1 Peter 3:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 3:20

Comments

We read all about this in Genesis 6. Moses is there talking about people not demons, and you can see how terribly wicked society had become, how people rejected the truth and refused to believe and did hateful and evil things. That society was not unlike society today. We are going right back to that situation, where all morality is rejected and sin is made legal and even forced upon the people. That is one reason why we believe these are the very last days: this present society is getting so much like the society before the flood. Peter tells us that when the people were alive, before they died and as souls, leaving their bodies behind in the grave, went into the prison house of the lost; while they were on earth, the Spirit of God, of Christ, preached to them through Noah. For 120 years between the announcement of the flood and its coming, Noah preached while he built the ark, but no one believed the message; they thought he was mad. He built a land-locked vessel, 450 feet long and he was dismissed as an eccentric. At the same time that Noah preached to them, he warned them of the impending judgment of the world, and he gave them a visual aid in the form of the ark, which backed up his message and showed how fully he believed what he preached. He was prepared to devote a large portion of his life to preparing for a future that God had revealed to him but which could not yet be seen. His family of eight was overwhelmingly outnumbered by unbelievers. No doubt people constantly insulted, scorned, and rejected him, and he was tested to the very limit. But however strange the building of the ark was, they should have recognised the truth of his message for their own wickedness taught them to expect judgment. Noah was a messenger of mercy to them. He was telling them how they could be forgiven, how society could change, how they could walk with God and know a happy eternity, but they hated him for every word. So, he is an example of suffering, long suffering with zero apparent fruit. You too must witness to Christ and you will do better than Noah, for it is the will of God that in this gospel age some people will be drawn out of darkness, as you once were, into the glorious light of Christ. These eight were saved ‘by water’ or ‘through water’. From what were they saved? From the evil generation around them or from the flood, the judgment of God? The next verse shows that it is salvation from sin and its consequences that Peter has in mind, for the salvation that baptism pictures is not salvation simply from the presence of sinners, but from the wrath of God due to our own sin. This is a curious expression for we might expect Peter to say that they were saved ‘from water’, but he seems to have in mind the parallel that he is about to draw with baptism and obviously baptism is a symbol of the salvation of those who rise out of the waters and not of the destruction of those who drown in them. Noah and his family were saved by water when the ark was lifted up above the earth on the surface of the waters. Noah was saved from the anger of the Lord poured out on the human race.

Application

God is slow to judge and during that time he sent Noah to warn the world before sending such severe judgment. He did not leave that generation without a witness against their wickedness but spoke to them through his prophet. The Lord always warns before he judges, for he wishes to show his reasonableness, in contrast to the unreasonableness of sin.

Questions

Any interpretation of these verses, which understands Christ to have preached to the dead as a disembodied spirit himself, is contrary to the analogy of faith and therefore erroneous. The word ‘preached’ refers to the preaching of the gospel and cannot refer to the announcement of condemnation on those who were already lost. But what else could be said to the dead, for there is no second chance to repent given to men after death, and no further offer of pardon can be made. ‘It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.’ If you die unregenerate ad unsaved, there is no second chance. There is no purgatory. The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory is built on a complete misinterpretation of this passage, interpreting it in such a way that it contradicts all the rest of Scripture. In addition, the passage only mentions one group of people from the past – those living in the time of Noah. If Christ went and preached to those who were dead spirits, why should he limit his preaching to this group only? A variant on this interpretation has Christ going and preaching to the righteous dead, that is, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all other Old Testament believers. The idea is that he took them from the abode of the dead and brought them to heaven. But Peter describes those whom Christ preached to as disobedient which could not apply to Old Testament saints, and again he only mentions those living in the time of Noah not all other believers from the past. The phrase which follows in verse 20, ‘which sometime were disobedient’, makes clear that the preaching took place before they came to be captive spirits in prison. Nor does Peter say that they were released from prison. If we add the word ‘now’, the sense becomes clearer – ‘unto the spirits now in prison’. It took hundred and twenty years to build, and there was an antagonistic population all around, sneering and jeering and scorning, and probably doing all they could to hinder the construction of the ark. But Noah and his family, with perhaps such help as they could pay or muster, built it over that time. A hundred and twenty years of patience on the part of Noah. A hundred and twenty years of sustaining antagonism and unbelief, by which Christ preached in Noah's generation, through him. Many pictures can be derived from that. Noah and his family left the old life behind, and were brought into a new life, a new humanity, a new mankind, a new beginning. So his suffering brought about a new start, a new blessing, and a preservation of the race.

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1 Peter 3:20 Commentary and Bible Study