1 Peter 3:19

by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison We enter here on a passage of which widely different interpretations have been given. It seems best in dealing with it to give in the first place what seems to be the true sequence of thought, and afterwards to examine the other views which appear to the present writer less satisfactory. It is obvious that every word will require a careful study in its relation to the context. (1) For "by which" we ought to read "in which." It was not by the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit, but in His human spirit as distinct from the flesh, that He who had preached to men living in the flesh on earth now went and preached to the spirits that had an existence separate from the flesh. (2) The word "went" is, in like manner, full of significance. It comes from the Apostle who was the first to proclaim that the "spirit" or "soul" of Christ had passed into Hades, but had not been left there (Acts 2:31). It agrees with the language of St Paul in the Epistle to which we have found so many references in this Epistle, that He had "descended first into the lower parts of the earth," i.e. into the region which the current belief of the time recognised as the habitation of the disembodied spirits of the dead (Ephesians 4:9). It harmonises with the language of the Apostle who was St Peter's dearest friend when he records the language in which the risen Lord had spoken of Himself as having "the keys of Hades and of death," as having been dead, but now "alive for evermore" (Revelation 1:18). Taking all these facts together, we cannot see in the words anything but an attestation of the truth which the Church Catholic has received in the Apostles" Creed, that Christ "died and was buried and descended into Hell." And if we accept the record of St Peter's speeches in the Acts as a true record, and compare the assured freedom and clearness of his teaching there with his imperfect insight into the character of our Lord's work during the whole period of His ministry prior to the Resurrection, we can scarcely fail to see in his interpretation of the words "thou shalt not leave my soul in hell," the first-fruits of the method of prophetic interpretation which he had learnt from our Lord Himself when He expounded to His disciples the things that were written concerning Himself in the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44), when He spoke to them of "the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). In the special truth on which the Apostle now lays stress, we must see, unless we think of him as taking up a legendary tradition, as writing either what had been revealed to him, "not by flesh and blood, but by his Father in heaven" (Matthew 16:17), or as reporting what he had himself heard from the lips of the risen Lord. Of the two views the latter seems every way the more probable, and accepting it, we have to remember also that it was a record in which he was guided by the teaching of the Spirit.

And he "went and preached." The latter word is used throughout the Gospels of the work of Christ as proclaiming "the Gospel of the kingdom" (Matthew 4:23), preaching "repentance" (Matthew 4:17), and the glad tidings of remission of sins as following upon repentance. It would do violence to all true methods of interpretation to assume that the Apostle, who had been converted by that preaching and had afterwards been a fellow-worker in it, would use the word in any other meaning now. We cannot think of the work to which the Spirit of Christ went as that of proclaiming an irrevocable sentence of condemnation. This interpretation, resting adequately on its own grounds, is, it need hardly be said, confirmed almost beyond the shadow of a doubt by the words of ch. 1 Peter 4:6, that "the Gospel was preached also to the dead." Those to whom He thus preached were "spirits." The context determines the sense of this word as denoting that element of man's personality which survives when the body perishes. So, in Hebrews 12:23, we read of "the spiritsof just men made perfect;" and the same sense attaches to the words in Luke 24:37; Luke 24:39; Acts 23:8-9, and in the "spiritsand souls of the righteous " in the Benedicite Omnia Opera. And these spirits are in "prison." The Greek word, as applied to a place, can hardly have any other meaning than that here given (see Matthew 14:3; Matthew 14:10; Mark 6:17; Mark 6:27; Luke 21:12), and in Revelation 20:7 it is distinctly used of the prison-house of Satan. The "spirits in prison" cannot well mean anything but disembodied souls, under a greater or less degree of condemnation, waiting for their final sentence, and undergoing meanwhile a punishment retributive or corrective (see note on 2 Peter 2:9). Had the Apostle stopped there we might have thought of the preaching of which he speaks as having been addressed to all who were in such a prison. The prison itself may be thought of as part of Hades contrasted with the Paradise of God, which was opened, as in Luke 23:43; Revelation 2:7, to the penitent and the faithful.