The Days of Noah
“Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few — that is, eight — souls were saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ: who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.”
I Peter iii. 18-22 (r. v.).
Cy5^ T would be unwise to load these pages with laboured ‘ifim references to the various and conflicting interpretations which have been put upon this difficult and much-debated passage. It appears better, after much studying of them, to take the words as they stand, and seek to set forth in clear outline the thought which seems to have been in the Apostle’s mind; so far at least as the present writer conceives of it.
The main idea is of course a comparison between the experiences of our Lord and those of his suffering followers. TTie sacred writer was striving to the utmost to sustain and comfort them under the severe stress of persecution through which they were passing. “Take heart,” he seems to say, “your sufferings are not exceptional; they run in the Divine family; even our Master was not exempt from them: He also suffered in the flesh; but’ his sufferings did not stay his blessed ministry; nay, they even augmented his sphere of usefulness; “He was quickened in spirit,” in which also He went forth to herald his accomplished work in regions to which, but for death, He had not obtained access. So shall it also be with you. Your sufferings shall not clip your wings, but add to your powers of flight. The things which happen to you shall fall out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel; and it is through death that you must pass up to share his glorious resurrection and imperial power.
I. An Historical Fact. — “Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the longsufifering of God waited in the days of Noah.”
In one of Isaiah’s most splendid passages, the king of Babylon, having fallen at last before that mightier Monarch who comes with equal foot to the hut of the peasant and the palace of the king, is depicted as a thin, pale ghost entering the abodes of the departed. And as he comes, the shades of the kings of the nations and chiefs of the peoples stir themselves, and with thin voices accost him in tones of withering sarcasm: “Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Is this the man that made the earth to tremble? — that did shake kingdoms?”
But surely the abodes of the departed were stirred after another fashion when the Son of God, having welcomed the dying thief to Paradise, refused to rest there after the strain of his long conflict and agony, but started forth to spend the brief interval until his resurrection in proclaiming with herald voice the wondrous news of accomplished redemption. This is surely the emphatic teaching, not of this passage only, but also of that marvellous announcement of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “He descended into the lower parts of the earth,” a phrase which was constantly used among the Jews for the nethermost abyss, the unseen Hadean world, the abode of the departed. On such testimony as this, the Church in all ages has affirmed. He descended into Hell (the word Hell, of course, standing, as it does so often on the page of Scripture, for Hades). We do not know the full burden of our Master’s message there. It is not declared; and all our surmisings must fall short of the reality. All that .we need to notice is that the word employed of his ministry is carefully chosen, and only includes the work of a herald as distinguished from that of an evangelist.
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It may be asked why He preached only to those who were disobedient in the days of Noah? Why were his messages confined to these? Were there not many more who had been disobedient at other periods of the world’s sad story? But none of these are excluded. The sacred writer does not say that the Lord addressed no others, but that He certainly addressed these. And our attention is thus focussed on ^/lem, because it was his desire to guide our thoughts to a comparison, already forming in his mind, and casting its shadow over his words, and which would draw lessons from the days of Noah for our own.
Are we then to think that these spirits had another chance, and swarmed, as the mediaeval artists loved to depict, in rejoicing crowds after Christ into Paradise? There is nothing of this sort in these words. And it is a mistake to trust to inference in a case so utterly removed from human cognizance and experience. The Bible turns our thought from speculation about the future to life in the living present. “What is that to thee? follow thou Me!”
All that we need to concern ourselves with now is this fragment which Peter has handed down to us from the posthumous sayings of Christ, when He taught them for forty days, and “spoke to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” We must clearly understand that Christ’s death did not stop his usefulness, but that He ministered still; just as Joseph, when cut off from his duties in the palace, ministered to his fellow-prisoners, proclaiming to one his deliverance and to another his doom.
II. A Confession. — The story of the Flood seems to have made a great impression on the mind and heart of the Apostle; and the event is constantly on his lips (2 Peter ii. 5; iii. 5, 6). And here he follows closely on the words of his Master, who compared the days of Noah with those of the Son of Man.
We need not stay to describe in detail the days which were before the Flood, or ///c condition of the old world. Its course was precisely similar to that of the world around us still.
“They ate; they drank; they married, and were given in marriage.” The arts and sciences were richly cultivated. Gigantic engineering and architectural works must have abounded, or it would have been impossible to construct such a marvellous vessel as the ark. Refinement and civilization, side by side with abnormal and horrid crimes. The giddy pursuit of pleasure; the eager search for wealth; the lawless gratification of evil propensity; the reckless disregard of the claims of God; the rush of the torrent of evil and unholiness, in spite of the remonstrances and pleadings of the grey-headed preacher for a hundred years. All these are what we see to-day around us in confused and grievous manifestation.
And there is as little need to describe the new world into which Noah and his children stepped down from the mountain slopes on which their ark grounded. How delicious the balmy air, the green grass carpeting the earth, the luxuriant growth of vegetation from the soil enriched and fructified by the alluvial deposit of the waters! It was a world from which sin, and crime, and evil, had been purged, and Creation seemed already to anticipate the vision of the seer: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.”
But surely that old world is very significant of the old life into which we are born by nature; and that new world of the new life mto which we enter in regeneration. And the Flood of water, through which Noah passed from the old into the new, bearing him onwards on its broad and swelling bosom, from evil and familiar scenes into new and ecstatic surroundings, is a type of the blessed experience of which the Epistles so often speak; when believers through faith in Jesus pass out of the old life of selfishness and death, into the glorious new life of resurrection blessedness; when they sit with Christ in the Heavenlies; when they reckon themselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God; sharing the spirit of the Saviour’s death, and of his resurrection: at such times they may be said to repeat the experience of the patriarch, when he passed from the old world into the new.
The early Church was accustomed to set forth this spiritual experience by the outward act of immersion in water. Believers, in confession that they had passed from their previous life of sin into the blessed life of fellowship with the risen Saviour, were buried under water in the likeness of his death, and were lifted again above the water in the likeness of his resurrection. The water in the pool or river might thus be compared to the waters of Noah’s Flood, because through each there was a passage from the old to the new, just as in the grave of Jesus there was a passage from the more limited life of the flesh into the freer life of the spirit. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Baptism, indeed, has no sacramental efficacy; but there are no trifles in the kingdom of God; and obedience to a mere outward rite may make a world of difference between the uneasiness of an evil conscience and the answer of a good one.
III. An Analogy. — We have now seen three facts. First, that Christ’s suffering did not hinder his heralding his finished work. Second, that He heralded it to the spirits who in Noah’s day were disobedient. Third, that we are like Noah, and Christ, too, in having passed through the waters of death: not the death of the body; but the death of the spirit to its fonner tastes and delights, because it has entered so fully into the meaning of Christ’s death, and into participation with his new life.
What then? Since we have entered into this new and blessed life, are we to be indifferent to those who belong to the old world and life from which we profess to have passed away? Nay, that cannot be; the very metaphors on which we have been dwelling exclude such a thought, and banish it from our serious consideration. In the light of these analogies it cannot be tolerated for a moment.
Of course it would have made the analogy more complete if it could have been said that Noah, after the Flood, had continued preaching to his old companions. But that could not
have happened. Yet the same purpose was served, though with a slight change in the person of the herald. For Jesus, whose death and burial were symbolized in the Flood, of whom Noah was a type, and with whose death we are identified, went to these self-same spirits, and spake with them. It was equivalent to Noah going; nay, it was better. Certainly the spirit of Noah’s ministry was fully realized in that of his great Antitype.
In my opinion, then, the drift of this passage is to show that it becomes us to herald the tidings of the cross to the old companions of our former life; we are,- as it were, to go back to them across the waters of the death-flood, not to live again in that world which we have abjured, but to declare the glad tidings of salvation.
Yes, and even their persecution of us should not hinder our efforts for their salvation. Indeed, we shall probably discover that our very sufferings will loose our tongues and enlarge our opportunities. In the stocks we may so sing praise that the prisoners may hear. In Caesar’s house, our bonds for Christ will be manifest in all the palace. In our martyrdoms we shall light fires which shall flame up over the world, and shall never be put out.
Noah’s Flood makes us think, not only of that symbolic death which is as much the theme of Rom. vi. as of this passage, but of that literal death, which these believers had to face in the form of martyrdom, and which, unless the Lord come first, we too must experience. But in whatever form death comes to the believer, whether in the acts of daily self-denial, or in the definite abjuring of some form of evil, or in the dissolution of this natural body, it may be met calmly and joyfully, because it is always followed by resurrection.
Through death we follow our Master’s steps, which lead to the upland lawns through the valley of the shadow of death. Let us fix our constant gaze on his resurrection, which is a type of ours also, as He takes his place on the right hand of God, “having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.” We shall share that power only in proportion as we are willing to share his death.