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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 3:14-22
In this message we come to 3:14-22, a section that speaks of suffering for righteousness by the will of God, as Christ suffered. Although this portion is included in the section on Christian life and its sufferings, it actually speaks concerning Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. These verses involve two major problems that have been debated over the years, one problem related to Christ’s death and the other regarding baptism in relation to His resurrection and ascension.
Verses 14 and 15 say, “But even if you suffer because of righteousness, you are blessed; and do not be afraid with fear from them, nor be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, being always ready for a defense to everyone who asks of you an account concerning the hope in you, but with meekness and fear.” If we are terrified and troubled by persecutors, it will appear that we do not have the Lord in our hearts. Therefore, in suffering persecution we should show others that we have Christ within us as Lord. This is to sanctify Him, to separate Him, from the false gods, not degrading Him to be as the lifeless idols.
The hope spoken of in verse 15 is the living hope of the inheritance of eternal life. This is a hope in our pilgrimage today for the future, not a hope of objective things, but a hope of life, even eternal life, with all the endless divine blessings. The fear mentioned by Peter in verse 15 is a pious fear, a holy fear. Peter speaks of fear a number of times in this Epistle because the teaching of this book concerns the government of God.
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 shall 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.
I have told you before of a story I heard concerning a young woman who was martyred during the Boxer Rebellion in China. This particular incident took place in Peking. Because of the Boxer movement, all the businesses in the city were closed. A young man who was learning a certain business did not dare to open the door of the building where he was. Peeking through a crack in the door, he saw the Boxers parading down the street. He heard the crying and shouting. He saw some of the Boxers, with swords in their hands, threatening a young woman. She was a Christian. She was sitting in a wagon that was carrying her to the place where she would be martyred. Although the Boxers surrounded her, shouting, crying, and threatening, she was not afraid. Her face was glowing, and she was rejoicing in the Lord and praising Him. That young man was deeply impressed by what he saw. An unbeliever at the time, he decided then that he would learn about the Christian faith. He thought to himself, “If this is nothing more than a Western religion, why is this young woman not frightened by the threatening and the shouting? Why is she not afraid of death? Why is her face glowing, and why is she rejoicing?” This young man did not then realize that she was praising the Lord. Later he believed in the Lord and became a preacher. Long after that, when he became old, I met him in my home town, and we enjoyed a pleasant conversation. He told me the story of what he experienced that day in Peking.
That young woman who was martyred during the Boxer Rebellion truly sanctified Christ as Lord in her heart. The glow on her face, the rejoicing, the praising — all this was an expression that the Lord was in her heart. Spontaneously, she sanctified Christ as Lord. Her sanctifying Christ in this way influenced that young man to believe in the Lord.
In verse 16 Peter goes on to say, “Having a good conscience, that wherein you are spoken against as evil-doers, 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.
The Christian good manner of life should be one that is in Christ. It is a living, a daily life, in our spirit. This is higher than a life which 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, our conscience, 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.
A brother, for example, should take care of his conscience in his relationship with his wife. In the sight of man, it may appear that he is not wrong with his wife in any way. But his enlightened conscience may tell him that he has been wrong with her in many ways. Likewise, 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.
In verse 17 Peter continues, “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if the will of God should will it, than for doing evil.” Again Peter speaks concerning unjust suffering. He covered this point earlier in 2:18-21, where he says that Christ is a model to us of One who suffered unjustly and that we should follow in His steps.
Verse 18 says, “Because Christ also has once died concerning sins, the righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit.” Christ is the righteous One, and we are the unrighteous ones, yet He died for our sins. Christ died concerning our sins so that He might bring us to God. His death removed all the barriers, in particular the barriers of our sins and unrighteousness. Because His death has removed the barriers of sins and unrighteousness, we have a way to reach God. Christ died in order to bring us to God.
Sins in verse 18 and in 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3, and Hebrews 9:28 refer to sins we commit in our outward conduct. But sin in 2 Corinthians 5:21, John 1:29, and Hebrews 9:26 refers to sin by birth in our nature. Christ died for our sins, carrying up our sins on the cross, that our sins might be forgiven by God. But He became sin and took away the sin of the world that the problem of our sin might be solved. Peter does not deal first with sin in our nature, but with sins in our conduct, in our manner of life. In this book 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 His death was for redemption, not for martyrdom. On the cross Christ was our Substitute, bearing our sins, the righteous One 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.
According to verse 18, Christ was “put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit.” This is not the Holy Spirit, but the spirit which is Christ’s spiritual nature (Mark 2:8; Luke 23:46). The crucifixion only put Christ to death in His flesh, which He received through His incarnation (John 1:14), not in His spirit. His spirit did not die at the cross when His flesh did. His spirit was rather made alive, enlivened, with new power of life, so that in this empowered spirit He made a proclamation to the fallen angels after His death in the flesh and before His resurrection.
On the cross Christ was put to death in flesh, but was made alive in spirit. We should not interpret “made alive in spirit” here as referring to Christ’s resurrection. As we have pointed out, although Christ’s body was slain on the cross, His spirit was enlivened. Therefore, as the phrase “in which” at the beginning of verse 19 indicates, it was in His enlivened spirit that Christ made a proclamation to the spirits in prison. This indicates and proves that in this spirit Christ, after dying in His flesh, was still active.
In verse 18 we see Christ’s death, but there is no mention of resurrection in this verse. When Christ was buried in the tomb, in His empowered spirit He went, before His resurrection, to the abyss to proclaim God’s victory to the rebellious angels.
Verse 19 and the first part of verse 20 say, “In which also having gone to the spirits in prison, He proclaimed to those once disobedient....” 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 do not refer to the disembodied spirits of dead human beings being held in Hades, but to the angels (angels are spirits — Heb. 1:14) who fell through disobedience at Noah’s time (v. 20 and Life-study of Genesis Message 27, pp. 363-364) and are imprisoned in pits of gloom for the judgment of the great day (2 Pet. 2:4-5; Jude 1:6). After His death in the flesh, Christ in His living spirit went (probably to the abyss — Rom. 10:7) to these rebellious angels to proclaim, perhaps, God’s victory through His incarnation in Christ and Christ’s death in the flesh, over Satan’s scheme to derange the divine plan.
The “prison” in verse 19 refers to Tartarus, the deep and gloomy pits (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 1:6) where the fallen angels are kept. The word “proclaim” does not indicate the preaching of good news, but the proclaiming of the triumphant victory. This proclamation was made to “those once disobedient.” These are angelic beings, not human beings, and therefore are different from the “eight souls” spoken of in verse 20. So, the spirits in prison do not refer to the disembodied spirits of dead human beings held in Hades, but to angels who fell through disobedience at the time of Noah. But many interpreters say that the spirits in verse 19 denote the spirits of certain human beings who disobeyed Noah’s preaching. Those who follow this interpretation claim that, at Noah’s time, Christ through His Spirit preached the gospel to the people of Noah’s generation. Furthermore, they teach that “made alive in spirit” in verse 18 refers to the Holy Spirit. Supposedly in this Holy Spirit Christ at Noah’s time preached the gospel.
Another interpretation is that Christ, after He died, preached the gospel to the spirits of human beings who had died. What a mistaken interpretation this is! According to this interpretation, after people die and go to Hades, the gospel may still be preached to them there in Hades.
Christ did not preach the gospel to the spirits in prison; He made a proclamation to them. He proclaimed to those rebellious angels God’s victory over Satan through Christ’s incarnation and death. At that time, Christ had not yet been resurrected. It was after His death that He went to that particular place, in His empowered spirit, to proclaim Christ’s victory. Perhaps He said, “You angels followed Satan to rebel against God. But through My incarnation and death, your leader, Satan, has been conquered.” This proclamation is a shame to Satan and his followers, but it is a glory to God.
I would urge you to study message twenty-seven of the Life-study of Genesis. That message explains how at Noah’s time the so-called sons of God, who are angels, became fallen. They left their own place, came down to earth, and used human bodies to commit fornication with the daughters of men. That polluted the human race and produced giants. Finding that situation intolerable, God would no longer allow the human race to exist, because mankind had been polluted by Satan’s angels. Therefore, except for Noah and his family God destroyed the entire human race with the flood. Also, when God sent the children of Israel into Canaan to slaughter the Canaanites, there were the same kind of giants among the Canaanites, giants born of fornication between angels and human females.
We are not the only ones who interpret the Bible record in this way. A number of Bible scholars, including Pember and Govett, agree with this understanding of this part of the Word.
Christ died on the cross for our redemption. But although He was put to death in His body, He was enlivened and empowered in His spirit even before the resurrection. In this enlivened and empowered spirit He went to proclaim to the rebellious angels God’s victory over Satan, their leader.
Peter’s word in these verses is very meaningful. Peter unveils something extraordinary related to Christ’s death. He shows us that Christ’s death not only accomplished redemption for us, but also gained the victory over Satan and his followers. Therefore, after His death and before His resurrection, Christ proclaimed to Satan’s followers God’s victory over the Devil through the crucifixion of Christ.
