1 Peter 3:22

1 Peter 3:22. who is on the right hand of God. A familiar phrase expressing ‘the regal and judiciary power' to which Christ is exalted. Compare such passages as Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Philippians 3:20; Hebrews 1:3; and the fundamental O. T. passage, Psalms 110:1.

having gone into heaven. The verb is the same as the ‘went' in 1 Peter 3:19, with the important difference, however, that here the going is not said to have been ‘in spirit' or ‘spirit-wise.' The phrase is important, as it presupposes, if it does not expressly state, Peter's affirmation of Christ's Ascension.

angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. These terms, and others of a similar kind, are often used, especially by Paul, as designations of the various powers of the heavenly world (cf. Romans 8:38; Ephesians 1:21-22; Colossians 1:16; Colossians 2:10; 1 Corinthians 15:27; Hebrews 2:8). Whether they describe these simply according to their several relations to God and to the world, or according to their several ranks and orders, is not easy to determine. In favour of the latter view, however, appeal is made to Christ's own words in Matthew 18:10, which are taken by many (e.g. Meyer) to assume differences of rank or class among the angels. The application of these two terms authorities and powers to the angels is peculiar to Paul, the present being the only non-Pauline instance. The three names are used here not with the view of expressing any particular relation in which they stand one to another, but simply as names covering generally all the heavenly powers over which Christ is supreme. It has been supposed that the various clauses of this verse came from some doxology, or from some form of faith professed by candidates for baptism. This, however, is uncertain. The point of the verse is to bring out the heightened power which resulted to Christ from His suffering and death, and thus to crown the train of statement by which the blessing of suffering for righteousness' sake is enforced. The particular climax in the verse is lost to the English reader through the inversion of the order of the Greek in the A. V. The order is not, ‘who is gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God,' etc., but, as in the R. V., ‘who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven,' etc. That is to say, Peter first states the fact that He who died in the cause of others is now exalted to the highest place of honour next to God Himself, then explains that He came to this place by passing into heaven itself, and finally adds that being elevated to the place of the heavenly powers He now has all these powers subject to Him and in His service. In the light of this examination of the train of thought and the usage of the disputable terms which occur in this verse, what verdict may now be ventured on the leading solutions of this enigma of the New Testament? Several of these are at once and entirely discredited by the plainest data of the exegesis. This is the case (1) with the idea, which has commended itself to interpreters like Grotius, Dr. John Brown, and (to some extent) Leigh ton, that the preaching affirmed is simply that addressed by the risen Christ through His apostles to men of their own time, who were in bondage to the law or in captivity to sin. This overlooks the fact that Christ Himself, and not Christ through the Apostles, is represented as the preacher. It puts a gloss upon the phrase ‘spirits in prison.' It also takes the disobedient of Noah's time simply as types of the disobedient of apostolic times. The same holds good (2) of the view advocated by many distinguished Lutherans, that Christ went and proclaimed judgment, or made a judicial manifestation of Himself, to the impenitent in the world of the dead (of whom those of Noah's time are mentioned as exemplary of all, or as the worst of all), and that this was done not by the soul of the dead Christ, but by the revivified Christ during the interval between His quickening and His actual resurrection. This interpretation, which was that of the old Lutheran theologians, is inconsistent with the usage of the word ‘preached,' which denotes not a message of judgment or condemnation, but a message of grace. It is adhered to, in so far as regards the assertion of a descent and message to the world of the dead by Christ after His restoration to life and before His re-ascent to earth, by many exegetes who otherwise differ from each other as to the object of the Descent (e.g. Schott, de Wette, Wiesinger, Huther, etc.). But in all forms it substitutes the Restored Christ, or Christ in His spiritual body, for Christ in a spiritual mode of activity (which is what Peter affirms) as the Preacher who goes with the message. Not less inadmissible is (3) the Patristic view, that in the period between His death and His resurrection Christ went and preached to the righteous dead of Old Testament times in their place of intermediate detention, with the view of perfecting their salvation. This interpretation has been connected by Roman Catholic theologians both with their doctrine of a Limbus Pairurn, and with that of Purgatory. It has been adopted in part by some Protestants of note, including both Zwingli and Calvin; the latter of whom takes the ‘spirits in prison' to mean the spirits ‘on the watch-tower, in expectation of Christ.' But this view does violence to the sense of the word rightly rendered prison. A different position must be allowed (4) to another line of interpretation which has seldom wanted advocates, and which secures the adhesion of many of the best expositors of our own time, namely, that which discovers here a ministry of grace, in the proper sense of the word, on the part of the disembodied Christ in the world of the dead. This is held in a variety of forms. Some think the passage points to a second grade of probation open to all, righteous and unrighteous, in the intermediate state (Heard, Lange, etc.). Others regard it as meaning that after His death Christ descended to Hades as the herald of grace to the men of Noah's generation, but only to those who had repented at the crisis of their death in the Deluge (Bengel, Birks, etc.). There are those again who see in it a more general reference to the men of the Flood, as men to whom some compensation was made through Christ in the other world for the shortening of their opportunities in the present Bishop Horsley, e.g., believes it to be one of several passages in which we may observe ‘an anxiety, if the expression may be allowed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that the antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption and final retribution.' Yet another class of interpreters recognises in it a bona fide proclamation of the Gospel in Hades, either in the form of an offer of grace to those who had it not in this world, or in that of' a renewed offer of grace with renewed opportunities of repentance to all. It is supposed, therefore, to furnish some warrant for cherishing the ‘larger hope.' At present it is expounded by not a few eminent exegetes in the interest of ‘wider and happier thoughts as to the state of the dead,' and in support of the belief that beyond the grave ‘the love which does not will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, proclaims evermore to the spirits in prison, as during the hours of the Descent into Hades, the glad tidings of reconciliation' (Plumptre). There are serious difficulties, however, in the was of this interpretation. Besides the fact that it crosses the analogy of the faith, running athwart the clear and consistent doctrine of Scripture, that the present life is the theatre of human destinies and the scene of probation and grace, it is exegetically faulty at various points. It gives the passage little more than the value of a digression. It introduces into the important phrase ‘in which' (1 Peter 3:19) a different meaning from its antecedent, making it equivalent not to ‘in which spirit,' or ‘in which spiritual mode of being,' but to ‘in which disembodied, or quickened, spirit,' and thus representing the Preacher not as Christ in a particular form of life and activity (which is Peter's statement), but as the disembodied or quickened Christ. It fails to give any adequate reason for the exact specification of the time of the disobedience, and for the mention of the men of Noah's day only. It reduces to something like mere descriptive accessories the details about the building of the Ark, the Divine waiting, and the salvation of eight souls. The preaching which it affirms is one the results of which are in no way indicated, and the introduction of which at this point is in no obvious connection with Peter's exhortation. What motive to a life of well-doing and of patience under injury in this world lies in the statement that, in the other world, the disobedient and injurious have the Gospel preached to them through Christ's descent to Hades?

There is, however, (5) another method of interpretation, which has been followed more or less since Augustine gave it the sanction of his great name. It has secured the general assent of men like Aquinas, Hugo of St. Victor, Bede, Beza, Gerhard, Turretin, and, more recently, of Besser, Hofmann, Schweitzer, etc. It takes the preaching to have happened not in Hades but upon the earth, not during the period between Christ's death and resurrection but in Noah's time. In one point of importance, however, this interpretation required, and has recently received, a precision which it had not in the hands of its older advocates. The Preacher must be understood to be Christ Himself, not Noah or Christ speaking by Noah. What is affirmed, therefore, is a gracious activity on the part of the pre-incarnate Christ, a preaching in the form of the Divine warnings of the time, the spectacle of the building of the Ark, etc. This we believe to be the exposition which best satisfies the condition of the exegesis. The two main objections urged against it are, that the phrase ‘spirits in prison' becomes equivalent to ‘spirits now in prison,' and that the word ‘went,' which implies local motion, is improperly used. But the answer to the latter lies in the Old Testament method of speaking of Jehovah as coming, going, ascending, and in the analogous use of the verb ‘came' in Ephesians 2:17. And as to the former objection, if in this view there is a difference of time supposed between the preaching and the state of imprisonment, in the other views there is a difference of time supposed between the preaching and the disobedience. On the other hand, the arguments in favour of this interpretation are numerous and weighty. It retains the natural sense for all the capital terms flesh, spirit, quickened, preached, prison, etc. It preserves the same Subject all through, namely Christ as the Subject put to death, Christ as the Subject quickened, Christ (not the quickened Christ or the disembodied Christ) as the Subject preaching, Christ as the Subject exalted. It accounts for the definite statement of the time of the disobedience. It starts not with what is obscure in the section, viz. the phrase ‘spirits in prison,' but with what is clear and unambiguous, viz. the historical reference to the Flood, and lets that direct the exposition. It seeks the key to the problem of the passage in Peter's own writings, particularly in what he says of an activity of the pre-incarnate Christ, or the Spirit of Christ, in the O. T. prophets (1 Peter 1:2). It gives an intelligible reason for the details about Noah's time, the building of the Ark being instanced as one of the means by which Christ preached to the men of that generation. It helps us to understand why Peter goes on to notice Christ's present position of power and honour at God's right hand. It bears most directly on the injunction to a Christ-like behaviour under wrong, in relation to which the whole section is brought in. For it points the readers to the graciousness which has always been seen in the case of their Lord, and which He has never failed to exhibit towards even the worst of wrong-doers. The strain of the paragraph, therefore, amounts to this: Be content to suffer. It is a blessing to do so, provided ye suffer for well-doing, not for ill-doing. Look to Christ's example how He did good to the most unworthy and died for the unjust. Think, too, what the issue of suffering was to Him how, if He suffered even unto death as regards the mortal side of existence, He was raised thereby as regards the spiritual to a life of heightened power. Look back, also, on the distant past; ere He had yet submitted to the limitations of the flesh, and when He had that supernatural order of being into which He has risen again. Reflect how then too He was true to this gracious character, how He went and preached to that guiltiest generation of the Flood, making known to those grossest of wrong-doers, by the spectacle of the Ark a-building, the agency of His servant Noah, and the varied warnings of the time, His will to save them. And consider that He has the same graciousness still, of which baptism is the figure that He can still save oppressed righteous ones as He saved the believing souls of Noah's house, that all the more indeed can He now save such, seeing that in His exalted life He has all the powers of heaven made subject to Him.