Who were the spirits in prison?

A. The first expression important to seize is that Christ is said to have been quickened in the Spirit in which He also went and preached. That is, the words, strictly, do not attribute a bodily going to preach, but that He went and preached in the Spirit. Now this was true, if it was the Spirit of Christ testifying in and by Noah the preacher of righteousness, as he is called in 2 Peter 2. It is also confirmed by what is said in this First Epistle of the Spirit of Christ working in the Old Testament prophets; and very distinctly by the well-known passage in Genesis 6:3. Next, it is not said that he went to their prison and preached there to the spirits; but that in the Spirit he went and preached to the imprisoned spirits (or to the spirits which are in prison). Not a word intimates that the preaching was in prison or that they were in prison when preached to. Again, the absence of the article before ἀπειθήσασιν denotes that it is not a mere descriptive circumstance assumed to be known; but the cause is predicated why the spirits were imprisoned, namely, their having been disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, when, as I believe, the testimony of God was rendered to them but rebelliously refused. Therefore not only the flood took them away from the earth, but their spirits in prison are reserved for judgment. Few were saved then. The godly must not wonder if they are few now; nor would temporal judgments cover the doom of those who reject the gospel, for they too, like the antediluvians, will not escape the dealing of God who will judge the wicked and unbelieving. The men of the world, and even the Jews most of all, turned a deaf ear to the voice of Christ's Spirit preaching by Peter and the rest. They only looked for a visible Messiah, present and reigning over the earth and especially over Israel in the land. Hence the testimony of a rejected crucified Messiah, exalted in heaven (with a people indiscriminately called out from Jews and Gentiles, and exposed to oppression, shame, suffering, and death here below), was odious to them. Nothing could be more appropriate than the allusion to Noah's teaching of old and the safety of a few in the ark (who heeded the word, spite of appearances), while the mass who were incredulous remain in prison for the eternal judgment of God. There is the utmost force in adducing that remarkable witness of the value of faith in a divine testimony, and of the solemnity of rejecting it; whereas the supposed reference to a personal preaching to these particular souls in hades is not only without the smallest countenance from elsewhere, to say the least, but seems strangely lame and incongruous for the case in hand. Proclaiming to Old Testament saints there I can understand (though I see not the smallest warrant for the notion); but here it is expressly not the obedient and saints, but a limited class once disobedient to God's word, when His Spirit strove with them in Noah's day before the flood. Bad as the notion of purgatory and its temporary suffering may be, the idea of preaching to disobedient souls in hades in order to let them out, appears to me no better, and directly defeats the serious warning of judgment for unbelief which Peter had in view. For it allows of a hope for some unbelieving ones after death. Bishop Horsley and Dean Alford are quite wrong as to this.

What, then, does the passage mean? It is very simple after all. He preached by the Spirit, or in the Spirit, that is, the same Spirit who raised Him from among the dead, the Holy Spirit of life and power, to the spirits who are now in prison. But when the preaching occurred they were not in prison. And who were they? All the wicked dead for 4,000 years? The text makes it clear that they are a special class of people. They were living in the days of Noah. It is incomprehensible how some of these teachers, misinterpreting this passage, can teach that it includes all the lost, or angels which fell, or the righteous dead. The Spirit of God preached to them, that is, the Spirit who quickened the body of Christ, the same Spirit preached to the generation of unbelievers in the days of Noah. The time of the preaching, then, did not occur between the death and resurrection of Christ, but it took place in Noah's day. Christ was not personally, or corporeally present, just as He is not present in person in this age when the gospel is preached; His Spirit is here.

So was He present by His Spirit in the days of Noah. It is written: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years" (Gen. 6:3). His Spirit was then on the earth. In long-suffering God was waiting for one hundred and twenty years while the ark was preparing. His Spirit preached then. But He needed an instrument. The instrument was Noah; in him was the Spirit of Christ and as the preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5) he delivered the warning message of an impending judgment to those about him, who did not heed the message, passed on in disobedience, were swept away by the deluge and are now the spirits in prison. As the Spirit of Christ was in the prophets (chapter 1:11) testifying beforehand of the suffering of Christ and the glory that should follow, so the Spirit of Christ preached through Noah. This is the meaning of this passage, and any other is faulty and unscriptural.

(Vv. 19, 20). In order 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 (Genesis 6:3; 2 Peter 2:5). 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 (Acts 1:8). 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. So too the great mass of the Jewish nation entirely rejected the preaching of Christ by the Spirit (Acts 7:51-53). In the days before the flood, it was the time of “the long-suffering of God”, in which God waited to bless men before the judgment fell; so the present time is the day of God's grace that precedes the coming judgment.

Many are perplexed as to the meaning of this scripture, and, as a consequence, questions concerning it are often received. It is frequently concluded (and there are many advocates of this view) that Christ Himself went, after His death, when "quickened by the Spirit," and "preached unto the spirits in prison," the spirits described in verse 20; and it is contended that the gospel was thus proclaimed, with the object of their deliverance, to those who had rejected God's testimony through Noah to his generation. One easily perceives the reason for the readiness with which this interpretation is adopted and promulgated. The question therefore is, Does it convey the mind of the Spirit in the passage? The following considerations will supply the answer. Let it then be first remarked that in chapter 1:11 we find that it was the Spirit of CHRIST that "testified beforehand" through the prophets "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." In this we surely have the key for the understanding of our scripture. Noah received a revelation from God "of things not seen as yet"; he was "a preacher of righteousness"; and he was thus a true prophet. In him therefore it was also the Spirit of Christ who wrought and produced his testimony to the souls of his generation. Accepting this all is plain. Peter had just spoken of the atoning sufferings of Christ, their character and object, and then, as he was about to connect the typical meaning of the flood with baptism, he adds, "being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also He went (or, "in which also going") and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah." It was, then, the Spirit of Christ, or Christ in the Spirit, who went in Noah and preached to these spirits; but they were disobedient to the testimony rendered; and heeded not the longsuffering of God during those one hundred and twenty years. They lost therefore the opportunity of salvation, and incurred the penalty of destruction through the flood, and of their spirits being "in prison" after death. Noah and his family alone were preserved; these unhappy spirits now in prison stumbled at the word, being disobedient, to their eternal loss and sorrow.

This passage in 1 Peter 3 has occasioned difficulties to the readers of Scripture; but it appears to me simple, if we perceive the object of the Spirit of God. The Jews expected a Messiah corporeally present, who should deliver the nation and exalt the Jews to the summit of earthly glory. But He was not present, we know, in that manner, and the believing Jews had to endure the scoffs and the hatred of the unbelieving on account of their trust in a Messiah who was not present and who had wrought no deliverance for the people. Believers possessed the salvation of their soul and they knew Jesus in heaven, but unbelieving men did not care for that. The apostle therefore cites the case of Noah’s testimony. The believing Jews were few in number, and Christ was theirs only according to the Spirit. By the power of that Spirit He had been raised up from the dead. It was by the power of the same Spirit that He had gone — without being corporeally present — to preach in Noah. The world was disobedient (like the Jews in the apostle’s days), and eight souls only were saved; even as the believers were now but a little flock. But the spirits of the disobedient were now in prison because they did not obey Christ present among them by His Spirit in Noah. The longsuffering of God waited then, as now, with the Jewish nation; the result would be the same. It has been so.

A. To be understood, this verse must be taken with what goes before. Christ was put to death in flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient as they at one time were when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved through water; which figure also doth now save you, etc. Just as we read in 1 Peter 1:10-12 of Christ's Spirit in the prophets testifying, so we here learn that His Spirit (i.e. in Noah) preached. Those who heard were disobedient then, and their spirits are in prison now. Christ's Spirit by Noah went and preached to them when they were living men, before the Deluge came; but they rejected the Word, and now consequently their spirits await the judgment at the resurrecion of the unjust. The collocation of the Greek (τοῒς ἐν φυλακῆ πνέμασιν) is decisive, that the true connection is not with the preaching, but between the spirits and prison. They were sinners disobedient to the message, not saints comforted. The preaching was on earth, where the unbelieving rejection was; and because of it their spirits are now imprisoned (the very opposite of paradise) till judgment come.

There is no possible connection between this scripture and 1 Peter 3:19. They refer to entirely different subjects. In Psalm 16 we have the Lord's experience as the dependent Man, while passing through this world, and also in the prospect of death. He is thus. seen in it more in the character of the "Leader and Completer," the perfect Exemplar, of faith. Verse 8 closes, so to speak, His earthly pathway; and it is, as in the contemplation of death and the grave, that He says, in verses 9 and 10, "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." The word rendered "hell" in verse 10 is misleading. It is more exactly hades, as may be seen from Peter's citation of the passage on the day of Pentecost. (See the Greek of Acts 2:27-31.) Now, hades is a general term to indicate the place of departed spirits, and it is thus used of such in the case of unbelievers as well as of believers. (See Luke 16:23.) But then it must be remembered that, while the term covers equally the abode of good and bad spirits, the place of "the spirits of just men made perfect" is entirely different from that where the spirits of the unsaved are kept. This is shown from the words addressed by the Lord to the malefactor, "Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise;" whereas it is said of the rich man, "And in 'hades' he lift up his eyes, being in torments." The former therefore are in a state of blessedness with Christ; the latter are in a condition of unspeakable woe, shut out for ever from the presence of the Lord. There is consequently no foundation whatever for the popular idea that our blessed Lord descended, after His death, and before His resurrection, into hell; nor, it may be added, for a prevalent opinion that the passage in Peter means that He went there to preach the gospel to the spirits of those who perished through the flood in the days of Noah. From 1 Peter 1:11 we learn that it was the Spirit of Christ that acted in, and testified through, the prophets of old. It was thus the Spirit of Christ that testified through Noah. This makes all plain when we read that Christ, having been put to death in the flesh, was quickened by the Spirit, by which also (note the word "also" as introducing an additional thing) "He went and preached unto the spirits in prison." But when? The answer is found in what follows, from which we gather that it was in the days of God's longsuffering before the flood. The Spirit of Christ thus preached through Noah to those spirits who are now in prison in consequence of their disobedience to, and rejection of, Noah's testimony.

The question asked, probably arises from an error, only too commonly held, that our Lord went into the prison to preach to spirits held there. The tense used is important to the understanding of the passage. Note, therefore, that these imprisoned spirits were not such when they heard the preaching. They were in their bodies. The Spirit of Christ, in the preaching of Noah, warned them of the coming flood — the judgment of God upon the world that then was because of the appalling wickedness then prevalent (Gen. 6:5-12). So then, Christ preached to them by His Spirit, in Noah, during the period of God's long suffering. At the time Peter's first Epistle was written, they were — as to their spirits — in prison having been carried away — in their bodies — by the waters of the flood, because of their wanton disobedience. Hence the warning to the mockers of Peter's day (and ours) who scoffingly asked, "Where is the promise of His coming? for from the time the fathers fell asleep all things remain thus from the beginning of the creation. For this is hidden from them through their own wilfulness … the then world, deluged with water, perished" (2 Peter 3:4-6; and Luke 17:26-27).

The foregoing leaves a solemn question with our readers; Is it really to be thought that if our Lord had actually gone and preached to the spirits in prison, His preaching would have been confined to those who were disobedient in Noah's day? A second opportunity of repentance is not any time given to such as refuse the testimony of God. Read, 2 Thess. 1:7-10 and Chapter 2:8-12.

The chief question is: Did our Lord go to Hades in a disembodied state? In fact, all depends on the question of what is the true meaning of the sentence, "quickened by the Spirit." Now, according to the interpretations of the men who teach that the Lord visited Hades, the spirits in prison, during the interval between His death and the morning of the third day, He descended into these regions while His dead body was still in the grave. Therefore, these teachers claim that His human spirit was quickened, which necessitates that the spirit which the dying Christ commended into the Father's hands had also died. This is not only incorrect doctrine, but it is an unsound and evil doctrine. Was the holy humanity of our Lord, body, soul and spirit dead? A thousands times No! Only His body died; that is the only part of Him which could die. The text makes this clear: "He was put to death in flesh," that is, His body. There could be no quickening of His spirit, for His spirit was alive. Furthermore, the word quickening, as we learn from Ephesians 1:20 and 2:5-6, by comparing the two passages, applies to His physical resurrection, it is the quickening of His body. To teach that the Lord Jesus was made alive before His resurrection is unscriptural. The "quickened by the Spirit" means the raising up of His body. His human spirit needed no quickening; it was His body and only His body. And the Spirit who did the quickening is not His own spirit, that is, His human spirit, but the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:11 speaks of the Spirit as raising Jesus from among the dead.

The Spirit of Christ in Noah really preached to the people in Noah's day. How the Spirit of Christ? We have seen in the first chapter of this epistle that very expression (1 Peter 1:10-11). The Spirit of Christ in the prophets could write Scripture, and then search Scripture. So the Spirit of Christ in Noah could proclaim the Gospel to the antediluvians, while they were men on the earth. In Genesis 6 God says, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." This is the very word. The Spirit of the Lord strove with them for a hundred and twenty years. The Spirit of Christ in Noah proclaimed the Gospel all that time. It was the preaching of righteousness and coming judgment. The spirits of these men are in prison now, because they were disobedient to the word preached to them then.