Our New Testament reading from this week’s Lectionary is from the first letter the Apostle Peter wrote to Christians who were scattered around Asia Minor and elsewhere. These new Christians that Peter was writing this letter to were suffering various degrees of persecution for their faith. Some suffered from their families and former friends, whether Jewish or pagan. Some suffered from the government and other municipal authorities, and these persecutions varied in intensity. Whatever the source of persecution, or how strong it was, Peter wrote to encourage them to stand strong and to continue to share their faith. This still holds true today. Because Christ died for us, we should be ready to share our faith with everyone. We should be ready, if necessary, to suffer for, or die for our faith.
Suffering can be discouraging, and Peter reminded his readers that even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ suffered unjustly, which was God’s will, to bring salvation to mankind (vs. 18). Jesus, however, triumphed to being exalted to the right hand of God. The demons who were behind Jesus’s suffering are forever subject to Him.
The Jewish people, in their religious observances, offered sacrifices for sins over and over again. These, though, could never take the sin away. Jesus’s one sacrifice for sin is forever and eternally valid. It was sufficient for everyone, and never needs to be repeated. As Peter said in verse 18, Jesus “suffered once for sins”.
Jesus was sinless. His death was substitutionary for us, as Peter said, “the just for the unjust”. His death was an atonement for our sins. Jesus never sinned, but nonetheless, He took our place, taking our punishment. He satisfied God’s just penalty for sin, and because of that, He opened the way to God for all who repented and believed.
During the time between Jesus’s death and resurrection His spirit went to the realm of the dead to accomplish several things. While we are not given specific details of what He did during this time, there are passages, like verse 19, which give us some hints as to what occurred. One thing Jesus may have done was preach to and give the spirits of the dead, who had died before He had come to earth, the opportunity to hear and accept Him and His substitutionary atonement for their sins. The other may have been to proclaim to the demons bound in the abyss that, in spite of the crucifixion, He had triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). These demons are fallen angels who were permanently bound because of grave wickedness. All demons eventually will be sent to the lake of fire (Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10). These demons are bound in the abyss since the days of Noah because of wickedness (vs. 20). They filled that era with their iniquity, evil doings, and rebellion against God. It was so bad that even with many decades of Noah’s preaching, he had not one convert. Noah’s family were saved and spared in spite of the water of judgment.
An “antitype” is an earthly expression of a spiritual reality, a symbol or picture of a spiritual truth (vs. 21). Eight people were inside the ark, and they went through earth’s judgment unharmed. That is analogous to what Christians experience in salvation - being in Christ, the ark of our salvation. We are united with Christ as an ark of safety from the just judgment of God. Because Jesus rose from the dead, this shows that God accepted His substitutionary death for the sins of those who believe. The believer who is “in Christ” are thus in the ark of safety, sailing over the waters of judgment, into eternal glory. Those in Noah’s ark who were saved from judgment prefigures those in Christ, saved from eternal damnation.
After Jesus’s death and resurrection, He entered back into heaven, to an exalted place of majesty, authority, and power (vs. 22). We are saved, not by some external rite, but by agreeing with God that we need to “get into the ark of safety”, which is the Lord Jesus, by placing faith in His death and resurrection.
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