Question:
1 Peter 3:18-22 has led to quite a varied discussion, especially verse 19…so if anybody could explain what’s going on here….

Answer:
Allow me to quote verses 18-21, “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 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” (emphasis on verse 19).

Verse 19 is often used by those who would seek to teach that Christ, after His resurrection, went to the regions of the lost to preach to them. But what could He preach to them if this were true? The gospel? Surely this is error of the highest degree, for the Lord Jesus taught emphatically that there was no second chance for salvation if one died without it. He stated in John 8:21 and 24, “I go My way, and ye shall seek Me, and shall die in your sins:whither I go, ye cannot come….I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins:for it ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” If one does not believe that Christ is the Saviour, the Son of God, IN THIS LIFE, he will die in his sins (with his sins unforgiven) and will not go where Christ is. The Lord Jesus also taught in Luke 16:26 that there is a GREAT GULF FIXED between the saved and unsaved after they die. These two passages are enough to assure us that there is NO SECOND CHANCE TO BE SAVED FOR ANYONE AFTER DEATH, so 1 Peter 3:19 cannot be teaching us that Christ was offering the lost a second chance to be saved.

I believe the passage is simply teaching us that the Spirit of Christ preached through Noah to the disobedient [unbelievers] before the flood. They were then living men and women, but they are NOW disembodied and their spirits are in prison (the place of confinement of the lost until the Great White Throne judgment at the end of time).

Let’s look at the passage closely: By which……this refers to the Holy Spirit Who was just mentioned at the end of verse 18 (Christ was quickened by the Holy Spirit). He went……Christ went by the Spirit—it was the “Spirit of Christ” (see 1 Peter 1:11 where we read of the “Spirit of Christ” Who testified through prophets). and preached……just as Old Testament prophets testified by the Spirit of Christ, so Christ, by the Spirit, preached through Noah. Noah is called a “preacher of righteousness” in 2 Peter 2:5. To the spirits in prison……the spirits are NOW in prison, but Noah preached to them while he was preparing the ark (verse 20). They rejected his message and are now disembodied spirits in prison waiting judgment day.