for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, [the] just for [the] unjust, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in flesh, but made alive in [the] Spirit,
Peter has been urging believers not to fear when they suffer for doing good. He then points them to the one death no believer can copy: Christ suffering once for sins, to bring people to God.
Peter points to the cross to mark off a suffering that is Christ's alone.
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.
The cost of that suffering shapes how a believer treats sin.
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?
Believers share in suffering, but not in punishment, and the word "once" is why.
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.
Christ's suffering here is not an example we can follow.
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.
The two descriptions also mark a change of position for everyone who believes.
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.
The stated aim of the cross is not a place but a Person, and not a future arrangement but a present one.
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.
God's rescue of Israel from Egypt shows the pattern.
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?
Commentators differ over the last clause. One reading settles "made alive" by its contrast with death.
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.
Both halves of the clause carry gospel weight.
His death rolled away the evil before God, and His resurrection proclaimed the victory to faith.
- Once — the suffering for sins happened on the tree and nowhere else; never before, never again.
- The just for the unjust — substitution in fact, even though the word is absent: the sinless One took the place of the unrighteous, and those who believe are righteous from then on.
- Made alive — the One put to death in the flesh was raised, and His resurrection proclaims the victory to faith.
- To God — the goal is nearness to God now, in Christ's own acceptability, not only heaven later.
- Therefore — since He alone could suffer for sins, our suffering should only ever be for doing good.
in which also going he preached to the spirits [which are] in prison,
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
heretofore disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in [the] days of Noah while the ark was preparing, into which few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water
The verse looks back to a moment when the whole world stood under warning and only one family listened. Peter uses it to steady believers who felt few and outnumbered, and to raise the question of what happens when God's patience ends.
Peter's readers were a small group under real suffering. He steadies them by pointing back to the days before the flood.
To sustain these Jewish believers in their special sufferings, the Apostle draws a parallel between their day and the days before the flood. Christ was not personally present then, yet He preached to men by the Spirit of God through Noah. Today Christ is no longer present on earth, but the Holy Spirit has come, and the Gospel is being preached by the servants of the Lord. In Noah's day the great mass was disobedient to the preaching, and their spirits are now in prison awaiting the yet greater judgment of the dead.
The people who did not obey are the ones who heard the preaching. Commentators place that preaching on earth, before the flood, in a human voice.
His Spirit was then on the earth. In His patience God waited one hundred and twenty years while the ark was being built. His Spirit preached then, but He needed an instrument. The instrument was Noah. The Spirit of Christ was in him, and as the preacher of righteousness he delivered the warning of a coming judgment to those around him. They paid no attention. They went on in disobedience, were swept away by the flood, and are now the spirits in prison.
Some take the verse to mean that Christ preached among the dead. William Kelly answers that the hearers were alive when the message came.
Christ's Spirit preached to them through Noah while they were still living men, before the flood came. But they rejected the Word, so their spirits now await the judgment at the resurrection of the unjust... They were sinners who disobeyed the message, not saints being comforted. The preaching was on earth, where the unbelief and rejection took place.
The years of building were themselves the message.
Here we see the patience of God. He bore long with the sinners before the flood and gave them room to repent. Every day that Noah worked at the ark, every plank, every nail, every stroke of his hammer, was a warning and a threat of the coming judgment. And God could do nothing until Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in. Even then there was a pause of seven days.
God named a limit to that patience then. He names none now.
Then in patient goodness He adds, "his days shall be 120 years." Was there not long patience in that? Was there not plenty of chance to repent? Can I promise you one hundred and twenty years of grace now? You have no such promise.
The parallel reaches the numbers as well.
The great mass of the people before the flood were "disobedient" to Noah's warning of the coming flood. In the same way the great mass of the Jewish people were "disobedient" to the warning of the Spirit to save themselves from that crooked generation, doomed as it was to judgment. At that time, too, only a few — eight souls — were saved through water. To continue the parallel, the Jewish believers found that only a small minority were coming into the blessings of the gospel.
Peter does not say they were saved from the water. He says they were saved through it.
All this adds weight to the point that, after all, only "a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water." The very judgment that fell on the world became in this way the means of saving those who escaped it. They were saved through water, the water itself lifting the ark so that it escaped the judgment.
Both the water and the ark point beyond the story.
The water of the flood leads to the meaning of baptism in verse 21. It is a picture of death under judgment — death for the world that perished in the flood, and salvation by grace for the believer, through Him who went down for our sins and rose again to be the true ark for us. The water was the instrument of God's judgment in destruction. Those in the ark were saved through it, but only because they obeyed God's word and the ark kept them safe. The ark was a picture of Christ, not of the church, as some wrongly imagine. The church did not exist then, and even if it had, it could not have saved anyone.
- Waiting. God's patience set the clock: 120 years of ark-building, and every hammer stroke was a warning of coming judgment.
- Preaching. During that wait the Spirit of Christ preached through Noah to living men on earth, not to the dead. Those hearers are in prison now because they refused then.
- Few. Eight people were the whole harvest of that preaching. Peter uses the number to comfort believers who felt like a tiny minority.
- Through. They were not spared the water but carried through it. The very flood that destroyed the world lifted the ark and saved them.
- Now. The ark stands for Christ. The same patience waits today, but this time with no promised length.
which figure also now saves you, [even] baptism, not a putting away of [the] filth of flesh, but [the] demand as before God of a good conscience, by [the] resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Peter has just spoken of the flood. Then he says something that has troubled readers ever since: baptism "now saves you." Two questions follow — saved from what, and how can water do anything at all?
Peter links the flood to baptism with a word often translated "antitype." One writer says that word does not make baptism the reality itself.
The word plainly means, as in Hebrews, "figure," or, more fully, "answering figure." Older versions give it as "like figure." Its simple force seems to be a figure that answers to the facts. So we can understand why the apostle says that baptism, as such a figure, "saves." Baptism expresses the thing that does save — a matching reality in the soul.
The flood carried Noah out of a doomed world into a new one. Commentators read baptism the same way for Peter's first readers.
The flood cut off that little remnant of the age before it. Through the waters of death they left the old world behind and entered the new. The converted Jews to whom Peter wrote were in exactly that position. They too were only a small remnant. Their baptism separated them from the mass of their nation, which lay under wrath and judgment, so that they might come under the authority of their risen and glorified Messiah. Baptism is, in figure, separation by means of death, and in that sense it saves.
The same picture reaches past those first readers:
The baptism of the flood cut all Noah's links with the old world. For us Gentiles baptism has the same meaning. It separates us — if we understand it and are true to it in practice — from the world which is rushing on to judgment. Are we true to what baptism means?
Peter blocks the misuse of his own sentence. He adds that this is not about washing dirt off the body.
Peter is careful here, to guard against a superstitious twisting of his words. He says "not the putting away the filth of the flesh" — washing dirt away was all that water could do. What a good conscience asks God for is salvation by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For He was given up for our sins and raised again for our justification. So we have acceptance in Him.
Whatever baptism pictures, it does not give new life.
Baptism has its place of deep interest and importance. But Scripture never credits it with giving life. That is a very old and stubborn error in the Christian world.
Older versions read "answer of a good conscience." Writers here take the word the other way round: the conscience asks God for something, rather than answering Him.
The word is a little difficult, but I believe its force is this: it is what the conscience wants and asks God for. Now, when the Holy Spirit touches a conscience, what satisfies it? Nothing less than acceptance in righteousness before God. And that is the very position baptism sets out.
Another writer keeps the distinction practical. Baptism voices the demand; it does not supply the answer.
It expressed the desire or demand of a good conscience — it does not itself give a good conscience, but since baptism is "unto Christ," it points to Him who does give a good conscience.
The verse does not stop at conscience. It ends with the resurrection of Jesus.
We never see salvation stated in its real force apart from resurrection. You may find in death what meets guilt, but salvation is never less than the power of resurrection, and never separable from it. Peter did not mean the mere outward act of baptism. That could save nobody. But what baptism represents does save. It declares that the Christian has a new place and standing — not in the first Adam at all, but in the Second, in the presence of God — as man without sin, accepted according to the acceptance of Christ before God.
Notice too whom Peter is addressing.
Salvation does not work apart from faith. Peter may tell us that baptism "now saves you" (1 Peter 3:21), but note the word "you" — and the "you" are believers.
- Figure — the word behind "corresponds to this" means an answering figure, not the reality. Baptism pictures what saves.
- Separation — the flood cut Noah's every link with the old world. Baptism marks a person off from a world under judgment.
- Not water — Peter's own words rule out any power in the washing. Scripture never traces new life to baptism.
- Request — baptism asks God for a good conscience; it does not produce one. It points to the One who gives it.
- Resurrection — salvation is never stated apart from the risen Christ. That is where the verse lands.
who is at [the] right hand of God, gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to him.
Peter has traced Christ from the cross to the resurrection, and now one step further — into heaven, to the place of highest authority. The verse answers the question that presses on anyone who suffers for doing right: where is Jesus now, and what does that mean for me?
The verse is the last link in a chain Peter has been building since verse 18. One writer traces the whole line.
The Apostle had been writing of Christ suffering once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Then he sees Him "made alive in the Spirit." Then he sees Him in the place of supreme authority, with all the great beings of heaven subject to Him. Such is the greatness and glory of the One Peter knew on earth as a lowly Man, who died to put away our sins.
What does the right hand of God mean? One writer answers with a picture from business.
Christ is not only risen. He has gone into heaven and is already at the right hand of God. That means He is the appointed Administrator of all God's will. A businessman who has a very able person acting for him and carrying out his wishes will often call him "my right-hand man." The Lord Jesus is indeed the "man of your right hand" of whom the Psalmist spoke (Ps. 80:17), and we have been baptized to Him and come under His authority.
Peter's first readers were Jews who had expected their Messiah to reign in Jerusalem. The verse redirects their hope upward without cancelling the older promise.
He "has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him." In due time He will certainly sit as David's Son on David's throne in Zion, and in that day all Israel will repent, believe and be saved. But the Jews, and the Gentiles too, who see Him now by faith have a better portion, because He has gone up into a higher glory. If He sits there, as Psalm 110 assures us, then angels and authorities and powers are not disobedient like the Jews on earth; subjected to Him, they break out in glad and loud praise. And Christians even here and now worship in the Spirit the One who is exalted above.
One writer names the lesson the Jews had to learn.
The Christ had gone up to heaven, and all powers and rulers were made subject to Him. He is at the right hand of God. We have therefore not a Messiah on earth, but a good conscience and a heavenly Christ.
The striking thing here is the reversal. The Man who once ranked below the angels now stands above them.
He Who was made a little lower than the angels so that He could suffer death is now exalted, with "angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to Him."
This subjection began at the ascension. One writer draws a wider conclusion from it.
Besides that, He has His own personal supremacy, as 1 Peter 3:22 says: He "has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him." This took effect when He ascended. It is a blessing to see that no purpose of God fails to reach its full end. Man fails, and has failed, in every position God ever set him up in. Yet all of it will be found made good and upheld in Christ as man, to God's everlasting glory.
One writer draws out the encouragement in this for people who suffer.
How great an encouragement for us! Remember, all these verses (15-22) grew out of the thought that we may have to suffer for righteousness' sake. The converted Jew suffered exactly when his baptism cut his links with Judaism. But he was baptized to the Lord Jesus, and so came under the authority of the One who sat in the place of supreme authority and administration. And since all powers were subject to Him, no power could touch them without His permission.
One writer puts it in the first person, as Peter looking up.
I look up, Peter says, and see Christ raised from the dead, and gone into heaven, angels being made subject to Him. There was a beautiful touch for the believing Jew. I have a good conscience, and a seated Christ in glory, and I am on the other side of death and judgment, seated in Christ at God's right hand.
- Suffered — the line starts with Christ suffering for sins, the just for the unjust. This glory is where that line ends.
- Seated — at the right hand of God, Christ is the appointed Administrator of all God's will — the "man of your right hand" of Psalm 80.
- Subjected — the Man once made lower than the angels now has angels, authorities and powers under Him. This took effect when He ascended.
- Shifted — hope moves from a Messiah on earth to a heavenly Christ. His throne in Zion is still to come.
- Sheltered — every power is subject to Him. So no power can touch the believer who suffers for righteousness without His permission.