Do Unbelievers Get a Second Chance After Death?
00:00:00.000 | (music)
00:00:04.000 | Do unbelievers get a second chance at salvation after death?
00:00:11.000 | This is a common question in the inbox. It's an important question, too.
00:00:15.000 | So important that two people asked the same question at the same time,
00:00:19.000 | inspired by the same biblical text.
00:00:22.000 | "Hello, Pastor John. My name is Florin. I am a Romanian, but live in London.
00:00:26.000 | I have asked a few different pastors, but they could not give me an answer.
00:00:30.000 | Can you explain 1 Peter 3, verses 19-20 and 1 Peter 4-6,
00:00:34.000 | this idea that the gospel was preached to the dead?"
00:00:38.000 | And the question also recently came from a listener named Jason.
00:00:41.000 | "Pastor John, could you please explain 1 Peter 3, 19 to me?
00:00:45.000 | I've heard so many explanations to what Jesus was doing and why he was there.
00:00:50.000 | Some go so far as to imply a second chance salvation.
00:00:55.000 | Is there one?"
00:00:57.000 | I've returned to this text, and I'm thinking particularly now of 3.19.
00:01:02.000 | I've returned to this text over and over in the last 50 years
00:01:08.000 | and have to admit that I don't have complete confidence
00:01:13.000 | that I know for sure what Peter is referring to when he says that Christ,
00:01:19.000 | in the Spirit, preached to those who are now in prison.
00:01:25.000 | Here's what the verse says, so everybody can be up to speed with us.
00:01:28.000 | "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,
00:01:33.000 | that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh,
00:01:36.000 | but made alive in the Spirit."
00:01:38.000 | And here it comes.
00:01:39.000 | "In which," that is, in that Spirit,
00:01:42.000 | "he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison,
00:01:47.000 | because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited
00:01:51.000 | in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared,
00:01:54.000 | in which a few," that is, eight persons, "came safely through the water.
00:01:58.000 | Baptism," which corresponds to this, "now saves you,
00:02:02.000 | not as a removal of dirt from the body,
00:02:04.000 | but as an appeal to God for a good conscience
00:02:07.000 | through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
00:02:09.000 | who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God
00:02:12.000 | with angels' authorities and powers, having been subjected to him."
00:02:18.000 | And I read the whole thing because the context is going to make a difference
00:02:21.000 | in the various interpretations that are put forward.
00:02:24.000 | So here's what Martin Luther said about this text.
00:02:27.000 | "A wonderful text is this, and a more obscure passage perhaps
00:02:32.000 | than any other in the New Testament,
00:02:34.000 | so that I do not know for a certainty just what Peter means."
00:02:38.000 | That's Martin Luther.
00:02:40.000 | That's pretty much the way I feel as well.
00:02:43.000 | "I do not know for a certainty."
00:02:45.000 | So I'm going to mention the three main interpretations
00:02:49.000 | and then tell you the one I lean toward and why,
00:02:51.000 | and then step back and say a word about handling texts
00:02:56.000 | where you're not sure all that it means.
00:03:00.000 | So here's the first one.
00:03:02.000 | One interpretation is that between Good Friday and Easter, those days,
00:03:08.000 | Christ in the Spirit, in his Spirit, went to the place of the dead and preached.
00:03:15.000 | This is linked then to Ephesians 4.8, where it says that when he ascended,
00:03:20.000 | he led a host of captives.
00:03:22.000 | So he led Old Testament saints out of the temporary place of the dead
00:03:27.000 | with him into heaven.
00:03:30.000 | Now this may well be the right interpretation,
00:03:34.000 | but it does seem odd to me that the focus of Jesus' preaching
00:03:42.000 | would seem to be limited to those who did not obey in the days of Noah.
00:03:47.000 | If the reference is to all the Old Testament saints
00:03:52.000 | and the fact that they disobeyed is an odd way of referring to them as well,
00:03:58.000 | then I'm just still puzzled.
00:04:00.000 | So that may be right.
00:04:02.000 | I've got good friends who hold that view.
00:04:04.000 | It's a pretty traditional view.
00:04:06.000 | Here's the second one.
00:04:07.000 | Another interpretation argues that the preaching of Jesus after the crucifixion
00:04:17.000 | refers to his ascended proclamation of victory over those angelic forces
00:04:24.000 | referred to in verse 22 that I read at the end of the passage,
00:04:28.000 | "with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."
00:04:32.000 | So this view says that the spirits in prison are the evil angels in prison
00:04:39.000 | for their disobedience, and Jesus is simply announcing after the resurrection
00:04:45.000 | his victory over them.
00:04:47.000 | And again, that may be right.
00:04:51.000 | I've got a good friend who wrote a commentary who thinks that's the right interpretation.
00:04:56.000 | But I have a hard time following Peter's thought from the days of Noah
00:05:02.000 | to that conclusion.
00:05:04.000 | So here's the third one, and it's the one I have leaned to.
00:05:07.000 | I've circled back to it again and again.
00:05:10.000 | The view that I keep coming back to is it seems attractive to me
00:05:15.000 | because the strangeness of this text has already been set up for us
00:05:23.000 | by the strangeness of another text back in chapter 1.
00:05:27.000 | Here's what 1 Peter 1, 10, and 11 says.
00:05:31.000 | "Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace
00:05:38.000 | that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,
00:05:43.000 | inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them
00:05:51.000 | was indicating."
00:05:53.000 | That's amazing that he's talking about the Spirit of Christ in the prophets,
00:05:59.000 | like Noah perhaps, in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ
00:06:05.000 | and the subsequent glories.
00:06:08.000 | So Peter has already prepared us for thinking that Christ in his Spirit
00:06:15.000 | during the Old Testament went and preached through the prophets.
00:06:22.000 | So 1 Peter 3, 19 can very legitimately be translated that Jesus,
00:06:30.000 | "in the Spirit, having gone to the spirits who are now in prison,"
00:06:37.000 | they're now in prison, "proclaimed to them in the days of Noah."
00:06:43.000 | So on this interpretation, there's no preaching to the dead
00:06:48.000 | between Good Friday and Easter, whether that happened or not.
00:06:52.000 | I'm saying that's not what this text is about.
00:06:55.000 | Instead, there's a reference to the fact that the very Spirit that raised Jesus
00:07:00.000 | from the dead was the Spirit in which he had gone and preached through Noah
00:07:05.000 | to the world of Noah's day.
00:07:08.000 | Most were disobedient.
00:07:10.000 | Most people were disobedient, and they're now in prison,
00:07:14.000 | awaiting their final judgment.
00:07:17.000 | Now, it seems to me that this interpretation has the advantage
00:07:21.000 | of making good sense out of why there is a focus on Noah
00:07:27.000 | and the people of his day.
00:07:29.000 | Why did Noah even come to Peter's mind to think of Noah at this point
00:07:37.000 | in the argument?
00:07:38.000 | What brought him to mind as he was writing this text?
00:07:43.000 | Now, I said that I would try to explain how I think about handling text
00:07:49.000 | where I'm not clear on some things.
00:07:52.000 | Well, in this case, what I do is to step back and look at the larger flow
00:07:59.000 | of Peter's thought and ask, "What's he trying to do in verses 18 to 22?
00:08:07.000 | Why did the issue of Noah and the disobedience of so many people
00:08:13.000 | and the salvation of so few in the ark, namely eight,
00:08:18.000 | why did that even come to his mind?"
00:08:21.000 | And I think the answer is that the churches that Peter was writing to
00:08:26.000 | were very small and insignificant in comparison to this gigantic
00:08:32.000 | Roman Empire.
00:08:34.000 | Most of that empire were being disobedient to the gospel in Peter's day.
00:08:40.000 | The salvation of such a few people in this huge Roman Empire caused Peter
00:08:46.000 | to think of the days of Noah when only eight people came safely
00:08:52.000 | through the waters of judgment.
00:08:54.000 | And Peter says over in chapter 4 that in his day it's time for judgment
00:08:59.000 | to begin with the household of God, similar to the days of judgment
00:09:04.000 | in Noah's day.
00:09:06.000 | And as he ponders this parallel between the salvation of a few in Noah's day
00:09:12.000 | and the salvation of a few through baptism in his own day,
00:09:17.000 | it strikes him perhaps as he thinks back on chapter 1, verses 10 and 11,
00:09:25.000 | where Christ was preaching through the prophets in the Old Testament,
00:09:29.000 | it strikes him that it might be helpful to mention that the analogy
00:09:36.000 | between Noah's day and his own day is even fuller and deeper
00:09:40.000 | than the people might think.
00:09:42.000 | In other words, the analogy is not just that vast numbers
00:09:46.000 | of people were unbelieving and disobedient in Noah's day,
00:09:50.000 | just like they are in Peter's day, and only a few were saved
00:09:54.000 | through the ark, just like only a few were being saved
00:09:58.000 | through the waters of baptism.
00:10:00.000 | But also the analogy extends to the fact that Jesus himself,
00:10:06.000 | by the Spirit, through Noah, was preaching in the days of Noah,
00:10:11.000 | and Jesus is preaching by the Spirit through the apostles
00:10:15.000 | in Peter's day.
00:10:16.000 | So, even if I'm wrong about my understanding of the details
00:10:22.000 | of Christ preaching through Noah to the world of his day,
00:10:27.000 | I think this bigger picture is right.
00:10:31.000 | That's what I meant when I said trying to understand,
00:10:33.000 | "What do you do with the text if you don't understand all the details?"
00:10:36.000 | You try to get, "What's the bigger picture that you can see clearly?"
00:10:41.000 | I think it's right and has a huge significance for that day
00:10:45.000 | and for ours.
00:10:46.000 | Noah came to Peter's mind because only a few were saved
00:10:51.000 | in the ark under God's judgment, and now salvation through faith,
00:10:57.000 | through baptism, is like that.
00:11:00.000 | Through water, God saves his people, whether few or many,
00:11:05.000 | at any given time and place, and we should rejoice
00:11:09.000 | that Christ died to bring us to God through his judgment.
00:11:15.000 | The whole world may laugh, as in the days of Noah,
00:11:19.000 | but by faith we do.
00:11:21.000 | We come safely through the judgment.
00:11:24.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:25.000 | Great point about letting the flow of context help decipher
00:11:30.000 | the meaning of confusing text.
00:11:31.000 | That's really helpful.
00:11:32.000 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:11:34.000 | Ask a question of your own, search our growing archive,
00:11:36.000 | or subscribe to the podcast, all at AskPastorJohn.com.
00:11:40.000 | Speaking of hard texts in Peter, why does Peter say that we are
00:11:44.000 | saved through baptism?
00:11:47.000 | That's his claim in 1 Peter 3.21.
00:11:49.000 | Why does he say it?
00:11:50.000 | What does he mean by that?
00:11:53.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:54.000 | We will be back here on Wednesday to look at that text,
00:11:57.000 | 1 Peter 3.21.
00:11:59.000 | We'll see you then.
00:12:01.000 | [end]
00:12:02.000 | 1 Peter 3.21
00:12:03.000 | 1 Peter 3.21
00:12:05.000 | 1 Peter 3.21
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