‘Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,'
Once again we learn that when the Christian faces suffering he must bear in mind that Christ also suffered for sins. Suffering for righteousness' sake is nothing new. It has been a part of following Christ from the beginning (see Matthew 16:24; John 15:20; John 16:2; Acts 14:22; compare Hebrews 11). The fact that Peter says that He suffered for sins ‘once', brings out that this suffering refers specifically to the cross. The Messiah suffered once as ‘the Righteous One' (Acts 3:14; Acts 22:14; Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 9:28) on behalf of the unrighteous (the Obedient One on behalf of the disobedient), and He did so in order that He might be our Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:15; Hebrews 12:24) and bring us to God, by shedding the blood of the covenant for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28). Compare the picture in Hebrews 9:11-12; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:19-20 which also speaks of His suffering, and the way back to God that results from it.
‘On behalf of' (huper) indicates that He died in our place both as our substitute (Mark 10:45) and as the representative of all Who are His elect. It is to be noted here that our approach to God is made possible through His suffering, not through His resurrection, for without that suffering in which He bore our sin we would not be able to approach God. But His resurrection is then the evidence that He has accomplished His purpose and defeated the powers of darkness. It is the source of our confidence and of the life that we receive as a result.
The cross and the resurrection regularly go together, and we have here the emphasis that Christ Himself was ‘put to death in the flesh', so that His life on earth was over. But then we also have the emphasis that He was ‘made alive in the spirit'. This was the indication that death had been defeated. The new life that He would give to all who became His was just beginning. His suffering was the action of men as they thought that they had done with Him (although within the purposes of God), His resurrection was the action of God. It does not say that He ‘became alive in the spirit' but that He ‘was made alive in the spirit'. Thus after men had put Jesus to death, God ‘made Him alive in the spirit'. In other words although His body was dead, God gave Him a new spiritual body through which His spirit could live (1 Corinthians 15:44-45). This can only refer to the resurrection. (The same is also true if we translate ‘was made alive by the Spirit'. In fact it makes little difference for spiritual life is always finally the result of the Spirit's working).
The verb ‘made alive' is elsewhere used similarly in order to indicate resurrection. See for example 1 Corinthians 15:22; John 5:22. Compare also Romans 1:4. And in the context here the term ‘spirit' signifies ‘supernatural' life. Consider for example the parallel of the ‘spirits in prison'. Their supernatural existence is seen as in contrast with the supernatural spiritual life that He has received. See also 1 Corinthians 15:45, where He is made a ‘lifegiving spirit'; Hebrews 12:23, where we learn of ‘the spirits of righteous men made perfect' who are in the after-life; Romans 1:4 where Jesus is ‘declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead'; John 6:63, where ‘it is the spirit that makes alive, the flesh is of no profit, the words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life'. Thus there is no reason for doubting that we have here a description of Christ's resurrection (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:21; 1 Peter 2:4) following His death (1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 1:19; 1 Peter 2:24). It would be totally unlike Peter not to mention the resurrection here (compare 1 Peter 1:3; 1Pe 1:21; 1 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 3:21), especially as he then goes on to describe the enthronement.
‘In the spirit.' The idea is that He arose with a spiritual body in renewed spiritual life (1 Corinthians 15:44). This is not contradicted by Luke 24:39. There Jesus was not denying that He was ‘spirit' (we know that in fact He is spirit - John 4:24), He was denying that he was a ‘ghost'. Thus we must not see Him there as denying that He had risen as a ‘supernatural' spirit in a spiritual body, but simply as denying that He was a mere phantasm.
Alternately we may see ‘in the spirit' as meaning ‘by the Spirit', with the life of the Spirit contrasted with human life. Some would object that the parallel of ‘flesh' with ‘spirit' excludes this idea, but a similar parallel between flesh and the Holy Spirit can be found in Galatians 5:16 ff. and would make good sense here. On the other hand there it is the pull of ‘sinful flesh' that is contrasted with the work of the Spirit, whereas here there would appear to be the deliberate intention of contrasting the death of His sinless human flesh with the making alive of His spirit as in 1 Corinthians 15:44-46, where it also refers to the resurrection. However, whichever way we view it, to be made alive by God is certainly to be made alive by the Spirit.
In the end it would be unwise of us to speculate too much on something which we cannot possibly fully understand, but it is difficult to see ‘made alive in the spirit' as referring to some kind of experience that happened before the resurrection. Peter is hardly likely to be suggesting that not only had Jesus' body died, but His spirit had also died in such a way as to need to be made alive again even prior to the resurrection. He would be well aware that Jesus had commended His spirit to God (Luke 23:46) and that when the body died the spirit did not die but returned to the God Who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). His point here is rather therefore to emphasise the activity of God in the unique work of ‘making alive the spirit in a spiritual body' through the resurrection following physical death (compare Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2-3; John 5:28-29).
We can in fact compare for this whole process the credal hymn cited by Paul in 1 Timothy 3:16. ‘He Who was manifested in the flesh (He was put to death in the flesh), vindicated in the spirit (He was made alive in the spirit), seen of angels (He proclaimed His victory to angels, here seen in terms of the spirits in prison), preached among the nations (just as when, while the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, Noah as the preacher of righteousness preached to the nations), believed on in the world (the response of a good conscience towards God), received up in glory (Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into Heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him)'. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Peter may be patterning his arguments on a similar credal hymn, while applying them in such a way as to get over his point.