Joy In Suffering Through Jesus's Victory

1 Peter 3:18-22

Transcript

For Christ also suffered once for sins, 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, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they
formerly did not obey. When God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the
ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought
safely through water, baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as
a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the
right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers, having been subjected to
him. Praise God for his word. Let's take a moment to pray. Let's pray. Lord God,
we thank you for your scripture. We thank you for this weekly time where we are
able to gather as a household of God. Hear from your word. Would you work by the
power of your Holy Spirit to help us to understand, to feed us with what's
necessary today, to strengthen us for the week ahead, illuminate our hearts and
minds. And we point us to Christ, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. I'll read the
passage one more time. For Christ also suffered once for sins, 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, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in
prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the
days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight
persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this,
now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God
for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone
into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers,
having been subjected to him. So it's a challenging passage, and as you read it,
you might have thought, as we've read it, you might have thought to yourself a
couple times, what does that mean? Typically, on a Monday, when I sit down to
study the passage for the upcoming week, and start to, I'll usually do that and
start to try and get my head around the passage for the upcoming Sunday. And at
the beginning of the week, of this week, I read a quote by the great reformer,
Martin Luther, when he was commenting on this passage. If you know Luther, he
did not generally struggle to have opinions on anything, or to voice them
passionately. And Luther said, about 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22, A wonderful text
this is, and a more obscure passage perhaps than any other in the testament, so
that I do not know for a certainty just what Peter means. I cannot understand
it, and I cannot explain it, and there has been no one who has explained it. So
that wasn't very encouraging to read at the start of the week. And yet, Luther
is right when he said, it is a wonderful text, so I'm going to do my best to
explain some of the interpretive difficulties, and I'll be happy to discuss them
with you afterwards, but we'll focus on what we are certain of. And as we've
been discussing throughout this letter to 1 Peter, Peter is bringing a circular
letter of encouragement to suffering believers who are scattered throughout Asia
Minor. They are experiencing suffering, but Peter is bringing them hope, hope to
know how to live and function in this world that's not our home. And our
specific passage this morning is kind of bracketed by the suffering that the
church is experiencing. If you look at the verse just previous to this one,
verse 17, it's talking about suffering. 3, 17 says, It is better to suffer for
doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. If you look at
the 4, 1, the following verse, Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm
yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh
has ceased from sin. So we know that we are continuing with this theme of
suffering, but our passage today has three parts and it functions as a bit of a
sandwich. It begins with Jesus' suffering, then it concludes with his victory.
So if you look at 18, that has to do with Jesus' suffering. Verse 22 has to do
with Jesus' victory. In between is this biblical historical look back at Genesis
that Peter says will correlate with the church's situation today. So if you
broke it down structurally, you would see Jesus' suffering, Jesus' victory, and
in between this seeming tangent about Noah and the ark. But what we'll see is
they actually are related. So our passage, though, is ultimately about the
victory of Jesus and the encouragement that that brings in our suffering. So
let's begin in verse 18 with the suffering of Jesus. Verse 18 says, For Christ
also suffered once for sins, 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.
So verse 17 says it's better to suffer for doing good, and then here we have the
ultimate example of suffering for doing good, Jesus himself. Verse 18 is about
Jesus' suffering, and it's this incredibly concise explanation of what we call
the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. Jesus suffered one time for sins.
It was on the cross, once for all, no further sacrifice necessary. It was a
complete and total payment. The text tells us he did not suffer for his own
sins. He suffered as the righteous one, the only man who perfectly obeyed God's
law. He suffered as the righteous for the unrighteous. He came to earth and
lived a morally perfect life, and then he suffered on the cross. And therefore,
his suffering on the cross was substitutionary. It was in our place, in the
place of the unrighteous. The unrighteous is comprehensive. That's everyone
else. That's everyone who has broken God's law. That's an all-encompassing
category. And the text tells us that he did it so that he might bring us to God.
Some people might ask, why is that necessary? Well, the short answer is sin.
There's not one of us who has not sinned. Sin is breaking God's law. It's
falling short of his standard. There's not a single person in the room, not one
of us, who can stand before God on our own merits, on our own moral performance.
When Jesus walked with his companions on the Emmaus road, he walked them through
the Old Testament scripture, and he said to them, was it not necessary that the
Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? Once he explained
the Old Testament to them, they realized this is how it had to be. It was
necessary. When we read about the Apostle Paul and his preaching in Acts, we
read this description in Acts 17. That Paul went in, as was his custom, and on
three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and
proving to them that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from
the dead, and saying, this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ. Could
anyone else have done this? No. Because no one else would have been able to
offer a morally pure sacrifice. We could ask, does anyone not need the atoning
sacrifice of Christ? No. There is no other way to be brought back to God. So as
Peter's readers think about the suffering of Jesus, they find encouragement that
Jesus is their example in suffering. If they are suffering for doing good, well,
so did Jesus, and how much more so. But they also see his suffering is unique.
It's once for all. It's substitutionary. And even saying all of that, this
atoning sacrifice would have been a noble but ultimately meaningless sacrifice,
if not for the resurrection. Peter goes on to say that Jesus was put to death in
the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. And when he says made alive in the
spirit, that does not mean that Jesus was not physically resurrected, but rather
that he was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit and that he now lives in the
spirit, in other words, in an unseen state. So here's where we get to the
trickier part of the passage. It may appear, once you get to verse 19, that
Peter is changing the subject or going off on a bit of a tangent, but he's
actually drawing a parallel between the biblical account of what took place in
Genesis with Noah's Ark and the flood, and what the church is going through
today. So verse 19 says, in which Jesus was made alive in the spirit, in which
he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not
obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the Ark was being
prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the
water. Now there are questions that start to come up here, but the first one is
this. Who are the spirits in prison? There are different views on the subject,
but I'll tell you what I believe is going on here. The spirits in prison can
best be understood as the spirits, and is sometimes translated as the spirits
who are now in prison, in other words, currently in prison. That would refer to
the unbelievers who rejected the message of Noah in the days before the flood,
and refused to repent and find refuge in the means of escape which God provided
through the Ark. So let me give some background here. Remember, the churches who
are receiving this letter, they are tiny minority churches in the Roman Empire,
way out of step with the prevailing culture that ignores them and mocks them,
and is hostile to what they believe. And Peter's making a connection between
their day and the time of Genesis. The time of Noah, Peter's saying, relates to
this time of the church. Like these Christians, and like us, Noah and his family
lived in an evil day. Genesis tells us in Genesis 6-5 that the Lord saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of his
thoughts was only evil continually. So in light of human wickedness, God
determined to make an end of mankind through the flood. He gave Noah detailed
instructions on how to build this Ark, as a means of finding refuge from
judgment. And upon completion of the Ark, we read in chapter 7 that the Lord
said to Noah, Go into the Ark, you and your household, for I have seen that you
are righteous before me in this generation. And then Genesis 7 goes on to say
that Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives, that's eight people,
went into the Ark to escape the waters of the flood. Now the Bible does not
specifically say how long it took Noah to build the Ark, but the time between
when Noah fathered his three sons and when the Ark was built was about 100
years. So just the dimensions of the Ark would obviously take multiple decades.
So that's enough for us to realize this was quite a lengthy project. And people
have kind of laughed and speculated about what Noah's friends and neighbors
would have thought during the construction of this Ark. We don't really know
much about that from the Genesis account, but we do see something about that in
the New Testament. 2 Peter 5, the sequel, so to speak, of 1 Peter, describes
Noah as a herald of righteousness. That word herald refers to proclamation or
preaching. In other words, as the Ark was being built, Noah was proclaiming,
preaching to the unbelieving world around him about righteousness and the
judgment to come. The letter to the Hebrews reflects on Noah's life and says
this, Hebrews 11-7, By faith, Noah being warned by God concerning events as yet
unseen, in reverent fear constructed the Ark for the saving of his household. By
this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes
by faith. So Noah, we don't typically categorize him like this, but Noah was a
prophet, heralding a message of righteousness. Earlier in the letter to 1 Peter,
we read about the spirit of Christ indwelling the prophets. That's 1 Peter 1-11.
So what I believe that the text in 1 Peter is saying is that the pre-incarnate
spirit of Christ was preaching to the unbelievers through Noah as Noah spoke of
righteousness and coming judgment. And because of their unbelief and rejection
of the way of rescue that God offered to them through the preaching of Noah,
those unbelievers are now in prison spirits. They are now experiencing judgment.
And Peter's drawing a parallel between the suffering believers that he's writing
to and what's going on in the days of Noah. So like the suffering church, Noah
is this mocked and persecuted minority in terms of the rest of the culture
around him. He's completely out of step with the values of this world around
him, which are all running downhill towards wickedness. He's not preaching a
popular message. And yet, God delivered him. He must have felt like one little
dot in the world doing something that seemed insane. And yet, God delivered him.
And I know that when we think about Noah and we tend to think about the ark and
the rainbows and the animals going in two by two, and we tend to associate it
more with children's storybook Bibles. And we play with little arks, fill them
with animals. But the truth is, that's all part of it, the truth is Noah
suffered and was preserved. The spirits who are now in prison did not obey, even
though God was patient with them. 2 Peter 3 tells us that God is patient, not
wishing that any should perish, but that all should find repentance. But we see
that some will respond to God's offer and find salvation, and others will reject
it and be judged. And in this case, Noah and his household were brought safely
through the waters of judgment. God was able to bring his people through the
waters of judgment. In the Old Testament, water represents cleansing, of course,
but it also represents chaos and judgment. If you think about the flood or the
Red Sea or what happens to Jonah or Job, the waters in those passages represent
chaos, danger, judgment, and death. And we speak like this today, whether or not
we even realize the biblical illusion that we're making when we say things like,
God has been going through some really deep waters. Some of you are in deep
waters this morning, going through trials of various kinds. And here's what
Peter is saying to these believers who must have at times felt like they were
drowning in the waters of suffering. He's saying to them, the Lord is able to
get you through the deep waters. He did it for Noah. He will do it for you. In
his classic book, The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan uses this same imagery
when he speaks of water. And Bunyan writes of a character with the name Mr.
Valiant for Truth. When Mr. Valiant for Truth realized that the day had come
that he would die, he summoned his friends and said this. I'm quoting from the
book. Mr. Valiant for Truth said, I am going to my father's and though with
great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the
trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall
succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My
marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his
battles who will now be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was
come, many accompanied him to the riverside into which as he went, he said,
death, where is thy sting? And as he went down deeper, he said, grave, where is
thy victory? So he passed over and all the trumpet sounded for him on the other
side. The Lord's able to get his people through the deep waters. Noah was saved
from the waters of judgment and God will deliver his people as well. And we
ought to be bold to witness as Noah was and to trust God with the results. Then
Peter makes a second connection between the Genesis account in verse 21. He says
baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you. Not as a removal of dirt from
the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection
of Jesus from the dead. We might not naturally think of the ark as a symbolic
picture of baptism. And we might wonder why Peter is referencing baptism for the
first time in this letter. I know I wondered that. I suspect that he knew people
in these churches were getting baptized or that this letter was going to be read
publicly on the occasion of baptism. But that's just my hypothesis. Peter is not
saying that immersing someone in water saves them or that the physical act of
baptism is salvific. Baptism now saves you, not in the physical sense, it says
very clearly, not as the removal of dirt from the body. But baptism does save
you in the sense that it represents faith in Christ. Water baptism is an outward
sign and a physical sign of what's taking place inwardly in a person by the work
of the Holy Spirit. They are placing their faith in the work of Jesus Christ.
When a person is immersed in the water, it's a picture of the old man dying.
When we are baptized, we do not stay in the water. We emerge out of it, raised
to new life. God judged the world through the flood, and those who rejected it
are now in prison forever. But he saved some through the waters of judgment. He
did it with Noah. He did it at the Red Sea. And every time someone is baptized,
it is a picture in miniature of the saving work that God is doing. There's no
baptismal regeneration. It's not salvation by the physical act of baptism. But
what it represents, Peter says, is an appeal to God for a good conscience. There
is no other way to have a clean conscience than to confess your sins to God and
ask for the cleansing of Jesus. That cleansing only comes through faith in what
Jesus has done on the cross. When someone has done that, then the proper
response is to get baptized in water. So having made his parallel between the
days of the church and the days of Noah, Peter now concludes by speaking again
of Jesus. Verse 22, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God
with angels, authorities, and powers, having been subjected to him. I know
there's complicated elements in the passage, but let's look at how this begins
and ends. Verse 18 begins with the sufferings of Christ and his substitutionary
death. But verse 22 speaks of the resurrection of Christ and his ascension far
above all things. So we begin with suffering in verse 18 and we end with
ascension and glory. So the main idea of the passage, regardless of the
interpretive difficulties, is the victory and triumph of Jesus that we see in
verse 22. Everything is now subject to him. Do you see that word at the end of
verse 22? Having been subjected to him. Think about what Peter's been building
across this letter with this theme of subjection. Chapter two, verse 13. Peter
tells us, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. We have to
submit to the government and human authorities, even when they are ungodly.
Chapter two, verse 18. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.
Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. Submission is required
even when your boss or your employer is not a good one, or in this case, even
when their actual, for the servants, when their actual masters were unjust.
Chapter three, verse one says likewise wives, be subject to your own husbands,
so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the
conduct of their wives. Submission is required of wives even when, even in those
cases when those husbands may not honor God. Then we see the picture of Jesus
submitting himself to the will of the Father and to unjust human authorities.
And on the cross, he submitted to gross injustice, but in the resurrection, we
see the great reversal that informs the whole way that we see our lives. Look at
it again. Verse 22, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into
heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers,
having been subjected to him. This is our hope. Everything is now under the
authority of Jesus. He has absolute authority and victory over all things. This
language that Peter used might be a reference to a hymn that the early church
sang. In 1 Timothy 3, Paul quotes a hymn that it seems like the early church
sang that said, He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen
by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up
into glory. We participate and rejoice together in the victory of Christ.
Everything is now subject to him. And multiple times in this letter, Peter is
urging his readers to look at Jesus as their example, but when he does it, he's
not repeating himself. He's actually providing them with different types of
encouragement in their suffering. So in chapter 1, verses 18 and 19, he says,
look at Jesus. Look at the precious blood of Christ and let that motivate you to
holiness. Look at the sufferings of Christ and be holy. In chapter 2, he says,
to this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an
example that you might follow in his steps. So the exhortation there is look at
the sufferings of Jesus. He's your example. He's your model for how to suffer.
But in chapter 3, now he says, he's gone into heaven. He's at the right hand of
God with the angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. And
here's the encouragement now. Look at Jesus and realize suffering doesn't last
forever. We don't only suffer. In the end, we triumph. And that's the biblical
pattern, that suffering leads to glory. Jesus is now seated in heaven and all
things are under his feet, and we will share in his victory. All the angels and
authorities and powers are subject to him. That means every good and evil
spirit, every power on heaven and on earth, all subject to him. And the idea of
Jesus being seated at the right hand of God might seem like kind of an abstract
picture to us, but it's spoken of often in the New Testament, and it ought to be
of great comfort to us. In the ancient world, the one who's seated at the right
hand of the king had all the authority and all of his power. He is right now
presently seated with all authority. That means redemption has been fully and
completely accomplished through his sacrifice. And he is the one who is worthy
of all of our praise. And when we think, what does it have to do with us that
all things are subject to him? We will reign with him. We will share in his
victory. And in that, we can also rejoice in our suffering. Our suffering, from
a biblical perspective, is not simply character building. It's not simply this
too shall pass. It's not simply something that we merely endure and hopefully
become better people for the experience. Our suffering leads to glory. That's
the biblical pattern. This past week, Micah and Ryan and I had a chance to
listen to a man named Ryan Corbett share at a local Reformation Society meeting.
Some of you will remember that name because we've prayed for Ryan in the past.
He is a missionary to Afghanistan that was detained and imprisoned by the
Taliban for over two and a half years. And for his Christian ministry. And over
900 days, separated from his family, much of that time was in solitary
confinement. He was released this past winter and is now home with his family in
western New York. And we had the chance, along with some others, to hear him
speak this past week. And it was, as you might imagine, a powerful testimony.
We're actually in some early conversation with Ryan about maybe having him come
up to Communion of Grace. But I want to share a short quote from what he
presented from his paper on suffering. Ryan said this. He said, I too can
testify to the supernatural joy of fellowshipping with Christ in his sufferings.
Sometimes walking in my dirty underground corridor on a cheap red carpet runner
they had laid out, I would laugh to myself thinking, of course they have given
me a red carpet. I am a royal prince. And then I would sing out loud. I
discovered that joy is both a feeling and a choice. It is a feeling in that it
is true emotion, not a disassociated mind trick. It is a choice in that someone
can, with the Lord's help, obey his command to rejoice in trials and in so doing
discover real joy. I remember the day it occurred to me that I didn't have to be
unhappy and in fact didn't have the option to be. That was not the end of my
tears by any means, but it was the beginning of a more consistent abiding joy in
the Lord. And joy is not a mind trick. We may never experience suffering that
even comes close to that level, but we can rejoice in our sufferings because
Christ has triumphed. Everything is now subject to him and we share in his
victory. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we worship you for your suffering on our
behalf, your once for all sacrifice, and we rejoice that all things are now
subject to you. Thank you for bringing us into your family. Thank you for giving
us a spiritual inheritance. Let's pray that those realities would inform the way
that we respond to the trials of this life, that we would suffer with you as our
example and our joy, and that we would recognize that all things are under your
feet. In Jesus name, Amen. Please stand with me and we'll sing.