Hudsonville Protestant
Reformed Church
5101 Beechtree
Hudsonville, Michigan 49426
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org
Vol. 9, No. 8
Contents:
Christ’s Words Shall
Never Pass Away (5)
Preaching to Departed Spirits
(2)
The Role of Israel (4)
Christ’s Words Shall Never Pass
Away (5)
The church of Jesus Christ confesses that the Holy Scriptures are a wonder. Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus uttered these famous words: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matt. 24:35), and His words have not passed away. You are a witness to this marvel, the preservation of God’s Word, OT and NT.
This is all the more remarkable in that the Bible has frequently and fiercely been attacked. In the fourth century, Diocletian, a Roman emperor, ordered all Bibles to be handed over to the civil authorities to be destroyed. The so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century disparaged the Scriptures as a book written in a "pre-rational" age for childish or adolescent man who had not yet attained to maturity. Higher criticism of the Bible entered the mainstream in the nineteenth century. Yet even then the nineteenth century became the century of Bible Societies translating the Scriptures into many languages and distributing them all around the world. Today there are more translations and copies of the Bible than any other book. After 2,000 years of desperate efforts, the unbelieving world has still failed to prove one error in God’s Word.
We must thank God for the Bible and its preservation. It is rightly said that verbal inspiration is only a significant doctrine if verbal preservation is also true. Without the preservation of the Bible, the church would be unable to fulfil the great commission. How could we go into all the world to preach the (pure) gospel if the Scriptures are hopelessly corrupted? Moreover, the preservation of the Bible and the preservation of the church are closely tied together. Without the Bible, there would be no church, for the Word—preached and read—creates the church. On the other hand, without the church there would be no one (humanly speaking) to preserve the Bible.
We can be sure that our Bible (Authorized Version) is a trustworthy and faithful translation of God’s inerrant and preserved Word—a Word breathed out by the Spirit in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago. Christians have nothing to fear from unbelieving textual critics or new discoveries of ancient manuscripts. For Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Rev. Angus Stewart
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 (I Peter 3:18-20).
One of our readers asks for an explanation of this admittedly difficult text, and adds the question: Did Christ preach to the departed at His crucifixion? He states that this seems to be the meaning of the Apostles’ Creed when it says, "He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, he descended into hell." He notes that the Anglican Church interprets the passage to mean that Christ preached to people in hell.
The reader also asks whether Christ preached to the departed while He was hanging on the cross. As far as I know, the usual interpretation is that Christ preached to the departed souls in a disembodied state during the time that Christ was in the grave. But this detail is not important. The meaning of the text is.
Last time we called attention to a few interpretations of this verse. There is one more interpretation to which the attention of our readers ought to be called. In this interpretation, the text (if I may paraphrase it) would read something like this: "Christ hath once suffered for sins ... being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto those who are now spirits in prison, but who were once disobedient when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing...”
In other words, this interpretation explains the text to mean that Christ preached by Noah and through the Spirit to the wicked who lived prior to the flood, and who during their lives, mocked Noah and rejected Noah’s preaching; and who, because of their unbelief, are now in prison, that is, in hell for their rejection of the gospel.
There are some considerations which favor this interpretation. Noah is called in Scripture a "preacher of righteousness" (II Pet. 2:5). Furthermore, the fact that the text speaks of this proclamation made "by the Spirit" is in harmony with Genesis 6:3, where God says that His Spirit will not always strive with man; by which God refers to the preaching of the gospel in which men had been called to repentance from their sins. Thirdly, such an interpretation is surely in keeping with the rest of Scripture. If, therefore, anyone prefers such an interpretation (and it has been offered by some sound Reformed exegetes), it is surely an explanation which can be seriously considered.
Nevertheless, I am going to offer another explanation. It is not original with me, but is included in "Chapel Talks," an unpublished syllabus containing speeches Rev. Herman Hoeksema gave in chapel many years ago when I was attending Seminary.
The problem with the interpretation given above is, first, it does not seem to flow very well with the context, for Peter is speaking of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. The natural sequence of the text would seem to mean: (1) Christ was put to death in the flesh; (2) He was quickened by the Spirit; (3) by that Spirit that quickened Christ, Christ also went (not personally) to hell to announce His victory. Second, then the word "sometime" in v. 20 makes sense. The word means "at one time," "at some previous time." That is, these wicked of whom the text is speaking were at some previous time disobedient; that is, they were those who previously, at the time of the flood, had been disobedient.
I recognize, however, that this interpretation has one serious problem: the text would then teach a doctrine that is not found anywhere else in Scripture. One of the great Reformation principles is "Scripture interprets Scripture." That principle presupposes that the truths of Scripture are taught in many places, and each text on which a doctrine is based can be compared with other texts which teach the same truth. Such is not the case with the interpretation I am about to offer. Nevertheless, I suggest it as a possible interpretation.
Certain elements in the text must be considered here. The text does not say that Christ went to hell in a disembodied state, but that He went "by the Spirit." He went to hell by the same Spirit through whose power He was raised from the dead. Thus the Spirit of Christ went to hell as Christ’s representative to bring His message.
The text does not say that the Spirit went to hell to preach the good news of salvation, but a word is used here which mean "to announce, proclaim, herald." While this word is sometimes used to refer to the official character of the preaching, it can also mean simply proclamation or announcement.
That gospel was that God would deliver His church through a flood that was coming, and that salvation was to be found in obedience to God, an obedience expressed in seeking refuge in the ark. Such obedience would be the result of faith in the truth of God’s Word that God would deliver His church from the evil world through the blood of the "seed of the woman" (Gen. 3:15) who would crush the head of the serpent and his brood, and who would merit righteousness for His own. Noah was a "preacher of righteousness," and he pointed to the coming "seed of the woman" through whose work righteousness would be merited and accomplished.
The wicked in Noah’s day mocked that message and
laughed at the possibility of a flood. They went to hell in the flood while Noah was
saved—as a picture of baptism (I Pet. 3:21). We will present this interpretation in
the next article.
Last time, from a study
of the relevant NT texts (Matt. 26:28; I Cor. 11:25; Heb. 8:8-12; 10:16-17), we saw that
"Israel" and "Judah," the new covenant people in Jeremiah 31:31-34,
are the NT catholic church consisting of believing Jews and Gentiles. This is simply the
way the blessed Holy Spirit interprets the words which He breathed forth in Jeremiah 31.
Every time a Christian
partakes of the wine at the Lord’s Supper, he is confessing that he is one of the
"many" for whom Christ shed His blood, the "blood of the new testament
[covenant]" (Matt. 26:28) spoken of in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Thus, whether he is a Jew
or a Gentile, he is saying that he is a citizen of the "house of Israel" and the
"house of Judah" (Jer. 31:31, 33). Thus even a dispensationalist Gentile, by
partaking of the Lord’s table, confesses that he is a member of the new covenant
community in Christ. As a Gentile, he must confess that he is an Israelite not
physically but spiritually (cf. Rom. 2:28-29). Moreover, as a member of the NT church
he thereby confesses that the NT church is prophesied in the OT in Jeremiah
31:31-34. Furthermore, the inspired interpretation of Jeremiah 31 in the NT gives
absolutely no indication that this prophecy will be fulfilled in a later era (such as a
purported earthly Jewish millennium). Just read for yourself the accounts of the
Lord’s Supper in Matthew, Mark and Luke and I Corinthians 11, as well as II
Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 8 and 10.
But more can be said
from Hebrews, the NT book with most to say on the new covenant. Hebrews 1:2 describe the
era of the incarnation and work of Christ onwards as the "last days." The coming
of God’s Son (Heb. 1:2), including the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17-18),
marks the beginning of the "last days." When God proceeds to speak of the new
covenant in Hebrews 8 and 10 it is in intimate connection with the work of the Messiah who
brought in the "last days." Christ, "the priest forever after the order of
Melchisedec" (7:21), offered up Himself as the one great sacrifice for sins (7:27)
and thus became the "surety of a better testament [covenant]" (7:22), the
"new covenant"(8:8-12) prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Thus the "new
covenant" is a blessed reality for the NT church of believing Jews and
Gentiles—spiritual "Israel" and "Judah" (Jer. 31:31, 33)—in
the last days (Heb. 1:2).
The adjective
"last" in the "last days" is significant. The "last days"
are literally the last days which are to come before the eternal state of the new
heavens and the new earth for elect men and angels and the lake of fire for reprobate men
and angels. There simply are no more days to come after the last days and before
the eternal state, because the "last days" are the last days. Since the
new covenant is made with believing Jews and Gentiles in the "last days,"
there is no other era (such as the earthly Jewish millennium of dispensationalism) prior
to the eternal state in which the new covenant is to be made with ethnic Israel. Next time
(DV), we will consider the implications of this for understanding the context of Jeremiah
31:31-34, namely Jeremiah 30-33.
Rev. Angus Stewart