August 26, 2001

PREACHING TO SPIRITS IN PRISON

1 Peter 3:15-22

 

   "For Christ also once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in Spirit: by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein...eight souls were saved by water" (1 Pet.3:18-20).

   In 1 Peter 1:11 it is written that "the Spirit of Christ...was in..." the Old Testament prophets when they "testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." In this same manner, the same Spirit of Christ was in Noah "when once the longsuffering of God waited...while the ark was being built." Noah testified warning the people of his time about God's impending judgment of the flood. But they were disobedient toward his preaching. Therefore in this pass-age they are called "spirits in prison." His later words are most fitting of this same group for he wrote, "For this cause was the gospel preached [through Noah] also to them that are [now] dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit" (1 Peter 4:6).

   In Genesis 6:3, "the LORD said, 'My spirit shall not always strive with man...'" and set a time limit before bringing in the flood. That God by His spirit preached the gospel (that there was room in the ark and opportunity to flee the flood) through His servant Noah is abundantly clear and it is very fitting that Peter should refer to it here.

   Peter surely remembered the Lord telling how "it was in the days of Noah...before the flood [when] they were eating and drinking...until the day the flood came and took them all away" (Mt. 24:37-39). Little wonder that he should refer to the very same example of unbelief, such unbelief and opposition as was presently being experienced by those to whom he wrote. Peter referred again to Noah's flood telling how God "spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly..." (2 Pet. 2:5), and again, "...the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished..." (2 Pet. 3:6). What a warning to those of the Lord's day, Peter's day, and our own day, too!