“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
It’s from the first letter of Peter (chapter 3, verse 18), but you’d be forgiven for assuming this was Saint Paul or one of the other New Testament authors, as it’s solid, stock-standard biblical teaching, isn’t it? Even so, the verses that follow this are probably the most obscure and difficult sentences in the Christian Scriptures!
I’ll read those verses in a moment, but first a question: ‘Did anyone else receive a text message last Monday featuring an image of someone wielding a lightsabre?’
Joy and I sent complimentary BitMojis to each other last Monday morning, with each of us holding lightsabres of different colours. Last Monday was, of course, Star Wars Day – May 4th (‘May the Fourth be with you’).
I know not everyone loves Star Wars as we do, but it is, unquestionably, one of the defining narratives of our generation, and if you don’t know how the story was written, George Lucas deliberately built it around “The Hero’s Journey” as outlined in Professor Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”.
Campbell believed that all great tales and communal narratives, including the Bible, follow the same basic plotline, and Lucas constructed the Star Wars narrative to fit that storyline, which is why Professor Campbell was invited to Skywalker Ranch to preview the movie before it was released to the public.
Now, don’t fear! I’m not going to construct a sermon on how it was Jesus who really destroyed the Death Stars and brought down The Empire, but this is pretty much what Peter was doing in chapter three of his first letter. Let me continue with it:
“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)
Biblical scholars do see these words from Peter as amongst the most difficult and obscure passages in the entire New Testament.
- Who are these spirits?
- What is this prison?
- What exactly did Jesus proclaim?
Some have seen this as a reference to ‘purgatory’ – the place where souls go after death if they’re not good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell – but there’s nowhere else in the Scriptures that gives the slightest hint that such a place exists!
2nd-century theologian Clement of Alexandria suggested thatj when, after the crucifixion, Christ descended into hell (as is affirmed in our creeds), he preached to the tortured souls from Noah’s day, but the Bible never describes hell as a prison, and why would Jesus be singling out Noah’s contemporaries for a second chance?
Saint Augustine suggested that Christ, in His pre-existent Divine nature, preached through Noah to the people of his day who were ‘imprisoned in sin and ignorance’.
This interpretation seems the most unlikely of all, as Peter says Jesus was first “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18), so whatever was happening happened after the resurrection, not thousands of years earlier.
No. What seems to be happening here is that Saint Peter is drawing on a well-known story that was a defining narrative for the people of his generation, just as the Star Wars story is a defining narrative for many in ours.
Peter was drawing on a story from the first book of Enoch (chapters 6 to 21) where a group of 200 angels, called ‘the Watchers’, rebelled against God, descended to earth, took human wives, and taught forbidden knowledge – sorcery and astrology.
The story is inspired by Genesis 6:1–4, which mentions some “sons of God” taking human wives who produce giant offspring. This lead to the world becoming so full of violence that the flood becames necessary in order to give humanity a fresh start!
In Enoch’s narrative, God sends archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel to imprison the Watchers until the final judgement, which is where they are when, according to Peter, they hear Christ’s proclamation of victory.
As I say, the Enoch story was something of a defining narrative for Peter’s people . This should not surprise us. They were living at a time when their community was being abused, and the first book of Enoch was a story of survival and triumph.
Peter’s church included men, women, and slaves. Slaves were being abused because they were slaves. Women were abused because they were women. Others were being abused simply because they were Christians. Abuse seemed built into the system, and many believed therefore that the system had to be destroyed by revolution. Peter, though, saw another way — the way of Christ, who defeated violence not by hitting back but by enduring it.
Through His death and resurrection, Peter says, Christ beat the system, and whatever form evil takes in our world – whether it comes from religious zealots or from the empire or from strange spiritual forces in the heavenly realms – all these powers have been disarmed and defeated by Christ through His resurrection!
Did Peter literally believe the stories of Enoch, or did he see them the way we might see Star Wars — as powerful narratives that convey deep truth even if the events they portray didn’t literally happen? I don’t think it matters. What Peter understood is that every evil in our world – real and imagined – is powerless against Christ! On account of His death and resurrection, the writing is already on the wall. Evil is on its way out, and liberation is near!
And this is where Peter’s message becomes our message.
I look around our world and I see so much evil. There is so much greed and violence in our world at the moment that we seem to be just about ready to self-destruct! Even so, what can we do? The power of the ‘dark side’ seems so overwhelming!
Peter tells us to look up! Christ has already proclaimed His victory to those spirits in prison. He has already spoken His word of triumph into the depths!
For there is no darkness that he has not entered, no enemy that He has not faced and no fear that He has not already confronted!
So let us stand firm, lift up our heads and walk in hope, for the Christ who descended to the depths now walks beside us, and His victory speaks into our suffering even now.
First published in Father Dave’s weekly newsletter – May 9th, 2026
