Question: I am confused as to the meaning of the following scriptures: I Peter 3:19-20; Jude 6; and II Peter 2:4. As I look up cross-references, I find nothing that is very explanatory. I had always thought that heaven or the angel’s abode was completely holy and there would be nothing to tempt angels. Also, that anyone dying in sin was lost; so I can’t understand Jesus preaching to spirits in prison. Nothing in the gospels seems to mention any such or else I’ve missed it.
Answer: I Peter 3:19-20, reads: “By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”
The thought really begins in verse 18, and this verse holds part of the key to interpreting the other verses. Verse 18 reads, “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.” The “S” in the word “Spirit” here is capitalized, indicating that it is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune God-head that is meant here. It was through the power of the Holy Spirit that Christ was raised from the dead. Then verse 19 says, “BY WHICH also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” Then it was through the power and operation that He preached unto the spirits in prison. Then verse 20 tells when it was “…When once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the rk was a preparing,…”
The preaching to the spirits in prison here was done in the days while Noah was building the ark and all the while preaching righteousness unto them the people in the prison house of sin. Peter said in II Peter 1:21, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” It was the same Holy Spirit that raised Christ from the dead that preached through Noah in his day warning the people to turn from their wickedness and flee from the wrath of God which was to come. It was the same Holy Spirit then in Noah, or preaching through Noah, as in the Holy Spirit-filled ministers today through whom Christ is preaching His gospel of salvation and warning sinners to repent of sin, believe the gospel, and thus flee from the wrath of God which is to come.
These spirits are called “spirits in prison,” and rightly so. Prison is a place where one’s liberties are taken away. Spirits who have yielded themselves to the devil forfeit their liberties and become slaves to Satan and the power of sin. Those souls in Noah’s day, who had their imaginations of the thoughts of their hearts only evil continually, were whipped and lashed by a relentless, tyrannical master (the devil), and had no power or liberty of their own. Jesus Himself said in John 8:34, that he that “…committeth sin is the servant [slave] of sin.” But Jesus again said in John 8:32, that you “…shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It takes the power of the gospel of Christ to free men from sin. Paul said in Romans 6:17-18, “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.” Any person who will obey the gospel and believe in the merits of the blood of Christ to redeem them from sin shall be made free from sin. Being a servant of righteousness is much different from being a servant of sin, because when one is a servant of righteousness, he is living according to the nature God placed in man in the beginning, which is liberty and freedom in the fullest degree. Sinful man has had a sinful, fallen, corrupt nature imposed upon his true nature. This nature tends to rebellion against God and right, and consequently robs him of all his liberty and freedom. This is what Jesus came to free men from by His sacrifice and the power of His blood, and to restore him back to his true nature (the divine nature) in the image and likeness of God and thus to full freedom and deliverance.
The prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 42:7, said that one of the particular functions of the ministry of Jesus was “…to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” Even those in solitary confinement or the dungeon even the worst of them were to be brought out also. Again, Isaiah 61:1 says, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me…to proclaim…the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus read this very prophecy in Isaiah 61:1 concerning Himself, and then said to them in verse 21, “…This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Jesus, the great liberator, had come to open the prison houses of sin and let the prisoners come out free men. Ephesians 4:8 says that when He ascended up on high “…he led captivity captive,…” The margin here says, “A multitude of captives.” Jesus led a great multitude which no man could number out of the kingdom of darkness and sin, and translated them into the kingdom of God’s dear Son through the abundance of His grace and the power of His blood.
This does not mean that He opened up the prison and penitentiaries and turned the criminals loose on society. No, not at all. But the psalmist said in Psalm 142:7, “Bring my soul out of prison,…” So we see that souls can get in prison the same as bodies and men can be imprisoned spiritually as well as physically. And it was to those who were imprisoned spiritually that Jesus in Spirit preached to through Noah, and it is to those who are imprisoned spiritually today to whom He preaches in His Holy Spirit-filled ministers, and to whom He opens the prison doors to liberate them when they obey from the heart that form of doctrine delivered unto them.
Jude 6 says: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
I have mulled over this and wrestled around with it at different times, but never came up with anything that was satisfactory even to myself. Finally, I came across Bro. C. E. Orr’s interpretation of this text. He said that the angels referred to in this text were Adam and Eve. That seemed plausible and correct to me when I considered that they were created beings just like the angels, and designed for everlasting life just like the angels so long as they ate of the tree of life. Before they sinned they were holy just as the angels. When they sinned, they lost their righteous estate (kept not their first estate), and were driven from the garden (left their own habitation). This is the best I have to offer on this text as of now.
