Day 2389 – OUR STRANGE LIFE – FOCUSING FULLY ON JESUS CHRIST – 1 PETER 3:18-22
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Welcome to Day 2389 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Day 2389 – OUR STRANGE LIFE – FOCUSING FULLY ON JESUS CHRIST 1 PETER 3:8-17 – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 05/26/2024 Our Strange Life – Focusing Fully on Jesus Christ 1 Peter 3:18-22 Last week, we moved forward with our overall submission theme as we learned how to have A Righteous Life and a Ready Defense utilizing the nine maturity checkpoints of our Christian faith. Today, we switch the focus of why we,| as Christ Followers,| may suffer for our faith to the One who suffered all for us in a message titled, Focusing Fully on Jesus Christ. Today’s passage is 1 Peter 3:18-22, on page 1890 of your Pew Bibles. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive,[d] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. This passage of 1 Peter 3:18-22 is one of the most challenging passages to translate and interpret. Let’s look at this passage, focusing on its context to help us better grasp its content. — 3:18 — This section begins in the middle of a paragraph, a larger unit of Peter’s thought and argument. In the previous section, Peter referred to the believer’s appropriate response to unjust suffering (3:14-17). Believers who conduct their lives virtuously (3:8-12) sometimes incur unfair treatment as a result (3:14). Peter makes his point clear in 3:17: Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong! At this point in the paragraph, Peter turns our attention to Christ, who exemplified unjust punishment. In 3:18-22, Christ alone is the focus of our attention. Peter outlines in summary fashion the significant movements of Christ from His suffering and death on our behalf (3:18) to His resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God (3:21-22). Sandwiched between the familiar recounting of Christ’s death and resurrection, we find a few brief statements about what Christ did amid His descent (3:19-20) and how we publicly associate ourselves with Christ’s death and resurrection through our conversion and baptism (3:21). But before we follow Christ’s ultimate descent in verses 19-20, look closely at how His suffering is described (3:18). Here, we have a clear and concise statement of the Gospel.- Christ died for sins.
- Christ died once for all.
- Christ died in place of sinners, “the righteous for the unrighteous.”
- Christ died to bring us to God.
So, the central theme of the passage is Christ’s unjust suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, which are part of our saving faith. This V-shaped work of Christ is meant to give us hope. We live and suffer as Christ's followers and strangers in a strange world. We have also been spiritually united to Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf and physically identified with that spiritual reality through baptism. As such, we can look forward with absolute hope that—like Christ—we will be resurrected and glorified when this life is over. The New Testament’s treatment of Christ’s death and resurrection generally focuses on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Peter could have followed suit, and his explanation would have made perfect sense. But the Spirit moved him to discuss briefly the work of Jesus on Saturday, between His death and His resurrection. (Bulletin Insert) -3:19-20 — What did Jesus do on the Saturday between His death and resurrection? Peter tells us in 3:19 that After being made alive,[d] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—Who are these “spirits"? To those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water. Peter's language and narrative reflect a common understanding among Jews and early Christians, based on their reading of Genesis 6:1-4. Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. 2 The sons of God saw the beautiful women[a] and took any they wanted as their wives. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with[b] humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.” 4 In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times. According to that understanding, before the Flood, members of the unseen realm, which we generically refer to as Angels, chose to cross over to the human realm and sinned gravely by cohabiting with human women. Though not a part of the inspired biblical writings, both Peter and Jude quote from the ancient book of 1 Enoch, which also paraphrases the events of Genesis 6:1-4, giving us a clear example of the prevalent view in Peter’s time: And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: “Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children." (1 Enoch 6) But is there any way we can be sure Peter had this common historical interpretation of Genesis 6 in mind when he wrote 1 Peter 3:19-20? When we compare parallel passages in Jude and 2 Peter with language from 1 Enoch, we see that this is, in fact, in both Peter's and Jude's minds. Note the similarities in language and imagery as we compare these passages.
1 Peter 3:19-20 | 19 So he went and preached to the spirits in prison— 20 those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. Only eight people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood. NLT |
2 Peter 2:4 | 4 For God did not spare even the angels who sinned. He threw them into hell,[a] in gloomy pits of darkness,[b] where they are being held until the day of judgment. |
Jude 1:6 | 6 And I remind you of the angels who did not stay within the limits of authority God gave them but left the place where they belonged. God has kept them securely chained in prisons of darkness, waiting for the great day of judgment. |
1 Enoch 10:4, 6-7; 12:4 | “Bind Azazel [one of the wicked angels] hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness.... And on the day of the great judgment he shall be cast into the fire”. . . . “[The angels] . . . have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place.”[52] |
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