“First Peter 3:19-22”

Sunday, September 10, 2017

"In which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.”

---End of Scripture verses---

Jesus went “in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18) and “made proclamation” to the wicked people living in the years leading up to The Great Flood. When Noah, “a preacher or righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), warned his contemporaries in the days of “the patience of God” (verse 20), it was the truth of Jesus that he spoke to them, just as it was the Lord that spoke through Peter to his audience. And even though the times were wicked in which the recipients of this letter lived, in the days of Noah, “the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). And it did not go unnoticed or unpunished by the Lord.

Friends, there is no way to escape God’s righteous judgment. It eventually comes upon all flesh in one form or another, and no one can escape Final Judgement. Only “eight persons,” including Noah, heeded God’s life-saving message then. The rest were destroyed physically by the flood and are “now in” the “prison” of Torments awaiting a certain, eternal damnation in Hell. God announced and executed His judgment against that wicked generation in a deluge of water. His next, great act of Final Judgment will come in the form of an all-consuming fire (2 Peter 3:7). But, our merciful and loving Father always provides a place of safety and security for His faithful children. The only safe place to be in the days of the flood was in Noah’s ark. The only safe place to be today is in the Lord’s church. And the only way to enter into the Lord’s church is through the waters of baptism (1 Corinthians 12:13).

While it must be admitted that this is a difficult passage to get a handle on, the one, clear takeaway from Peter’s illustration is that “baptism now saves you” (verse 21). It is interesting to note that the waters of the flood represented the “antitype” that “corresponds” to the waters of baptism that now save God’s people. It is certainly true that the ark saved Noah’s family from the waters of the flood, but it was the flood that saved them from the corrupting influence of the wicked world in which they lived. God, through His word, has set that genuine, historic, catastrophic event up as a “foreshadowing” to “prefigure” the spiritual deliverance that He secures in Christ through the waters of baptism.

We are saved from our sins when we are baptized in the right way, for the right reasons, because the Lord has designated the act of water baptism as the point that we make “an appeal to God for a good conscience.” It is through baptism that we “call on the name of the Lord” and have our sins “washed away” (Acts 22:16). It is through baptism that we contact the life-saving blood of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3), and it is “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (verse 21) that we arise to walk in newness of spiritual life (Romans 6:4). If you are going to truly be saved God insists that you must do so “through the water” (verse 20).

Please read 1 Peter 4:1-3 for tomorrow.

Have a blessed Lord’s Day!

-Louie Taylor

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