What do 1 Peter 3 verses 19-20 mean?

Answer 1

The relevant text from the King James Bible:

1 Peter 3:18: "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:"

1 Peter 3:19-20: "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 most significant statement is, "[Christ] ... being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison", because this says that Christ went to hell, where he preached to the condemned spirits (spirits in prison). This passage began the early Christian dogma that Christ preached in hell, although the presumed purpose of this seems unclear.

The text then begins to use Noah's Flood as an allegory for Christian baptism, as can be seen in verse 3:21 ("The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us ..."). There has been a long tradition in Christianity of reinterpreting the Hebrew Bible in Christian terms.

--------------------------------

Another answer is: Before God created the earth, he created angels.

We can see this from the account at Job 38:7 where it says that as God formed the earth and prepared it for habitation, "…all the sons of God were shouting in applause". Long before man was created, the angels were already there, working closely with God, their father, and finding joy in his creations.

After the earth was set in motion, and God created a variety of life forms, and finally man 'to dwell on the earth'(Acts 17:26), some of these angels followed the lead of Satan the devil and rebelled, purposely turning against God and "…forsook their proper dwelling place…"(in heaven) (Jude 6), and chose to materialize human bodies, come to earth to cohabit with human women and have children by them, called Nephilim. (Genesis 6:1&2)

This was against God's purpose and for their disloyal and blatantly disobedient behavior, they were "…thrown into Tar′ta·rus, delivered to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment"(2 Pet 2:4) . Imprisoned.

These were not creatures who 'made mistakes'. These were perfect angels, with free will, who knew what they were doing when they rebelled, and made a conscious choice to go against God's will and purpose, adding pain and unrest to an otherwise perfect universe.

'Tartarus' is a condition, not a place. It's a state of spiritual darkness.

These disobedient, wicked angels, now called 'demons', were, in essence, 'imprisoned' …no longer allowed spiritual understanding, insight or enlightenment; mentally and spiritually 'in the dark', with no hope of forgiveness.

The demons, who were once Jesus' 'brothers' and fellow 'sons of God', knew Jesus very well, and were very well aware of who he was, (Luke 8:27-31) (Revelation 20:3) and that he would some day be the one to disable and destroy them, if he proved faithful in all ways. They knew he would do this, but because of their spiritually darkened condition, did not know when it would happen.

When Jesus 'preached to the spirits in prison', after his resurrection, he was not preaching the encouraging ' good news', to dead 'souls' (psy‧khai′), but a message of judgment to wicked restrained spiritcreatures(pneu'-ma-sin).

The root word here used for 'preach' is actually Ke·rys′so, which in general, means "to proclaim" (good or bad news).

Jesus was 'proclaiming' his victory to these demons, letting them know that, unlike them, he'd been loyal to God, and faithful until death, and that their future was distruction.