The Grounds Of Their Confidence In The Face Of The Powers That Are Against Them (1 Peter 3:18-21).
If we are to understand the significance of the verses that follow it is important that we recognise their context. It is a context of contrast. On the one hand are the people of God, who follow Christ, and worship God alone, on the other are the people who are attached to idolatry and the occult, and are opposed to the people of God. (Compare, ‘you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God' - 1 Thessalonians 1:9, and note Peter's emphasis in 1 Peter 4:3) Thus the context is of those who follow Christ, as compared with those who follow false gods, whether gods of idolatry or of materialism. We must remember that the vast proportion of people in the world in those days were in fact totally involved with idolatry and the occult. It affected every part of their lives. They walked in fear of the quite arbitrary wrath of the gods. But at the same time they were strongly attached to them, especially the ones that they felt were favourable. That is why they fought so fiercely for them (compare Acts 19:27-28).
Today in the Western world the gods may be singers, musicians or sports stars, but the worship is still as intense. In view of this Christians were to make sure that if they themselves were attacked, any attack on them was not because of their sinful manner of life or their bad behaviour, but because they were walking in obedience to Christ and manifesting His righteousness in opposition to these powers of darkness (Luke 22:53; Colossians 1:13). They were to be able to say, ‘the prince of this world has come, and has nothing in me' (John 14:30) And they were to remember that God's method of defeating these evil powers and ideas would often be through suffering, a suffering which would strengthen their own faith and bring men to face up to and know the truth (1 Peter 1:7).
With this in mind Peter now summarises the triumph of good over evil, and of Jesus Christ over the powers of darkness. He has in mind the fact that Christians have been transferred from under the tyranny of darkness, into the kingdom of His Beloved Son (Colossians 1:13), and that it was through the victory at the cross (Colossians 1:14) that this occurred. For this was what the cross was all about, to bring men and women into obedience to God so that they might be delivered from being children of disobedience.
We have already seen that that was because He ‘redeemed us with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless and unblemished lamb' in accordance with God's eternal purpose (1 Peter 1:18-20) bringing us to ‘obedience to the truth' (1 Peter 1:22), and because He ‘bore our sins' so that ‘by His stripes we are healed' (1 Peter 2:24) in order that we might ‘live unto righteousness', with the result that we can be purified by being sprinkled with His blood (1 Peter 1:2). Now we learn that as a consequence of His suffering in our place, and His subsequent resurrection and resultant triumph, we can enjoy full deliverance from all the powers of evil and sin. And this is because God has under control all who stand against Him, as can be evidenced from the past by what He did to the angels who sinned.
Seeing it in the light of Daniel 7, the Son of Man has come out of suffering and has received the kingship, and the glory and the dominion, and through our suffering for righteousness' sake as a result of our involvement in His service, and our obedience to His word, we also will share it with Him (Daniel 7).
One further point needs to be borne in mind as we look at these verses. In any difficult passage open to a number of interpretations as this one is, the best way to decide on which one is correct, all other things being equal, is by closely observing the grammar. We will now therefore consider one or two points of grammar that may aid us in discovering what Peter was trying to say.
1) The ‘in which' in 1 Peter 3:19 is a construction that nowhere else in the New Testament refers to a preceding adverbial dative. If this principle is followed ‘in which' cannot refer directly to ‘in the spirit.'
2) ‘He went' in 1 Peter 3:19 is the same verb as in 1 Peter 3:22. All other things being equal this would suggest that the two must be interpreted in the same way as a literal journey of Christ (as 1 Peter 3:22 clearly is) occurring around the same time, e.g. ‘He went to the spirits in prison' and ‘He went into Heaven'.
3) The ‘through water' in 1 Peter 3:20 finds its best parallel in ‘through the resurrection of Jesus Christ' in 1 Peter 3:22.
4) The verb ekeruxen can mean either ‘preached' or ‘made proclamation'. Both usages are found both in the New Testament and elsewhere. See for example Revelation 5:2; Mark 1:45; Mark 7:36; Luke 8:39.
5) The term ‘spirits', when used on its own without qualification, always elsewhere refers to ‘spiritual beings' (e.g. Hebrews 1:7; Hebrews 1:14; 1 Kings 22:21-23; Job 4:15; Isaiah 31:3 with 2 Kings 6:17; Ezekiel 1:12; Ezekiel 1:20-21; Ezekiel 10:17; Zechariah 13:2 where a false spirit of prophesy is in mind). We may add to this the fact that the idea of spiritual beings in prison or the equivalent is found in Isa 24:21-22; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6; Revelation 9:1-11, as well as in external Jewish literature.
Bearing this in mind we will now consider the passage.