Bible Readings for the Home

Chapter 113

The Spirits in Prison

In what way did Christ suffer for the unjust?
"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 3:18.

By what was He quickened, or made alive?
"Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." 1 Peter 3:18.

By what did He preach to the spirits in prison?
"By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison." 1 Peter 3:19.

What did the Saviour say He had been anointed to do?
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Luke 4:18.

By whom is a man taken into bondage?
"For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage." 2 Peter 2:19.

Under what is one thus sold into bondage?
"For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin." Rom. 7:14.
NOTE. - The prison in which men are found is the condition in which sin binds them. Christ came to unloose these bands, and set the prisoners free.

When did the Spirit of God preach to these "spirits in prison," who were disobedient?
"Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." 1 Peter 3:20.

Did the Spirit of God try to deliver the captives of sin in the days of Noah?
"And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." Gen. 6:3.
NOTE. - The Spirit of God strove with the sinful antediluvians. It also moved Noah to build the ark, by which he and his family were saved. Christ came to earth "in the flesh" (John 1: 14), and in this condition suffered death; but before this He was always manifested to the world as the Angel, the representative of God. See Ex. 23:20-23; 1 Cor. 10:1-4. It was in this way that He preached through Noah to the spirits in bondage, or prison, during the one hundred and twenty years in which the ark was being prepared.