1 Peter 3:21Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For this reason some psalms are inscribed “for the eighth,” and in the one hundred eighteenth psalm instruction is given to the righteous man in groups of eight verses, adapted to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

There are also eight beatitudes. When the Lord spoke them to His disciples on the mountain, He laid the foundation of the Church.

Ezekiel also found the number eight in the arrangement of the temple. You will find many other things in the Scriptures marked by this number.

So a raven is sent out from the ark and does not return, while a dove announces peace to the earth. So also in the Church’s baptism, after the ill-omened bird, that is, the devil, has been driven out, the dove of the Holy Spirit announces peace to our earth.

The ark being built, beginning from thirty, or three hundred, cubits, is gradually brought down to one cubit. In like manner the Church, having many ranks, is completed at the end by deacons, presbyters, and bishops.

Dangers threatened the ark in the flood, and they also threaten the Church in the world. After leaving the ark, Noah planted a vineyard, drank from it, and became drunk.

Christ, born in the flesh, planted the Church and suffered. The elder son mocked his naked father, while the younger covered him. The Jews also mocked the crucified God, while the Gentiles honored Him.

A day would be too little for me if I were to unfold all the mysteries of the ark, comparing it with the Church.

So also the waters of baptism serve believers as the symbol of the burial of their former sinful life and bondage under the law. They are also the passage to a new life (Rom 6:3-5).

Therefore the apostle adds that this baptism is not merely the washing of bodily impurity, but the appeal (ἐπερώτημα) of a good conscience. That is, it is the promise given by believers at baptism to live in good conscience.

Furthermore, baptism is the burial of sins and co-resurrection, regeneration to new life, and the beginning of a new chosen race.

Some interpreters see the type of baptism in Noah’s ark. As during the flood only those who were in the ark were saved, so now only those who receive holy baptism are saved.

This thought, correct in itself, is not strictly drawn from the words of the apostle Peter.

Let us suppose that in baptism water is only an accidental sign and not a means of salvation. Then it could not be said: they were saved through water, just as we are saved by water similar to that.

Rather it would have had to say: something else saves us. But in accordance with the teaching of Christ, we believe that our regeneration in baptism is accomplished by water and the Spirit.

The Spirit is the agent of this regeneration. Water is His bearer, means, and instrument. It is so necessary that salvation is here attributed to it, just as the salvation of Noah’s ark was attributed to the water of the flood.

They will say: baptism is later called “not the washing away of bodily impurity, but the promise to God of a good conscience.” Does this not indicate that water means nothing in baptism, but only the vow which the believer gives to God with a good conscience?

Because of these words, there is no need to belittle the meaning of water or wholly deny it. This is so first because water, becoming the instrument of our regeneration by the Spirit, is certainly not appointed then for washing bodily dirt.

It is also so because the one baptized in water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, truly expresses by this outward action his unbending resolve to remain a faithful servant of the tri-hypostatic God.

“To be baptized into Moses” means to express obedience or faithfulness to Moses (1 Cor 10:2).

Therefore baptism, while remaining, according to the words of the apostle, the washing not of bodily defilement but the promise of a good conscience to God, can and must at the same time be water baptism, according to the institution of the Lord Himself.

Therefore they brought no benefit to the soul of the one washed, nor to his moral being and spiritual activity.

Baptism “saves those who come with faith into the ark, that is, into the Church. And as water washes away impurity, so also does baptism.

Only baptism effects the removal not of bodily impurity, but, through an outward sign, the washing away of the defilement of the soul. It is, as it were, a pledge and entrusting of a good conscience before God” (Theophylact).

The apostle indicates this positive side of the concept of baptism with profound and intricate features. Baptism is the promise to God of a good conscience, or more precisely in the Slavonic, the asking of a good conscience from God.

What does this mean? In view of the negative side, expressed by the words “not the washing away of bodily impurity,” one would expect the apostle to define the positive side as spiritual or moral cleansing.

The words “a good conscience” point to this side, as a designation of man’s spiritual and moral disposition. Yet judging by the apostle’s expression, this disposition is seemingly not yet given in baptism, but only asked for.

But in baptism, with the forgiveness of sins and removal of guilt for them, a good conscience should be granted as the consequence of reconciliation with God and entrance into spiritual union with Him.

What, then, does this mean? The cleansing of conscience by baptism, or the granting by God of a good conscience in baptism, is not excluded by the apostle’s expression. It is the necessary action of baptism.

Yet the apostle also wishes to indicate man’s personal action in baptism. A man, receiving forgiveness of sins in baptism, not only receives as a consequence a good conscience.

He also asks, or implores, God to grant him a good conscience for the future, or to guard by His almighty grace this received purity of conscience.

For all manner of approaching impurities can defile it. Thus the apostle’s expression about the positive side of baptism includes not only the given grace of cleansing the conscience of the one baptized.

It also includes the grace desired by him, which constantly cleanses his conscience afterward. This grace constantly guards such purity and preserves in him a good conscience.

Conscience here is understood generally as moral and spiritual self-awareness. A good conscience is the awareness of the right ordering of spiritual and moral life.

This baptism, prefigured by the waters of the flood, saves us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It saves, that is, it delivers from the curse and eternal death.

These are the inevitable consequences of human sinfulness for a man not reconciled with God in his natural, ungraced state.

Baptism has saving power in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in this sense: by His resurrection from the dead, Christ brought humanity, redeemed by His sufferings, to God the Father for eternal and blessed union with Him in the Kingdom of glory.

Man appropriates this saving power of baptism by faith in the resurrection of Christ.

The example of the eight souls of Noah’s family saved in the ark should inspire Christians with hope and patience. They too are surrounded by the abyss of a sinful world and seem to sail in an ocean of every trial from the sons of this age.

Baptism, corresponding to this figure, that is, to the floating ark, now saves us also. Its saving power is appropriated by faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He Himself, through suffering, ascended into heaven and abides at the right hand of God. Angels, authorities, and powers have been made subject to Him, that is, also according to His humanity.

Having said that it is better to suffer for good works 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; in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison.”

When reading these apostolic words, the first question that naturally arises is what must be understood by the prison into which Christ descended in His soul, while His body remained in the tomb.

By this prison the Apostle names that region, little known to us, where the souls of departed men go and abide.

The people of the Old Testament called this region by the general 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, but in the general sense of the kingdom of the dead (Gen 37:35).

By calling this place a prison, or confinement, the Apostle plainly ascribes to it something constraining for the human spirit. It is something that hinders the free manifestation of its powers, and in general something unpleasant and undesirable.

Such was this place before the coming of Christ the Savior for all men who died. Of course, the degree of their righteousness, as also the degree of their impiety, was reflected in corresponding degrees of their confinement in Sheol.

That is, the souls of departed patriarchs and the souls, for example, of those who perished during the Flood, of whom the Apostle speaks in particular, were not in one place and not in one condition.

Why did the Lord descend into Hades? The holy Apostle Peter answers this by saying that Christ, having descended into the prison of spirits, preached. Therefore the Lord descended into this prison for preaching.

The subject of this preaching was surely that the salvation of men had been accomplished. It was that this Savior is He Himself, the Son of Man, who descended into the nether parts of the earth to the prisoners of Hades.

It was also that moral communion with Him had become the one universal means for men’s salvation from there.

Thus “whoever believes in Him,” as the incarnate Son of God, “will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:16).

That this truly was the essence of Christ’s preaching in Hades is indicated clearly enough by the Apostle. He calls this preaching the Gospel, or glad tidings, below in 1 Pet 4:6.

We know that the chief aim, or essence, of the evangelical proclamation is this: that men 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 addressed to spirits with another expression: “the Gospel of Christ was preached to the dead” (1 Pet 4:6).

Thus, according to the Apostle, only human spirits, that is, the souls of departed men, were instructed by Christ’s preaching, not spirits in general, such as the fallen angelic spirits.

Because these latter spirits lack all good receptivity, preaching to them would have been utterly hopeless, and therefore in vain.

On the same basis one may suppose that even among human spirits only a portion 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 to faith in Christ had been preserved.

Still, it is most consoling that the God-inspired Apostle Peter considerably broadens the realm of those saved by Christ’s preaching.

He points to them even where, according to our human reasoning, it would be hard to suppose them. He points precisely to the realm of people who perished in the waves of the Flood.

These were people “who once were disobedient while God’s longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared” (1 Pet 3:20).

That many of these people were saved is directly declared by the Apostle. Perhaps at the moment of their destruction they recognized their impiety. Who knows? Perhaps they died with cries to God and with repentance.

The Apostle says: “For this reason 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).

From this it is clear that a kingdom has also been prepared for those who believe in Jesus Christ. For He said: “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also” (Jn 12:26).

Speaking about the feelings with which Christians approached Baptism, seeking in it a conscience cleansed from sins before God, the apostle teaches Christians to preserve the good conscience which they truly received through Baptism (cf. Mt 15:23; Mt 16:1; Acts 23:20).

By pointing to the obedience of the angels to Christ, he shows His immeasurably great power. This power is fully sufficient to be an unshakable support for suffering Christians.

To them He said: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, and falsely speak every evil against you for My sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven” (Mt 5:11-12).