Ultimate Victory

We’re moving onward in our series called ‘Stand Firm” where we’ve been doing a deep dive into the Books of 1 & 2 Peter. For Week 19 we dove into the wonderfully strange passage of 1 Peter 3:18-22 which reads,

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, 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 having been subjected to him.

1 Peter 3:18-22 is one of the most debated and written about passages of Scripture — and has been since the earliest days of the church. But within it is both one of the clearest and most beautiful proclamations of penal substitutionary atonement AND, as we get to in the sermon, a glorious pronouncement of victory for Jesus over sin, death, all of the forces of evil.

1 Peter 3:18-22 is the third time that Peter specifically addresses the life of Jesus and, like the other two instances, he starts with the suffering and death of Jesus. But where 2:22-25 emphasizes the redeeming power of Christ’s crucifixion — 3:18-22 highlights the conquering power of his resurrection and ascension. More than that, it grounds our willingness to suffer unjustly for the sake of Jesus in the fact of Jesus’s willingness to suffer unjustly in order to bring us to God.

Give the sermon text a read and a listen and we hope to see you this week at a Family Meal and/or a DNA group to dive even deeper.