1 Peter 3:18

This leads to another important point: if we do suffer, it should never be for sin, and for the moving reason that Christ has once for all suffered for sins. Let that be enough. Christ has suffered for sins; He has had there, if we may say so, a monopoly, and there let it end. Why should we? He alone was competent to suffer for sin. We ought never to suffer except for His name, unless it is for righteousness, as is said here.

Our sins caused the unspeakable agony of the Lord of glory. He suffered that agony to take our sins away completely, and to present us in righteousness before His God and Father. Why then should a believer go back in the smallest degree to what gave Christ His agony?

The suffering that fellow heirs share has nothing of punishment in it. It is not suffering from the hand of infinite justice because of sin. The cross fully met all of that, when the divine victim bowed His sacred head under the stroke. "Christ also suffered once for sins," and that "once" was on the tree and nowhere else. He never suffered for sins before, and He never can suffer for sins again.

His sufferings, as this verse presents them, were in a class by themselves and altogether beyond us. He suffered for sins as a Substitute — the Just for the unjust ones. The actual word substitution does not appear in our English version. But what the word stands for is very clearly in this verse.

He was alone in that one act of suffering supremely at God's hand. It was for unjust or unrighteous men. Sadly, here all were unrighteous, all sinned. Those who by grace benefit through faith would be the first to admit it of themselves. From now on they are righteous, and they live by faith, since it was through faith that they became righteous.

His own testimony assures us that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring us to God. He does not just bring us to heaven when we die. He brings us to God now. How does He bring us to God? Tied and bound with the chain of our sins? With an unbearable burden of guilt on our souls? No indeed. He brings us to God without spot or stain or charge. He brings us to God in all His own acceptableness.

Long ago, God did not shelter Israel in Egypt through the blood of the Passover lamb just to leave them in Egypt. He took them right out of Egypt and brought them to Himself... The great object our blessed Lord set before Himself in dying for us was to introduce us to God, His Father. He sets us before Him in the closest of relationships, and so establishes the happiest communion between our souls and Him. Are we really enjoying this?

What does "made alive" mean in itself? It should be plain that it stands in sharpest contrast with being put to death. Set against death, it means "being brought to life." It cannot carry the sense of "preserved alive," as some would make it; the word is never used that way. And it is the One who was put to death who was made alive. One would say He could only be "made alive" in regard to that in which death had come in. So if He was put to death in flesh, He must be made alive as to what suffered death. In that case there is no question that this speaks of resurrection. It is not the state between death and resurrection, but the resurrection itself.

His death rolled away the evil before God, and His resurrection proclaimed the victory to faith.