1 Peter 3:18-22
18 For Christ also suffered for
sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to
God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in
which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in
former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah,
during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were
saved through water. 21 And baptism, which this prefigured, 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, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God,
with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
The great Southern author William Faulkner once said, “The salvation of
the world is in man’s suffering,” and Faulkner himself knew a thing or two
about suffering. He and his wife Estelle had lost their first child, a daughter
named Alabama, just nine days after she was born, an event that would leave an
indelible mark on Faulkner’s life as well as his fiction. Some three years
later Faulkner’s childhood friend “Sonny” Bell and his wife Frances also lost
their first child, a daughter. So Faulkner sat down in and wrote these words of
condolence to his dear friend on a Friday in September of 1934 from his home in
Oxford, Mississippi: “Human beings are so
constituted (and thank God for it) that even grief cannot stay green very long.
You will hate to hear this and hate more to believe it, and your very refusal
to believe it will give you this comfort: it will help to tide you over into
the time when grief will be quiet, and instead of a date on a calendar and a
mark on the earth, the child will not be dead at all. It will be a living part
of living experience which will last as long as mind and body last, and because
of it after a while you can say to yourself, 'Because I have suffered, I know
that I have been alive. It is suffering which has raised me above the
articulated lumps of colored mud which teem the earth. And so long as I have
grief, death cannot hurt me'."[1]
“So long as I have grief, death cannot hurt me.” What an odd thing to say.
Grief, the result of the very suffering we experience from the lowest and
darkest valleys along life’s journey, saves us from the real pain of death. Does
this mean that we ought to welcome suffering with open arms? Should we look
forward to the day when tragedy and grief will strike and our worlds will be
turned upside down? Should we pursue calamity with a reckless fervor, hoping to
stave off our final days? “The salvation of the world is in man’s
suffering”—perhaps Faulkner’s words strike closer to the truth than he
realized.
Just as suffering was a common theme
for Faulkner it is a common theme throughout the letter of 1 Peter. The author of this epistle is writing to a church that is dealing
with all manner of trials and suffering because of their faith; they were being
scorned and maligned; their very way of life was in danger as their families,
social status, and their occupations were threatened. With such suffering, it
would have been all too easy for one to lose faith and give up hope in Christ.[2]
No wonder then that this epistle ends with these words in chapter 5, verse 12: I have written this short letter to
encourage you and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in
it. Suffering for the cause of Christ was an ever-present reality for
those early believers, and they stood in need of encouragement in the face of
such real suffering.
Of course, you and I are no
strangers to suffering ourselves. While none of you may have a clue as to what
it means to suffer for our faith, each one of you in your own life has
experienced some calamity, some tragedy that has caused your world to stand on
its head and spin backwards. Each of us has felt either the disorientation of
losing a job, the pain of losing a loved one, the life-altering shock of hearing
a dreaded diagnosis—we have all to one degree or another, as human beings in a
shared existence, come to understand what it means to suffer, to suffer with
the very ways of this world and the darkness that is in it. Thanks be to God you
and I are not alone in our suffering.
You see, whenever you may feel as if
you are abandoned in your suffering, as if no one else could possibly feel what
you have felt…hear these first words of the text before us today in verse 18: For Christ also suffered. It’s
such a simple phrase, just four little words, yet it is overflowing with power.
Christ, the eternal, only begotten Son of God, suffered. For that very reason the Church, down through the
centuries, has recited those words in the Apostles’ Creed that Christ “suffered
under Pontius Pilate.” Jesus is not simply an aloof savior who magically waves
his cross-shaped wand and makes atonement for sin. No, Christ is a savior who
has lived in our skin, walked on the hard, cracked ground, breathed the dusty
air, and above all, has suffered in his flesh. Christ also suffered.
But why? Really, why would the Son
of the Almighty, all-knowing, ever-present God go through the trouble, the
pain, and the heartbreak of suffering? Not one of you here today would rush to
the front of the line to voluntarily suffer if it were within your power to
avoid it. And who would blame you? If we finish reading the words in verse 18, however, we find the reason the eternal Son of God chose such suffering: For
Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous,
in order to bring you to God. Christ’s suffering has purpose! He
suffered for sins once for all. Christ’s suffering was for your sins, my
sins, once for all. Never would another have to suffer on behalf of the sins of
another; never would sacrifice and offering have to be made on behalf of our
sins. Hallelujah! Crank up the organ; pass the plate and shout the benediction,
we can all go home knowing that Christ’s suffering was for our sins once for all.
But now hang on just a minute. If
that’s all there is to understanding Christ’s suffering then the gates of
heaven could not hold the number of those who would long to get in. Church’s
would find the proclamation of the gospel much easier. If that’s all there is
to understanding the suffering of Christ, then seminaries and universities
would be filled with scholars trying to understand the theology of gnats and
houseflies. So what is it about the suffering of the Son of God that is so
difficult to stomach for so many people? What is it that complicates comprehension
of Calvary’s climactic crucifixion? Is it the difficulty in believing that the
Almighty God would be made flesh? That God could actually feel pain and simply
allow his son to suffer a slow and agonizing death on a splintered cross? While
these things may be difficult for the logical, reason-driven,
post-enlightenment mind to grasp, I have a feeling there is another reason that
so many simply refuse to acknowledge the truth of Christ’s suffering, a reason
that maybe even many of you find hard to swallow, and I believe that reason is
found in these ever-deepening words of our Scripture today.
Not only does the author say in verse 18 that Christ…suffered for sins once for
all, he goes on to say Christ (the righteous) suffered for
the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the
flesh, but made alive in the spirit, and then in verses 19 and 20 the author goes on to write that Christ (in the
spirit) went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former
times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the
building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through
water. It is in these puzzling
words that the Apostles’ Creed claims that Jesus “descended into hell,” though
the text says nothing of descending nor does it directly make any mention of
hell. In fact, the writer of 1 Peter doesn’t necessarily have hell in mind here
at all. If we are to understand what the author is getting at, we have to look
outside of our canon of Scripture to an apocryphal book that was very popular
in the days of Jesus and the early Church—the book of 1 Enoch.
In 1 Enoch we find story of Enoch
(the man in Genesis 5:24 who walked
with God; then he was no more, because God took him) as he is shown the
history of heaven, leading up to the time of the flood in Genesis 6. During his heavenly tour, we are introduced to a group
called “the watchers,” who were the fallen angels who had been with human
women, and their offspring were giants “from whose bodies ‘evil spirits’ [had]
come.”[3]
These giants, referred to in Genesis 6 as
Nephilim, came to represent the most vial generation to have ever lived. Such a
tradition was no doubt well-known and popular during the time of Jesus, his
disciples, and the writing of 1 Peter. So, when the author of our text today
says that Jesus made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did
not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of
the ark, it is very likely he’s referring to these “spirits,”
traditionally understood as the most dreadful of sinners.
You see, what the author of 1 Peter
is trying to communicate to us isn’t necessarily the answers to where Jesus
went and what Jesus did between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. No, the writer
of 1 Peter is communicating a much deeper truth. When he writes that Jesus made
a proclamation to the spirits in prison, what he is saying is that even
that generation that was considered irredeemable gets to hear the same gospel
that even the most holy generation has the privilege of hearing. Think about
it…even the most sinful, evil, disgusting generation of sinners have the
grace-filled opportunity to hear the proclamation of the good news. The ones
who many would have deemed undeserving, Jesus made a proclamation to them.
That’s where I think people trip
over the truth of Christ’s suffering. After all, it’s just fine for Christ to
have suffered and died for me—it’s not like I’ve lived an altogether terrible
life. It’s wonderful that Christ has suffered for the sins of those whose sins
weren’t all that bad to begin with (it’s not like you’ve ever murdered anybody
anyhow). But when grace begins to find its way into the hearts and lives of
those you deem unworthy…well, that’s when we find the cost of discipleship too
steep and the life of faith too burdensome. To think that Christ would die for
me or for you is a blissful, glorious thought, but to think that the love of
God extends to the one we find unfit to live…? That’s another thing altogether
isn’t it? Kind of makes the Church feel less like a social club and more like a
social service doesn’t it? Maybe that’s the point.
He was found dead in a prison
bathroom. He had been beaten to death by a fellow inmate. No one was really all
that upset about it to tell the truth. He had only served two of his 957 years
in prison, but no one was really all that up set to hear he hadn’t made it
longer. See, no one really cared whether Jeffrey Dahmer lived or died after
raping, dismembering, and murdering some 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.
No one really cared, except for a man named Curt Booth. Booth was a member of
the Crescent Church of Christ in Crescent, Oklahoma; he saw Dahmer on
television and mailed him a Bible correspondence course teaching the way to
salvation. Dahmer mailed a letter back to Booth expressing that he had accepted
Christ, but there was no baptistery in the prison and no one who would baptize
him. However, as it came to pass, a Church of Christ minister named Roy
Ratcliff began weekly Bible lessons with Dahmer and eventually baptized him on
May 10, 1994.[4]
As you can imagine, many are quick
to pronounce Dahmer’s story as just another case of “jailhouse religion.” But
what if it’s not? What if one of the most notorious serial killers in modern
history is listed among the saints in the kingdom of heaven? What does that
then say about the depth of God’s grace? What does that say about the love in
Christ’s suffering?
I heard an old preacher say once,
“When you get to heaven, you’ll look around and be surprised by all the people
who you thought would be there, but aren’t. You’ll look around and be surprised
by all the people who you never thought would be there, but are. You’ll look
around and see all the lovely faces of all the wonderful people. Then, you’ll
look around and be surprised most of all by the fact that you’re there.” Isn’t
that the truth?
Let us pray…
[1]
Doreen Fowler; Campbell McCool. “On Suffering: A Letter from William Faulkner,”
American Literature, Vol. 57, No. 4.
(Dec., 1985), pp. 650-652.
[2]
Jobes, Karen H. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the
New Testament: 1 Peter. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. p.42.
[3]
Jobes, Karen H. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the
New Testament: 1 Peter. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. p.244.
