The example of the eight saved souls of Noah's family in the ark should inspire Christians also with hope and patience. They are surrounded by the abyss of the sinful world and seem to sail in an ocean of every possible trial from the sons of this age.
Corresponding to this figure, that is, to the floating ark, baptism now also saves us. Its saving power is appropriated by faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He Himself, by the path of suffering, ascended into heaven and abides at the right hand of God. Angels, authorities, and powers have been subjected to Him, that is, also according to His humanity.
Having said that it is better to suffer for good deeds than for evil (1 Pet 3:17), the holy Apostle Peter adds: "For Christ also once suffered for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
By this also He went and preached to the spirits in prison."
When reading these apostolic words, the first question naturally arises: what should be understood by the prison into which Christ descended with His soul while His body remained in the tomb?
By this prison the Apostle means that region little known to us, to which the souls of dead people depart and where they abide.
The people of the Old Testament called this region by the common name sheol, or the netherworld, which in Greek is called Hades. This is not Hades in our sense as a place of torment for sinners alone.
It is Hades in the general sense of the realm of the dead (Gen 37:35).
By calling this place a prison or confinement, the Apostle clearly attributes to it something restrictive for the human spirit. It hinders the free manifestation of its powers and is in general something unpleasant and undesirable.
Such was the character of this place before the coming of Christ the Savior for all people who died in general.
Of course, the degree of their righteousness, as well as the degree of their impiety, was reflected in the corresponding degrees of their confinement in sheol.
That is, the souls of the departed patriarchs and, for example, the souls of people who perished during the flood, of whom the Apostle speaks in particular, were not in one place or in the same state.
Why did the Lord descend into Hades? The holy Apostle Peter answers this by saying that Christ, having descended into the prison of the spirits, preached.
Thus the Lord descended into this prison for preaching. The content of this preaching was, of course, that the salvation of mankind had been accomplished.
It also proclaimed that this Savior is He Himself, the Son of Man, who had descended into the nether regions of the earth to the prisoners of Hades.
It proclaimed that the sole and universal means for the salvation of people from there had become moral communion with Him.
Thus "whoever has faith in Him" as the incarnate Son of God "will be saved, but he who does not have faith will be condemned" (Mk 16:16).
That this truly was the essence of Christ's preaching in Hades is indicated rather clearly by the Apostle, when he calls this preaching the Gospel, or good tidings, below in 1 Pet 4:6.
We know that the chief aim, or essence, of the Gospel proclamation is that people may believe "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they may have life in His name" (Jn 20:31).
To which spirits did Christ preach when He descended into Hades? The Apostle later replaces his expression, that Christ's preaching was to spirits, with another expression: "Christ's good tidings were preached to the dead" (1 Pet 4:6).
Therefore, according to the Apostle, only human spirits, that is, the souls of dead people, were instructed by Christ's preaching, and not spirits in general, such as fallen angelic spirits.
Because these latter spirits lack every good receptivity, preaching to them would be completely hopeless and therefore vain.
On this same basis, one may suppose that even in the realm of human spirits only a portion of them was saved by the radiant preaching of the Resurrection and led out from the strongholds of Hades.
This was the portion in which at least some small receptivity to this preaching and faith in Christ had been preserved.
All the same, it is supremely consoling that the divinely inspired Apostle Peter considerably expands the sphere of people saved by Christ's preaching.
He points to them even where it would have been difficult for us to suppose them, according to our human reasoning. He points precisely to the realm of people who perished in the waves of the flood.
These were people formerly disobedient to the divine longsuffering that awaited them, in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark (1 Pet 3:20).
That many of these people were saved is directly declared by the Apostle when he says: "For to this end the Gospel was preached even to the dead, that. Having been judged according to men in the flesh," that is, having perished and suffered in the body, "they might live according to God in the spirit" in the world beyond the grave (1 Pet 4:6).
Perhaps at the moment of their destruction they recognized their impiety, and who knows? Perhaps they died with cries to God and with repentance.
THEOSIS