts we respect Him as the Lord; then in our behavior we express Him as the Lord in a good manner of life in Him. This expression will cause others to sanctify Him, that is, to see that He is the sanctified Lord.
If we are terrified and troubled by the persecutors (vv. 13-14), it will appear that we do not have the Lord in our hearts. So, in suffering persecution we should show others that we have Christ as Lord within us. This is to sanctify Him, to separate Him, from the other gods, not degrading Him so that He appears to be like the lifeless idols.
In sufferings that come from opposition and persecution, we should sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts. The word sanctify in Greek means to “set apart, to separate from things that are common.” This is to make something particular and even outstanding. In our suffering of persecution, we should make Christ particular; we should show that He is magnificent, absolutely different from idols. Sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts is not a matter of outward activity to set Him apart from what is common; it is an inward matter. To sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts means that when we are under persecution, we have the Lord in our hearts. If we allow the Lord to be the Lord in our hearts when we suffer persecution, we will express Him. This expression spontaneously will sanctify Christ and set Him apart from idols.
If we are timid and fearful when suffering persecution, the Lord will not be sanctified in us. What a shame that would be to Him! It will appear as if we do not have the Lord in our hearts. Whenever we suffer persecution, others must realize that we have Christ within us as Lord. But if we are timid and fearful, others will think that we do not have anything within us. They will have the impression that we do not have the living Lord in us. But if we are bold, sanctifying the Lord in our hearts and expressing Him in our faces, others will realize that we do have something within us. This is to sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts.
In verse 16 Peter goes on to say, “Having a good conscience, so that in the matter in which you are spoken against, those who revile your good manner of life in Christ may be put to shame.” Since the conscience is a part of our human spirit (Rom. 9:1; 8:16), to care for our conscience is to care for our spirit before God. A Christian’s good manner of life should be one that is in Christ. It is a living, a daily life, in the Spirit. This is higher than a living that is merely ethical and moral.
If we would have a good manner of life and sanctify the Lord in our daily life, we must take care of our conscience. It is not sufficient for us to be justified by others. We need to be justified by our own conscience. We should not be satisfied that we are justified by the community, by the brothers, or even by the entire church. No one knows us as thoroughly as our conscience does. This is especially true of the enlightened conscience of the regenerated spirit. A renewed conscience enlightened by the indwelling Spirit is trustworthy in its testimony and accurate in its judgment. The judgment of our enlightened conscience is more accurate than someone else’s judgment of us.
The enlightened conscience of our regenerated spirit is an inner judge. This inner judge cooperates with the indwelling God. The reason the enlightened conscience of the regenerated spirit can be an inner judge is that it cooperates with the indwelling God. For this reason, the judgment of the enlightened conscience is thorough and accurate. Therefore, we must take care of our conscience.
In the church life apparently we may be honest and faithful. However, our conscience may know that in certain things we have not been altogether honest and faithful to the church. Therefore, it is very important that we take care of our conscience.
