1 Peter 3:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 3:21

Comments

Peter says there is a correspondence between Noah’s flood and baptism, and the link between the two is death and resurrection. He uses the word antitype, which is translated ‘figure’ by the KJV. A type is something which makes an impression on a softer material known as the antitype by being struck against it, such as when a coin is struck and the impression on the two dies is transferred to the coin. The Bible uses these ideas to describe something more abstract: the relationship between a symbol and the reality which it represents. The God of all power teaches through types by causing physical objects or historical events to symbolise realities that come later, or which have corresponding spiritual existence. It is the divine method of teaching, which because of its supernatural character cannot be imitated by any human teacher. The Old Testament was particularly a time of types and shadows looking forward to the coming of Christ, but the New Testament also has two types – baptism and the Lord’s Supper – which represent unseen realities and look forward to second coming. Here, Peter makes Noah’s flood to be the type and baptism the antitype. He tells us that just as Noah was long ago saved from the flood waters, so baptism now saves. However, he is quick to add that the baptism that saves is not water baptism, which can only wash dirt from the body, but baptism of the Spirit which washes the conscience from guilt. There is nothing in the ordinance of water baptism that has the power to accomplish this as the baptismal candidate is well aware. His conscience is clean because he has been justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Since the conscience is not a physical entity, then neither is the saving baptism physical. Yes, Scripture teaches that there is one baptism and therefore water baptism and the baptism of the Spirit agree entirely, and the first is a picture of the second. Both involve the washing away of sins, but both also involve death and resurrection, water baptism teaching these things in symbolic form (Romans 6:3-11), and spiritual baptism working in us the reality. So, we have two types of spiritual baptism: water baptism, and Noah’s deliverance in the ark.What then is the resemblance between Noah’s flood and baptism? It is that both include the elements of death and of resurrection. In the case of Noah, God brought a flood on the earth which drowned all mankind except those who were on the ark. That death threatened Noah and his family as well, but he was delivered by the provision of the Lord. The ark, which was a picture of Christ, carried Noah upwards above the flood waters and the church pictured by Noah’s family was saved and brought alive to the new world. Noah was then in a sense raised from the dead by virtue of being on the ark. But the same is true of baptism which includes the elements of death and resurrection. First, we are immersed under the water, and then we rise up out of it again. Symbolically, we are baptised into Christ’s death by which we die to the old life and to sin, but then we remain united with Christ in his resurrection and we are raised with him from the dead to a new life. Noah’s ark very beautifully pictures the same thing. The reality which saves not just from a flood but eternally, is the baptism by the Spirit of God uniting us with Christ in his death and resurrection. Peter attributes our good conscience to Christ’s resurrection because the proof of our justification is the resurrection of Christ, through which God showed that he was satisfied with the atonement Christ had made, for he would never have raised him from the dead unless he had fully paid the price for sin. Water baptism follows the baptism of the Spirit to give visible form to what God has done invisibly in our hearts. So then water baptism and the deliverance of Noah and his family from the flood waters are both types of the same thing and are equivalent. ‘A good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ Surely that's not right, you may say. It's by the death of Christ, by the atoning death of Christ. Yes, but the resurrection of Christ is the climax. The atoning death of Christ took away our sin as he suffered and died on Calvary, and then the resurrection is the breaking of the bands of death.

Application

Those who come for water baptism must be aware of a work of the Spirit in their hearts already. Biblical theology is opposed to all superstition. Nowhere does the Bible attempt to assign a spiritual effect to a physical cause, but it keeps the two realms distinct and separate. The essence of superstition is the confusion of the two realms. The only way in which Scripture links physical and spiritual is symbolically – the physical may be a symbol of the spiritual – but it never assigns power in the spiritual realm to a physical cause. Water cannot wash away sin but only dirt from the body.

Peter is not denigrating water baptism, but is pointing out that it cannot be the antitype to which the type of Noah’s deliverance corresponds, for water baptism is itself a type, a picture of something else. The Lord does not create types which point to other types, for a type has value only because it points to something real and effectual.

Questions

What mode of baptism does Peter have in mind? In speaking of the putting away of the dirt of the body, he incidentally shows that in the New Testament, baptism is a washing ritual involving submersion of the body in water and the use of a quantity of water, and not simply a sprinkling, which cannot effectively remove dirt.

The KJV translates, ‘the answer of a good conscience toward God’. The Greek word translated ‘answer’ actually means ‘question’ or ‘interrogation’, but it is clear that the mere asking of a question and examination of the conscience is not what Peter has in mind. Although the KJV translation is an interpretation, it is evident that Peter means to put the one for the other and that ‘answer’ is a good translation.

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1 Peter 3:21 Commentary and Bible Study