As he concludes this second of his letters, the apostle Peter says regarding Paul that in all his letters, speaking in them of things in which are some things hard to understand, Peter could well have applied those same words to himself because he had some things that were rather hard to understand in his own writings. The context of the passage we're going to look at tonight will help us as we examine the meaning of the spirits who are in prison.
It is Peter who writes about these spirits in the first letter, in the third chapter, and verse 19. In order for us to look at the phrase in question, it would be good for us to back up to verse 18 and read more fully what the context is.
First Peter 3, 18, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also he went and made proclamation to the Spirit now in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water.
The fuller context of the passage we have read deals with the matter of suffering. Peter's writing to suffering believers, attempting to encourage us by reminding us that Jesus himself suffered. His suffering was that he might bring us to God. He the just one suffered in place of the unjust ones. He suffered for us that he might introduce us to God. That's the word there. It's the verb form of that great word access that we see several times in the New Testament.
He suffered in our place so that he might bring us into the very throne room of the sovereign of the universe and introduce us to him. That is the full thought here when it says that he suffered, that he might bring us to God. But not only did Jesus suffer, after his suffering he was glorified. And later in the passage at the end of the chapter we read about him being at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers have been subjected to him.
So the point that Peter is making is that yes we suffer in this world, but there is glory to follow. Glory is always preceded by suffering. So let us be encouraged in our own suffering knowing that God has glory laid up for us who suffer faithfully for Christ. If we suffer with him, says Paul in Romans, we shall also be glorified with him. So that's the context of the phrase we're looking at. But the question that was asked last Sunday night is, who are the spirits now in prison in verse 19?
The answer to that question depends somewhat upon how you take the whole context of what we've read. There are those who understand the interpretation of this passage as being this, that Jesus Christ in a pre-incarnate preaching declared through Noah the gospel to the people of that generation before the flood. So when it says that he made proclamation, it was actually Noah's mouth and his personality, but the pre-incarnate Christ was as it were speaking through him to that generation.
Now they rejected that message of salvation and therefore they were condemned and they are now in prison awaiting final judgment as are all the lost. That is one interpretation and it's a popular one. Another interpretation of this is that it is actually Christ who did the announcing and what he did was to descend into Hades between his death and resurrection.
And there in Hades he preached the gospel, say some, giving those who were there and who lived in Noah's day another opportunity to be saved. Now that is not such a popular interpretation and I think that the reason should be obvious and that the Bible nowhere teaches a second opportunity for anyone to be saved. There is a third interpretation and this is the one that I hold to. It is that Christ went to a special prison of spirits to make a proclamation to them.
Perhaps this was just after his resurrection that he went there because it says in verse 18 that he was put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit. Actually I don't think it refers to the Holy Spirit here in this context as though the Holy Spirit had a part in his resurrection. Now he did but it doesn't say that here. Rather I think spirit here is to be a small s and the real idea is that he was put to death with reference to the flesh, to the physical realm.
He was made alive in the spirit or with reference to the spiritual realm, not denying his physical resurrection but that his physical resurrection enables him not only to relate to the physical but to the spiritual realm as well. And it is in that glorified, resurrected state that he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison. You will notice in verse 19 it says, in which? That is in that state, that condition of being glorified and resurrected, he went and made proclamation.
So I repeat, I believe what it is saying here is that Christ went to a special prison of spirits and there made a proclamation to them. Now that brings certain questions to mind. Where did Christ go? And to whom did he speak? And finally, what did he say to them? Well let's talk about those three questions and then we will be on our way. Where did Christ go? It says that he went and that is as definite a journey as when it says in verse 22 that he's gone into heaven. It's the same word.
So Jesus Christ literally went somewhere. Now there are those who say that Jesus Christ, after his death on the cross, went to hell and was in hell for three days. After all, isn't that what the Apostle's Creed says? He descended into hell? Well it does say that. And yet the word hell in those days had a more limited meaning than the one in which we live today. When we think of hell today, we think of the burning place of torment of the lost.
I don't believe that those who wrote the Apostle's Creed were trying to say to us that after he died on the cross, Jesus went to the fiery burning hell. Indeed the Bible does not teach that he did. You say, but doesn't it say something about, thou will not leave my soul in hell? Yes. Would you turn back to Acts chapter 2 for a moment and let's look at one of the New Testament quotations of that 16th psalm.
In Acts chapter 2, verse 24, it says, And God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him, I was always beholding the Lord in my presence, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exalted. Moreover my flesh also will abide in hope, because thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades.
As it says in my translation, which is correct, the word is not the fiery hell here, but it's Hades. Nor allow thy holy one to undergo decay. In verse 27, we see two aspects of his burial. In the first place it mentions, thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades. That mentions the immaterial part of Christ, his soul, spirit. It was in Hades, it implies here, during those three days after his crucifixion. His body was in the grave where it did not, it says here, undergo decay.
So both his soul and his body are mentioned here in verse 27. He says, thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades. What is Hades? The word Hades here in the Greek is the same as the word Sheol in the Old Testament in Hebrew. There are two meanings to this word Sheol or Hades. One meaning is the grave, the place where the body is put, and it is used sometimes in that way. The second meaning is the realm of the departed dead. And it could be the departed lost or the departed saved.
That distinction is not necessarily made with this word Hades or Sheol. Therefore we believe that Sheol or Hades was actually a place where there were two parts or two compartments or two areas, if you please. One for the lost, the unsaved, and one for the saved. I believe we see this, for example, in the story that Jesus told about the beggar who died in Luke chapter 16.
After he died, the angels carried him away into what is called Abraham's bosom, which is an Old Testament way of saying the presence of God or paradise, the place of affection and closeness to the patriarch Abraham. Abraham himself was there, as the story tells us. We would call that, by another name perhaps, being paradise. That is where the righteous in the Old Testament before the resurrection of Christ went when they died, to that part of Hades, the realm of the departed.
But there was another part to this place called Hades, the realm of the departed, which was the fiery hell, the Gehenna, that Jesus talked about, where the worm does not die. It was to that place that the rich man, in that same story in Luke 16, went when he died. He lifted up his eyes being in torment, it says there in the Gospel of Luke. He saw afar off this beggar who had laid at his gate in life.
There was a gulf, a chasm, a separation between the two, and yet there was conversation able to be held between this rich man and Abraham. The rich man was able to look over into this other section or this other area that we might call paradise, or which is called there, Abraham's bosom. In summary, I would say that the Old Testament, Hades or Sheol, could be one of two places. There were two compartments in it, one for the righteous, one for the unrighteous.
I believe that when the Lord Jesus Christ died and said, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and when he left his body, he went to that place in Hades or Sheol where the righteous were. That is where he was for those three days before his resurrection. The idea that he would go to the fiery hell, to the Gehenna, is inconsistent with the nature of his finished work at the cross. For when he died on the cross, he said, it is finished. In other words, the price for sin was paid.
He suffered hell, as it were, upon the cross. There was no need for him to go to the fiery hell after his death and spend three days there. But now having said that, I don't believe that's what Peter is talking about when he said Christ went somewhere. As I've said, I believe that Peter is suggesting that Christ went to this prison, whatever it is, after his resurrection. For he says, in that state, the state of his resurrection, he went and made this proclamation.
So where is this place that Christ went in 1 Peter 3? I believe the answer to that is found in the second letter that Peter wrote, 2 Peter chapter 2. In verse 4, we read, For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, and so on, and he condemned Solomon Gomorrah in verse 6, and then he rescued the righteous.
Don't you know that he knows how to rescue the righteous from temptation now and to keep the unrighteous for judgment? That is the context. But I'm focusing particularly on verse 4, where Peter draws this illustration, which seems to be in the context here chronologically, either in or before the days of Noah, immediately in his days or just before the flood. Where he says, If God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell. That is one word in the original language.
It is a verb. The verb is tartarao, and it is the place where we get this name, tartarus. It is the only time that it's found in the New Testament. What is suggested here is that here is a special place that is completely different from Hades or Paradise or the fiery hell. Here is a place called tartarus, which was a name taken from mythology, by the way, but here given a content that is not mythological. He says that the angels who sinned were cast into tartarus and committed to pits.
The word here is underground storage bins, the kind of a place where they would have kept grain, for example, in that day. So Peter is saying that there were angels who sinned, and God cast them into tartarus, which he calls pits or storage places in darkness. So what I'm suggesting to you is that in 1 Peter 3, verse 19, when it says that Jesus went and made a proclamation, where he went was to this place called tartarus. To whom did he speak?
Well, in 1 Peter it says that it was spirits who were imprisoned. I believe that those spirits that he's talking about there are identical with the angels that are mentioned here in 2 Peter 2, 4, the angels that sinned. In other words, these angels are not just common ordinary fallen angels who fell out of heaven with Satan.
There is something that these angels did which was so different and so reprehensible that God immediately cast them into a prison where they today are kept in bonds awaiting their final judgment. The rest of the fallen angels who fell with Satan out of heaven are still loose with him, and we call them sometimes demons. But here is a group of fallen angels that's different. They sinned in a gross way. Now you say, what in the world did they do?
Well I believe the answer to that is found again in the Old Testament. I invite you to go back to the book of Genesis, chapter 6. We have here the day of Noah recorded. Genesis, chapter 6, beginning in verse 1. Now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them that the sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves whomever they chose.
Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years. In other words, that's the period of time from the time that God indicated judgment was coming until the ark was built and the judgment actually came. One hundred and twenty years. The same period mentioned in 1 Peter 3.
Then he says, The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Now these mighty men were men who were mighty, it would seem, in a military sense, in a sense of warfare. These men of renown were men who were great in power, extraordinary power. It perhaps includes the idea of wealth.
Now remember, this is describing that time just before the flood in Noah's day. It speaks here about the sons of God who cohabited with the daughters of men. Now there are those who take a line of interpretation here which says that it means that the line of Seth, the son of Adam and Eve, mingled with the line of Cain, the sons of God, the daughters of men. That is what God condemns here, the mingling of the seed of Seth with the seed of Cain.
Now I have difficulty with that interpretation, though it is appealing to the natural mind. But I have difficulty with that. In the first place, all of the sons of Seth could not be said to be godly and therefore be called the sons of God. Nor I think could it be said that only the men were godly and that all the daughters of Cain were all wicked. It seems to me that something more is being said here. I don't have time to talk about that interpretation.
Let me go on to the one that I think is correct. I believe that the sons of God here are angels. I believe that we have here a gross perversion, unlike the world has seen since that day. So gross that God brought the destruction that he did to the human race in that day apart from eight people who were spared. So gross that the angels who were involved in this were cast in a special judgment to charter us, awaiting their final doom. You say, what makes you think these were angels?
Well first of all, this Hebrew phrase, sons of God, is one that is never used of human beings and of believers in the Old Testament. Now the concept of God's people being his children and he being their father is found in the Old Testament, but you do not find this Hebrew phrase found in the Old Testament referring to human beings and believers. Indeed this same phrase is found only three other times in the Old Testament. Bene Elohim. And each of those other three times is in the book of Job.
In each of those times that it appears in Job, it is clear that it's referring to angels. Job 1-6, 2-1, and 38-7 if you're taking notes. Furthermore the name sons of God suggests that these beings were the direct creation of God. They were not produced by natural generation as were the other descendants of Adam and Eve. Over in Luke chapter 3, Adam is called there the son of God in the sense that he was the direct creation of God. God fashioned and formed him.
And that's different than all the rest of his descendants. It seems to me that the same idea is involved here by the sons of God is referring to beings who were the special creation of God. And finally I believe this refers to angels because the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament which was done even before the time of Christ several hundred years before.
That Greek translation of the Old Testament done by those Jewish scholars here translates this into the Greek as angels of God indicating to us that that was the Jewish understanding of what that phrase meant in those days several thousand years ago. So I believe this is what is saying here that in some way these angels cohabited with, took as wives or as their women, human beings, females and produced them in offspring. But someone says that doesn't square with what it says in Matthew 22.30.
Doesn't it say there that angels are neither married nor given in marriage? Yes it does. It does say that. But I would have you notice that that's all it says. It doesn't say they have no capacity to marry. As far as we know that whenever they appear they always appear in masculine bodies and real bodies though different than our own, nonetheless real. They are not phantoms when they appear.
For example they sat down, two of them did, with a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ and they ate with Abraham. They literally ate with him. So they are not ghosts. You would be able to touch them. They are physical, real physical bodies when angels appear. I don't believe it's too much really to assume that they also then would have male reproductive capabilities. At least the verse in Matthew cannot be used as a text to show that they are unable to do that.
It simply says they are not married nor given in marriage in heaven. This did not take place in heaven either. You say but why would angels do this? The answer to that is not difficult to find. Satan has tried throughout history to do anything that he can to corrupt the seed of the woman, Genesis 3.15, which was to bring salvation to man and judgment to himself. This is simply one of his attempts to try to corrupt the human race and to prevent the birth of that promised Redeemer in Genesis 3.15.
You say but why did he choose this particular time to do it? Perhaps the answer to that is found in a prophecy in Genesis 5, verse 29. Noah was the grandson of Methuselah. His father was Lamech. The Lamech lived 182 years and became the father of his son. Now he called his name Noah, saying, This one shall give us rest. That's what the name Noah means. Rest or comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.
In other words, there was a specific prophecy given with the birth of this child named comfort or rest or Noah, a specific prophecy dealing with the coming redemption from the curse. And it may be that it was that prophecy and Satan not being able to know what was going to happen in the future because he doesn't know anything in the future except what he's planned and what God has revealed. At that time there was nothing revealed in writing.
So Satan at that point because of this prophecy tried to intervene and interrupt and corrupt the seed of man, the seed of the woman rather, to prevent the man child from coming and being the redeemer. And what was the result? Well it seems to have been the eruption of abnormal wickedness upon the earth. Some have wondered and I wonder if this could be the basis for such legends as Hercules and Atlantis.
Perhaps this is the source of the Roman and Greek myths regarding the gods reproducing which was a whole part of their pantheon, their worship. Perhaps this is the source of that mythology. It was something that actually took place and was passed down from the sons of Noah to their sons and so on until it became so corrupted as we see it in the form of Greek and Roman mythology today.
We say if these actually were angels who cohabited with these women and produced offspring, what kind of offspring must they have been? Were they half demon, half human? That is a very difficult question to answer. If they were that, then how would they be judged? As angels or as human beings? Were they savable? Angels cannot be saved. Human beings can. Those are difficult questions. I don't know the answer to them.
Some have suggested this possible explanation that instead of these demons, these fallen angels actually assuming their own body form and cohabiting, that instead they possessed certain selected men of that day and then possessed certain women and through them produced a demonized race or generation rather. In other words, children who were born demon possessed because both their father and mother were demon possessed. We don't really know the answer to these things.
These are conjecture and questions that we have. God has not seen fit to reveal the answers to us. But nonetheless, I believe that the best understanding of the spirits in prison is that they were angels. The angels mentioned here in Genesis chapter 6 and that they are the ones who are the spirits in prison. There is one other text in the New Testament I'd like to look at and with this we come to a close. It's found in the book of Jude.
I think that this is a confirmation of the interpretation that I've given. Jude verses 6 and 7. Then Jude is writing about the certain judgment that will come upon false teachers. He points back to examples when God has brought judgment before. He says, angels who did not keep their own domain, that is the place where they were created, their God-given habitation, their own realm, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
I believe these are exactly the same angels that Peter was talking about in chapter 2 verse 4 of his second epistle and which he mentions in 1 Peter 3, 19. Now he goes on to say in verse 7, just as Sodom and Gomorrah, and I would have you notice that that conjunction into verse 7, just as, is one which says there's something very similar that I want to talk about to what I've just said.
He says, and likewise, in a same fashion, similar to what I just talked about in these angels leaving their own abode, he says Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these, verse 6, the angels, indulged in gross immorality and when after strange flesh are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
So I believe he is telling us by what he says in verse 7 that these angels who did not keep their proper abode, their own domain, did not do that in the sense that they committed some kind of gross immorality and indulged and went after rather strange flesh, which seems to me to be some jargon describing what happened in Genesis chapter 6. Now assuming that that's the case, let's go back again to 1 Peter 3 and just ask this final question in closing, what did Jesus proclaim to them?
It says that in this resurrection realm, the realm of the Spirit, he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison. Notice how he describes them, who were once disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during that 120 year period. But it says he went and made proclamation. He does not use a word here for preach the gospel.
It simply means he announced something, he proclaimed something, and I believe that what he proclaimed was his finished work of redemption. I believe that Jesus went to Tartarus after his resurrection, there to proclaim to those angels imprisoned in that darkness, in that pit, that in fact the prophecy of the seed of the woman which they had intended to corrupt and interrupt had been completed and fulfilled. And that now their judgment, which had already been pronounced, was sure and certain.
And today that judgment is still awaiting its fulfillment, but it's coming. In closing, I would like to say this. Jesus said that as it was in the days of Noah, what? So shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. I believe that one of the characteristics of the days of Noah was that there was an outbreak of demonism in that day so that that generation was a demonized generation. I believe with all of my heart that we are seeing that take place in our world today.
I don't know how to date it, I don't know how to fix it, I don't even know how to explain it really. But I agree with those who say that sometime during the 1960s that there was unleashed, particularly upon our nation, a wave of demons which are bringing about in very quick fashion the destruction of our society based upon the Bible.
I believe that we are living in the days like the days of Noah, days before the coming of the Son of Man, and that as that age was a demonized age, so is ours today. A second observation is that in that day which was so corrupt and wicked, God was patient with sinners, and God is still patient today. And that day he waited 120 years patiently while the ark was being constructed, and then judgment came.
And during that time, though the invitation was given, though the message was preached, none believed except Noah's immediate family, and they were saved. Likewise, in our day the gospel is being preached, people are being told how to be saved, the opportunity is before them, God is patiently waiting, judgment is coming, but only a few, really, are believing and will escape the coming judgment upon the Christ-rejecting world.
My friend, if you've been one who has rejected Jesus Christ, may I warn you that there is a day coming when your time of opportunity will be over. Now is the day of salvation, today. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And for those of us who know Jesus Christ, may we be faithful in our age as Noah was in his. Noah was a man who walked with God in such an age as that, and may we be found people who also walk with God.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you will make us faithful as was Noah. And though we live in a day that is corrupt and when society is degenerating, when there is a diminishing respect even for the nature of human life, in a day when there is a demonization of our culture and our society all around us, and drugs and rock music and so on, Father, in this godless generation, may we walk with you and may we preach the gospel as your patience waits for those whom you've chosen to be saved.
Can I pray this in Jesus' name? Amen.