The Godhead – Jesus Christ
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Jesus Christ at His death did not go to preach to the spirits who were
in prison |
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Here is
how some of the most famous Protestant Bible commentators have commented on
the following words of the apostle Peter concerning the preaching of Jesus to
the spirits in prison: “By whom also He went and preached to the spirits in
prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering
waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few,
that is, eight souls, were saved through water” (1 Peter 3:19-20 – NKJV). |
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John
Wesley: ‘By which Spirit he preached - Through the ministry of Noah. To the
spirits in prison - The unholy men before the flood, who were then reserved
by the justice of God, as in a prison, till he executed the sentence upon
them all; and are now also reserved to the judgment of the great day’ (John
Wesley's Notes on the Bible). |
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Matthew
Henry: ‘1. For the explication of this we may notice, (1.) The
preacher—Christ Jesus, who has interested himself in the affairs of the
church and of the world ever since he was first promised to Adam, Gen. 3:15.
He went, not by a local motion, but by special operation, as God is
frequently said to move, Gen. 11:5; Hos. 5:15; Mic. 1:3. He went and
preached, by his Spirit striving with them, and inspiring and enabling Enoch
and Noah to plead with them, and preach righteousness to them, as 2 Pt. 2:5.
(2.) The hearers. Because they were dead and disembodied when the apostle
speaks of them, therefore he properly calls them spirits now in prison; not
that they were in prison when Christ preached to them, as the vulgar Latin
translation and the popish expositors pretend. (3.) The sin of these people:
They were disobedient, that is, rebellious, unpersuadable, and unbelieving,
as the word signifies; this their sin is aggravated from the patience and
long-suffering of God (which once waited upon them for 120 years together),
while Noah was preparing the ark, and by that, as well as by his preaching,
giving them fair warning of what was coming upon them. (4.) The event of all:
Their bodies were drowned, and their spirits cast into hell, which is called
a prison (Matthew |
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John Darby:
‘The passage that follows 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 scorn 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 long-suffering of God
waited then, as now, with the Jewish nation; the result would be the same. It
has been so. This interpretation is confirmed (in preference to that which
supposes that the Spirit of Christ preached in hades to souls which had been
confined there ever since the flood) by the consideration that in Genesis it
is said, " My Spirit shall not always strive. with men but their days shall be a hundred and twenty
years." That is to say, His Spirit should strive, in the testimony of
Noah, during a hundred and twenty years and no longer. Now it would be an
extraordinary thing that with those persons only (for he speaks only of them)
the Lord should strive in testimony after their death. Moreover, we may
observe that, in considering this expression to mean the Spirit of Christ in
Noah, we only use a well-known phrase of Peter's; for he it is, as we have
seen, who said, " The Spirit of Christ which
was in the prophets." These spirits then are in prison, because they did
not hearken to the Spirit of Christ in Noah’ (John Darby's Synopsis of the
Bible) |
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John Gill:
‘The plain and easy sense of the words is, that Christ, by his Spirit, by
which he was quickened, went in the ministry of Noah, the preacher of
righteousness, and preached both by words and deeds, by the personal ministry
of Noah, and by the building of the ark, to that generation who was then in
being; and who being disobedient, and continuing so, a flood was brought upon
them which destroyed them all; and whose spirits, or separate souls, were then
in the prison of hell, so the Syriac version renders it, lwyvb, "in
hell," see Revelation 20:7 when the Apostle Peter wrote this epistle; so
that Christ neither went into this prison, nor preached in it, nor to spirits
that were then in it when he preached, but to persons alive in the days of
Noah, and who being disobedient, when they died, their separate souls were
put into prison, and there they were when the apostle wrote: from whence we
learn, that Christ was, that he existed in his divine nature before he was
incarnate, he was before Abraham, he was in the days of Noah; and that Christ
also, under the Old Testament, acted the part of a Mediator, in his divine
nature, and by his Spirit discharged that branch of it, his prophetic office,
before he appeared in human nature; and that the Gospel was preached in those
early times, as unto Abraham, so before him’ (John Gill’s Exposition of the
Entire Bible) |
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As you can
see, all of these Bible Commentators somehow or other comment on the words of
Peter saying that Jesus preached through the ministry of Noah to people who
lived in the days of Noah, who were disobedient. |
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Confutation |
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The above
mentioned words written by John Wesley, Matthew Henry, John Darby and John
Gill, cannot be accepted for the following reasons. |
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First,
because the preaching of Christ to the spirits in prison is closely linked
with the death of Christ, that is, the two events are closely linked
together, for before saying: “By whom also He went and preached to the
spirits in prison”, the apostle Peter says: “For Christ also suffered once
for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put
to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18 – NKJV).
Therefore the preaching of Christ to the spirits in prison occurred after His
death. |
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Second,
because ‘the spirits in prison’ to whom Christ preached were dead people who
had lived in the days of Noah, for the apostle Peter says a little further:
“For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that
they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God
in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6 – NKJV). The fact that the Scripture says that
the Gospel was preached also to those who are dead means that the Gospel was
first preached to the living (the persons who were alive in the days of
Jesus) and then to the dead (those who were formerly disobedient in the days
of Noah). |
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Third,
because what Christ preached to the spirits in prison was the Gospel, as it
is written: “For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are
dead” (1 Peter 4:6 - NKJV), and we know that the Gospel began to be preached
by Christ when He came into this world. Noah did not know the Gospel of
Christ, and consequently he could not preach the Gospel to his generation.
Noah was a preacher of righteousness, not a preacher of the Gospel of Christ. |
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I conclude
by saying that even though I believe and teach that Christ at His death went
to preach the Gospel to those who were formerly disobedient in the days of
Noah, I do not believe nor teach that He preached the Gospel to them that
they might be saved, for those people remained lost after they heard the
Gospel. After death men have no chance to be saved, for the Scripture says:
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgement” (Hebrews |