What does it mean that Christ also suffered once for sins (1 Peter 3:18)?

Now no one ever suffered as Christ. He is our supreme Example. Yet His sufferings as verse 18 presents them, were in a class by themselves and altogether beyond us, for He suffered for sins as a Substitute — the Just for the unjust ones. The actual word substitution does not occur in our English version, but that which the word represents is very clearly in this verse. Note the object of His substitutionary sufferings — "that He might bring us to God," making us thoroughly at home in His presence, having a fitness to be there. Are we all in our own hearts and consciences happily at home with God?

We shall find there, that Christ has already gone through the judgment of God for us individually and for our sins, and that in consequence we are already brought to God and accepted by Him as to our persons, instead of having to wait for the judgment day. For that judgment having been fully endured by Christ, when He suffered on the cross, there is no more remaining for those who believe. Thus the Apostle Peter says, "Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh" (1 Peter 3:18). It is this suffering for sins "once" by the Just One for the unjust — not in His life, but when He was "put to death" — which has answered and settled the question of sin by His having borne all the suffering due to it under the hand of God. This enabled Him, who so suffered, to bring us to God, who has already received us according to this title which Christ has so gained to present us to Him. For He took our place before God and what was due to us that we might have in exchange what was due to Him and His worth, instead of eternal misery, the just desert of our sin. Thus He brings us to God, according to the value of what He has done and suffered for us.

This leads to another important point; that if we do suffer, it ought never to be for sin, and for the affecting reason that Christ has once for all suffered for sins. Let this be enough. Christ has suffered for sins; He has had there, if we may so say, a monopoly; and there let it end: why should we? He alone was competent to suffer for sin. We ought never to suffer but for His name, unless it be for righteousness, as is said here, "For Christ also hath 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 the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison."

How simple yet weighty and conclusive is scripture! Who that considers it, when declared, can doubt that it is better to suffer when we are doing well than when we deserve chastening for ill-doing? Yet it is not at first obvious to him who, feeling the iniquity done him, is apt to complain of the hardship. Christ suffered throughout for righteousness, for truth, for love; and we have it as our privilege to share these sufferings of His, as the apostle Paul pressed on his beloved Philippians; "To you was granted in behalf of Christ not only the believing on him but the suffering for him also, having the same conflict as ye saw in me and now hear of in me" (Phil. 1:29-30). Peter too had already in 1 Peter 2:21 presented Christ as a model in this, but there as here, distinguished from that following in His steps, the foundation of all which He only could lay, in that He bore our sins in His body on the tree, that dead to sins, we might live to righteousness (ver. 24). So here the apostle turns to what is and must be solely His: "because even (or, also) Christ once suffered for sins, Just for unjust."

For sins it was His alone to suffer. He suffered but once in this atoning way where none could follow; for it was not from man because He was faithful to God, but from God because of His grace to man, whatever it might cost in bearing God's righteous judgment of man's sins. For on His holy head Jehovah made to light, as Isaiah says, the iniquity of us all. "It pleased Jehovah to bruise him," not only to put Him to grief, but "to make his soul an offering for sin." Thus only could we be pardoned righteously and saved. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes are we healed. What pathos as well as force in the apostle's cheer for suffering as doers of good and not evil, that He suffered for our sins once and once only! Let this suffice: so perfectly was it done, as He alone could bear that burden, intolerable to Him above all, yet borne by Him that they might be, as they are, borne away for all that are His. Let us therefore now suffer only for what is good on our part.

But there is more. Christ also suffered once for sins, Just for unjust. He was alone in that one act of suffering supremely at God's hand. It was for unjust or unrighteous men. Alas! here all were unrighteous, all sinned; and those who by grace benefited through faith would be the first to own it of themselves. Henceforward they are righteous, and so live by faith, as through it they became so; nor do they forget that they believed on Him that justifies the ungodly, and thus their faith is reckoned for righteousness. Such was His grace.

Think too of the efficacy of His suffering thus, "that he might bring us to God," not yet actually to heaven but meet for it, and therefore "to God" Who is far more than heaven. Christ on the cross cleared us from both our evil works and the evil root and sap, sin in the flesh that produces them. We are therefore no longer far from God but brought nigh, as he had said in 1 Peter 2, a holy and a royal priesthood with a better reality of nearness to God by the blood of Christ than the Aaronic priest had typically. To assert a sacerdotal class on earth now between the Christian and Christ is to deny the gospel. None can wonder who believe in the glory of His person who was put to death in flesh, and made alive, or quickened, in the Spirit. His death rolled away the evil before God, and His resurrection proclaimed the victory to faith.

Here is the way in which the whole question may be divinely set. Sin entails suffering, the world is full of it because sin dominates the earth. Suffering beyond the grave is entailed for those who die unconverted. Why? Because sin entails suffering. Why did Christ suffer? He suffered for sin. It is true in a certain sense that He suffered for righteousness because He was in an unrighteous world, there was a perfect man in the midst of sinful men, and they hated Him and His Father and they put Him out by way of the malefactors gibbet, the cross. But when He was thus put out by the action of sinful men something else happened, He offered Himself as the great atoning sacrifice, what Scripture calls the propitiation, that is to say, He said, in effect, ‘Let me be the One who bears the judgment and the wrath.’ How could He do it? He could do it on this universal scale because of who He really was. Had He not been the mighty Son of God, had He not been God manifest in the flesh, He could not have done it. What a wonderful thing! The God who acts in righteousness and who has to bring in judgment upon sin came in the Person of His Son into manhood to bear the judgment!

The first thing that they want to do, as no doubt they did to others who were to be put to death, is give them this stupefying drink that would make them insensible to all that was going on. But my friend, Jesus refused that. Peter tells us that "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." There are three wonderful things in that verse. When men want to write to impress you and me, they write volume upon volume. But listen what God puts into the space of this short verse: "Christ also hath once suffered for sins"-propitiation; "the just for the unjust"-substitution; "that He might bring us to God"-reconciliation. And think of it, dear friend, the Word of God-it has a majesty, it has a dignity of its own so that men need not elaborate on it whatsoever. It is a Word that comes from God Himself. And it comes with mighty power to grip the heart and conscience. That's the confidence of the preacher as he seeks to make known the story of the cross to men and women. He's not depending upon his ability. What a poor thing it would be. But he's depending upon the mighty power of God, and the use of that precious Word, simply though it may be spoken, to reach hearts and consciences. I trust it's going to reach yours tonight, dear friend.

Nor is the meaning doubtful. The apostle of the circumcision is eminently plain and practical, fervent and forcible. He does not, like Paul, penetrate into root principles or rise into the vast circle of the divine counsels, "wherein are some things hard to be understood." He is not like John, profoundly contemplative on the divine nature as revealed in the Son of GOD. Peter is so simple and direct, that the interpreters err greatly who fancy that his words convey what their own speculations import. He would not have the Christian suffer for evil but for well-doing; and this, not for moral reasons only, but in a touching appeal to Him who suffered atoningly on the cross: — "Because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust ones, that He might bring us near to GOD." Let it be ours, objects of His saving grace, to suffer only for righteousness and for His name. If it cost Him everything here up to death, GOD vindicated Him by resurrection, "put to death indeed in flesh, but quickened in Spirit" (or, as in 1 Tim. 3:16, "justified in Spirit"); in which [Spirit] also having proceeded He preached to the imprisoned spirits, disobedient as they were aforetime when the long-suffering of GOD was waiting in Noah's days. As the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead,* so not personally but in the same Spirit also He went and preached to the spirits in prison because of their disobeying the word in Noah's time, when preached by him.

The connection and scope is evident. The apostle is exhorting the believers to a patient life of suffering so as to fill with shame those who vented their spite on their good behaviour in Christ. Who could gainsay that it was better, did the will of GOD so will, to suffer while doing well than doing ill; and this because Christ also suffered (but He suffered once, once for all) for sins? This should be enough: we should suffer not for sins, but only for righteousness or for Christ's name sake. It was His to suffer for us, this once and for ever, Just for unjust persons (for such were we), that He might bring us to GOD. It is ours to suffer at times especially, but in principle always while in this present evil world. The καὶ connects Christ and us as suffering, but the contrast is as striking as it is morally suggestive. To understand with some περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν as a point of comparison between Him and us under such a junction is to miss the reasoning utterly, not to speak of failure in reverence towards the Saviour in that work which stands far above all comparison. This ought to have been too plain to need further reproof from δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, where His solitary and unapproachable place is set out. It was His alone thus to bring us near to GOD. The participles that follow tell us how this was done: "Put to death in flesh but made alive in [the] Spirit."

It may be that God may see it good that we should suffer. If so, it is better that we should suffer for well doing than for evil doing. The apostle gives a touching motive for this: Christ has suffered for sins once for all; let that suffice; let us suffer only for righteousness. To suffer for sin was His task; He accomplished it, and that for ever; put to death, as to His life in the flesh, but quickened according to the power of the divine Spirit.

First, then, the apostle explains that if they suffered for righteousness' sake they were a happy people: this was the mark of true disciples. It was therefore better, if the will of God should so will, that they should suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing. They ought not to suffer as evildoers, because Christ suffered once for sins that we might not suffer, though He was the Just One and we the unjust.

In referring to the suffering of Christ for sins, the apostle mentions the guilt of the Jews, namely, that He was put to death in the flesh (cp. Matt. 26:59; Matt. 27:1; Mark 14:55; same Greek word), but, he adds, quickened by, or in the Spirit.