THE SPIRITS IN PRISON

1 PETER 3:1

A. A SUBJECT OF MUCH SPECULATION, CONTROVERSY, AND CONFUSION
  1. Some think that Peter's words are proof that man is a dual being "immortal spirit" and the body made of clay:
  2. They maintain that our Lord actually, and personally, went and preached to the "disembodied spirits in the spirit world."
  3. Mormons and Catholics think Peter's words confirm their theory that at death the "immortal" soul, or spirit, separates itself from the body, goes to the "spirit world" -- purgatory or limbo or "spirit world":
B. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON
  1. The text: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."
  2. High points of the text:
    1. Christ was put to death in the flesh. Compare 1 Pet. 3:18 with Rev. 1:18; 2:8; 1 Cor. 15:3, 12-18
    2. He was quickened by the Spirit (resurrected) Compare 1 Pet. 1:18 with Rom. 8:11. The Spirit that raised Christ from the dead was the third person of the Godhead.
    3. By the Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, Christ went and preached unto the spirits in prison.
    4. When? In the days of Noah, when the ark was in preparation.
    5. Whom did the Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, use to preach?
    6. He used Noah for one hundred and twenty years to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ - Gen. 6:1-20
    7. This is the heart of Peter's words in 1 Pet. 1:18, 19
  3. What was the result of Christ, through the Spirit, and the Spirit using Noah, preaching to the spirits in prison?
    1. Eight souls were saved.
    2. Noah and his family were saved.
    3. The rest of the antediluvians perished in their sins. Compare Gen. 6:7, 8 with Luke 17:26, 27; Matt. 24:37-39; 1 Pet. 3:18-20
C. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON
  1. The spirits, who are they?
    1. They lived in the days of Noah, when the ark was in preparation.
    2. They, doubtless, saw Noah build the ark.
    3. They heard him preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
    4. It was Christ who sought to save them through the preaching of Noah.
    5. They rejected both Christ and the gospel of Christ - Gen. 6:1-3; Matt. 24:37-39
    6. They were destroyed by the flood - Luke 17:27
  2. The prison: What was it?
    1. It was the enslavement of sin; the captivity Satan held them bound in. Compare Isa. 61:1 with chapters 42:7, 8; 49:9; Ps. 142:7
    2. It refers to persons taken captive by Satan at will - 2 Tim. 2:26; Rom. 6:16
    3. A prison is a place of involuntary captivity, where one is not at liberty to exercise his free will - Rom. 6:16; 7:18-24
  3. The Spirits in prison:
    1. They were prisoners to Satan, and Christ sought to set them free - John 8:36
    2. The Holy Spirit strove with them during Noah's preaching, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years" - Gen. 6:3
    3. This brings up a very important point overlooked by our "spirits in prison" preachers.
      1. If Noah could do nothing to change the antediluvians, if the pleading of the Spirit could not help them, who could?
      2. They all perished in the flood; they had a chance to be saved, but rejected it: why preach more to them?


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