About this sermon
Peter sets out the heart of the gospel: Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. His death, of infinite value, paid the debt for sin in full, so no one needs to offer another sacrifice, and the accuser has no ground against those who trust him. Men put him to death in the flesh, but God made him alive in the Spirit. Baptism corresponds to Noah’s deliverance through water and is an appeal to God through Christ’s resurrection. Christ is the sinner’s substitute and Savior.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. My sermon text this evening, 1 Peter 3 verse 18. You’ll find that on page 1205 in your Pew Bible. 1 Peter 3 verse 18. I’m going to read verses 18 through the end of the chapter, verse 22, but we’ll focus especially this evening on verse 18. Dear ones, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with reverence and awe. For Christ also suffered once for 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 he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels’ authorities and powers, having been subjected to him. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Once again, let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. O heavenly Father, we do once again praise you and thank you that you have given to us a firm and certain word in the Holy Scriptures, for they are indeed your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. They are a lamp unto our feet, a light into our path. We pray, heavenly Father, that you would deepen and strengthen our confidence in your word and that you would give us insight as we explore the Scriptures, as we seek to take these truths to heart.
We pray that by your spirit you would cause the seed of your word this evening that is being proclaimed to find a resting place, rather a lodging place in our souls that it might bear spiritual fruit in our lives. Lord, bless the preaching of your word this evening and bless us as we hear. May we hear with reverence and awe, and may your spirit empower us to put into practice that which we hear this evening. We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is The Heart and Soul of the Gospel. There are a number of key words that I encourage you to listen for, especially I would highlight the words atonement, justification, and faith. Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in this section of 1 Peter, the apostle has been seeking to encourage and prepare his readers for the possibility of suffering for their faith.
Now, it’s likely that they had already begun to suffer persecution for their faith, but Peter is preparing them for a fiery trial of persecution. He’s preparing them for the possibility of intensified suffering at the hands of the wicked for doing that which is right and good. In other words, suffering for righteousness’ sake. We see that back in verse 14, for example, where Peter writes, But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy. We think also of what he says in the verse immediately prior to the passage we consider this evening, verse 17, where Peter writes under the Spirit’s inspiration, he says, For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil.
This passage indicates that it may sometimes be within God’s will that his beloved children suffer for doing what is right, as I just read for you in verse 17. And that’s a hard pill for us to swallow, isn’t it? God’s, you know, God’s will that we suffer, that’s difficult for us to accept. From our limited creaturely perspective, this may be difficult to understand or accept, but we can be assured, brothers and sisters, that should God choose to permit us to suffer for doing that which is right, in his infinite wisdom and good providence, our loving Father in Heaven will ultimately somehow bring good even out of such evil. The perfect example of this, of course, is the suffering and death of our Lord at the hands of wicked men. Our Lord who by his suffering and death atoned for our sins, atoned for the sins of God’s people and brought us back into a right relationship with God.
And friends, since this is the case, it should not surprise us that immediately after telling his readers that it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil, it’s understandable that Peter’s thoughts would immediately turn to the sufferings of Christ. And of course, as his thoughts turn to the sufferings of Christ, his thoughts also turn to what Christ has done for us in his sufferings. And so we come here in our passage for this evening to the heart and soul of the Gospel. As Peter writes again in verse 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, though righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit. As we focus on our passage for this evening, the first thing I want to point out, brothers and sisters, is that Christ suffered once for sins.
This is the first point in your sermon outline. Christ suffered once for sins. Now some versions read Christ also died for sins. That’s how it’s translated, for example, in the New American Standard Version. Instead of Christ suffered for sins. Now this is actually a textual issue, and some ancient manuscripts read suffered while others read died. But whichever reading is the correct one, the meaning of this passage is not in any way altered or compromised. Whichever translation, textual issue or textual reading is the correct one. Our Lord did indeed suffer in his death, and he did indeed die for our sins. And that’s the point that Peter is making here in this passage. It seems again, it seems that the thought which Peter is expressing here in this verse is picked up again in chapter 4 verses 1 and 2.
If you skip down from verse 18 to chapter 4 verses 1 and 2, we read this in chapter 4 verses 1 and 2. Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. In verse 17 he had said that we might have to suffer for doing, for righteousness sake if that be God’s will. He then turns his attention to the sufferings of Christ. And then there’s sort of a parenthetical statement here in verses 19 through 22, and then he returns to the theme of suffering for righteousness sake in chapter 4 verses 1 and 2. But what are we to make about the intervening verses here at the end of chapter 3?
This is actually after verse 18, it gets very complicated exegetically and in terms of how to interpret what Peter is talking about here. And I assure you that we’ll be getting into the weeds a little bit in the weeks ahead as we seek to understand what the spirit through Peter has recorded for us in verses 19 through the end of this chapter. But this evening we’re going to focus especially on verse 18. Remember friends that Peter is trying to encourage believers to endure suffering for righteousness sake by reminding them of Christ’s sufferings. But this God intoxicated apostle seems to find it difficult to mention Christ’s sufferings without also mentioning the glorious things which Christ accomplished by his suffering upon the cross, and also Christ’s subsequent victory and vindication. So brothers and sisters, our hearts also should be so full of gratitude for what our Savior has done for us on the cross that we too should find it difficult to mention Christ’s sufferings without also mentioning the wonder of all that Jesus did for us on the cross, all that he accomplished by his substitutionary atonement, his sufferings on the cross for our sins.
We should celebrate and rejoice in the wonder of the atonement and the glories of our Lord’s resurrection victory. Now with this context of the passage in mind, allow me to draw your attention to a few important truths that we glean in this passage. And one of the important truths that we learn from this passage of God’s word is we learn about the absolute sufficiency and finality of Christ’s atonement. Again, Christ suffered or died once for sins. Jesus didn’t have to die over and over and over again. He didn’t have to suffer over and over and over again in order to atone for our sins. It wasn’t like it was under the Old Covenant where animal sacrifices had to be offered in the morning, in the evening, day in and day out, and where over and over again the priests under the Old Covenant were constantly slaughtering animals as a reminder of ongoing sin and a reminder of the ongoing need among the people of God for a perfect lamb of God, a perfect Savior.
Our context tells us that Christ suffered once for sins, or I like how the New International version reads. It says that Christ died for our sins, or excuse me, that Christ died for sins once for all. This language, beloved, points to the absolute sufficiency and the absolute finality of our Lord’s atonement. Jesus paid it all and he paid it once and for all and forever. And that, brothers and sisters, is good news because it means that the debt has been paid so you and I don’t have to chip in. We don’t have to add our own payment for our own sins. Jesus paid it all. We could never pay for our own sins anyways by our own sufferings. We could never atone for our own sins. We are told here again that Christ suffered or died.
Now think about the implications of that. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the eternal Son of God in the flesh. He is the God-man, the Word-made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. He is the one and only mediator between God and man. Yet he had to suffer and die in order to atone for human sin. Friends, the Bible tells us that sin is so utterly offensive and serious in the eyes of our infinitely holy creator that it requires death, spiritual, physical, and ultimately eternal death in hell for the rebel sinner. As that familiar passage of Romans 6-23 tells us, the wages of sin is what? Death. Death. Separation from the loving, gracious presence of God. Spiritual death, physical death, and ultimately eternal death. That is the penalty for rebelling against our holy creator. God is holy and just and His holiness demands that sin be punished.
And our sin is so offensive to God that the only way He could redeem us from our sin was to send His Son, His incarnate Son Jesus, to pay the penalty for sin. And praise be to God, Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God incarnate did indeed die for the sins of His people. But not only that, He died once or once for all. His atoning death was of such infinite worth and such infinite value that it didn’t need to be repeated. Jesus does not need to be re-offered. It’s not like in the Roman Catholic Mass where they do acknowledge in Roman Catholic theology that Christ died once and for all, that His atonement was once and for all, but the atonement of Christ needs to be re-presented over and over and over again in their so-called sacrifice of the Mass.
We don’t need that. Jesus paid it all once and for all and forever. His atoning death was of infinite value because He is the infinite Son of God. He is the one of infinite worth and therefore His infinite worth as the God-man lends value, infinite value to His all-sufficient atonement. And so friends, our Lord’s all-sufficient atonement is indeed of infinite worth and value. Think about that. Think about that. If you’re tempted to imagine that you have gone too far, that you’ve become such a prodigal that there’s no opportunity to return. If you think, oh, I have just really messed up this time and there’s no turning back. The Lord will never receive me back. Jesus’ death is of infinite value. It can cover an infinite number of sins against our infinite Lord. He died once and His death is sufficient.
And therefore no more sacrifice for sin is required. Jesus took care of our sin problem once and for all and forever. And I don’t know about you brothers and sisters in Christ, but I need to remind myself of that time and time and time again. Especially when the devil, the devil’s called what? The accuser of the brethren. When the devil uses my conscience to say, ah, Jeff, Jeff, how can you call yourself a Christian? How can you have that wicked thought? Or how can you speak in that unedifying way? Or how can you do this and still call yourself a Christian? Especially since you’re a pastor. You should know better. And yes, I should know better. But Jesus paid it all and His atonement is of infinite value. And He doesn’t need to repeat what He’s done.
It is done. There are many other places in the Bible that affirm the all sufficiency of our Lord’s atonement. Let me just read as we compare scripture with scripture a few other passages. Turn with me if you would to Hebrews 9 verses 27 and 28. Hebrews 9 verses 27 and 28 as the author of Hebrews is contrasting the atonement of Christ with the Old Testament sacrifices. He says this, nor was it, I’m sorry, verse 27. It says, and just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. So Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him. Or think of what, stay in Hebrews and skip ahead to chapter 10 and look at verse 10.
It says, and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And by that will we have considered chapter 10 verses 12 to 14. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Jesus offered a perfect atonement how blasphemous to think that He needs our help to save us. Oh Lord, I’m glad You died for me, but let me hear, let me add my own works of penance, my own religious works. What a blasphemous thought. Jesus paid it all, once and for all and forever.
Dear listener, are you trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and His once for all sacrifice on the cross to take care of your sin problem? There’s nowhere else you can turn. There’s no other Savior. There’s no other atonement but that which Jesus offered on the cross for the sins of His people. And so believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, trust in Him and His perfect once for all sacrifice for your salvation. And God’s Word says that you will be saved, that you will be forgiven through faith in Him and faith alone. But how does this work? How is it that Christ’s once for all sacrifice deals with our sin problem? And that brings me to my next point. We learn here in this passage that Christ the God man, the righteous one suffered for the unrighteous.
Christ the righteous or just one suffered for the unrighteous or the unjust. As it says again in verse 18, our passage for tonight, for Christ also suffered once for sin, the righteous for the unrighteous. The righteous for the unrighteous. The language here friends indicates that Christ’s death was vicarious and substitutionary. Christ the sinless, spotless lamb of God, the righteous one died in our place, in our stead. He took upon Himself the divine wrath and punishment that we deserve for our sins. Because of our fall in Adam and our sinfulness, God views us as unjust, as unrighteous in His sight and thus worthy of His holy wrath and judgment. If you are in your natural fallen condition in Adam and apart from a saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ, then that is how God views you right now at this very moment and that’s a fearful place to be.
How then is it that a sinful man like me or like you, a sinful man or woman, boy or girl who is unjust before the infinitely holy God can come to be viewed by God as just and righteous in His sight? The biblical answer is only through a saving union with the just one, the righteous one, Jesus Christ our Lord. The scriptures present Christ as the second or last Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed. Adam, our original covenant head and representative, he failed to keep the creation covenant, the covenant of works. He failed to keep the covenant of works by failing to perfectly obey God during his probation in the Garden of Eden and as a result, he and all of those whom he represented became covenant breakers. In Adam, you and I are covenant breakers.
We’re covenant breakers from conception. We are involved in the fall of Adam from the moment of our conception. We are conceived and born in sin. God created us in His image. He didn’t create us sinful but we became sinful because of our connection to Adam, our covenant, our original covenant head and representative. Adam broke the covenant and we are covenant breakers in him but the good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the last Adam who is also under the covenant of works, perfectly obeyed God throughout his entire life. Jesus never once sinned. That is why he is described as the righteous one. He is the sinless one, the just one. He obeyed God’s holy law perfectly with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength all of the time. Our Lord Jesus did this as the covenant head and representative of all those whom the Father has given unto Him, namely the elect.
Because of His divine nature and because of His perfect obedience to the law, Jesus was the only one who was qualified to be the sinless high priest of His people who would offer a perfect sacrifice of atonement as the substitute and sin bearer in the place of God’s elect. Beloved in Christ, praise be to God, praise be to God that Jesus suffered in our place. Praise be to God that our Lord for us on the cross. He suffered the punishment for sin that we deserve to have suffered. By His life of perfect obedience to God’s law, Jesus merited for us that perfect everlasting righteousness that we need to stand justified before the infinitely holy God. And through faith in Jesus Christ, we are clothed in His perfect righteousness and declared to be just in the courtroom of heaven.
God declares us, we who are in and of ourselves and in Adam unrighteous, He declares us to be righteous in His sight. Not because of our own righteousness, for we have none, but because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, credited to us and received by faith, by trust alone in Christ. This is what the Bible means when it talks about justification by faith. But in order for us to be justified in the sight of God, it was not only necessary for Jesus to live for us, to earn a perfect righteousness for us by His perfect obedience to God’s holy law, it was also necessary for Him to pay the just penalty for our violations of God’s holy law. The law requires and declares a curse upon those who do not perfectly obey it.
Let’s look for example at Galatians 3. Let me read briefly Galatians chapter 3 verses 10 through 14 where the Apostle Paul lays this out very clearly. It says this in Galatians chapter 3 beginning at verse 10, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse for it is written, this is a quote from Deuteronomy, First be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. You want to be saved by good works, you’ve got to be perfect. You’ve got to keep it all, it’s all or nothing. Verse 11, now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. By becoming a curse for us, in other words he died the righteous for the unrighteous, the just for the unjust. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. But if God the Father has chosen us to belong to his son Jesus Christ, then we have been delivered by Christ from the curse of the law. You’re no longer under the curse. You’re no longer, God no longer views you as being under his wrath and curse. Yes, we as believers can fall under the fatherly discipline of our heavenly Father through backsliding and sin. God loves us enough not to allow us to continue on in sin and he will discipline his children.
But that discipline is not a sign of holy wrath and anger but a sign of love. My friends, how did Christ deliver us from the curse of the law? He did so by his atoning sacrifice of himself on the cross of Calvary. When he died on the cross he suffered the righteous for the unrighteous, taking upon himself our sin burden as our sin bearer and substitute. He died to pay the penalty for our sins and praise be to God, he paid our sin debt in full. It is finished. It is finished. Pound that into your consciousness. Let that be pounded into your head. The work is finished. Your sins have been atoned for, brother, sister and Christ. Dear listener, do you trust him as your sin bearer, your substitute, your savior? Trust in him tonight by the grace of God may he call you to himself.
So Christ suffered once for sins. He offered a fully sufficient infinitely valuable atonement. He died once and for all and forever. The righteous for the unrighteous. Why did he do so? This brings me to my final point. Christ suffered that he might bring us to God. This is the language of reconciliation. Our sin has separated us from our God, but Christ by his atoning work brings us back to the Father’s favor. Dear ones, we have seen from the scriptures that we are sinners. We have fallen short. We are covenant breakers, unjust men and women who inherit the curses of the covenant of works in Adam. As a result of our fallen condition, we find ourselves alienated from God, separated from his favor under his righteous wrath and curse. But if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, my friend, then God through Christ has brought you back.
He has brought you back into a right relationship with himself. And that is the reality for you, dear believer, no matter how you may feel. Don’t base your faith on your ever-changing moods or feelings. We all wrestle in this fallen sin-cursed world. Sometimes we wrestle with depression. Some of God’s children wrestle with depression or they have a hypersensitive conscience and they suffer doubts about their standing before God. If you face those kinds of stresses and those kinds of issues, realize that your standing before God does not depend on how you feel. It doesn’t depend on your psychology. It depends on Jesus Christ, his objective outside of you work that he did for you in your place and in your stead, dying as your sin-bearer, the righteous for the unrighteous. And even on your worst days, that is true.
Believe the good news. The God-man Jesus Christ brings about reconciliation between the holy God and sinful man. As the end of verse 18 tells us, even though our Lord was put to death in the flesh, he was made alive in the Spirit. Or as the NIV translates it, he was made alive by the Spirit, meaning by the Holy Spirit. And there’s different ways of understanding this language here of this contrast between in the flesh and in the Spirit. This could perhaps mean that Christ was put to death in the visible physical realm but was raised bodily from the dead in his resurrection body that is adapted to and capable of living in the invisible spiritual heavenly realm. Or perhaps it points to the Holy Spirit’s agency in physically and bodily raising our Lord from the dead.
But either way, this language points to our Lord’s resurrection victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil. Christ’s resurrection proves that the Father has accepted the sacrifice of his Son. Jesus paid the penalty when he was giving up the ghost on the cross. He said, it is finished. It is finished. And his resurrection proves that it is indeed finished and the Father has accepted his finished work. Our Lord’s physical bodily resurrection from the dead is confirmation and proof that God the Father has accepted our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross for our sins. Isn’t that good news? Praise be to God. Dear ones, Christ our Lord suffered that he might bring us to God. If by the sovereign grace of God you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for your salvation from sin, then you can be assured that you have been reconciled to God by the death of his Son through the saving work of Christ.
Dear listener, once again I ask you, do you know this Christ? Have you personally trusted in him as your very own Lord and Savior? And if you have, are you seeking to walk after a new obedience, not in order to earn further favor with God. You’re already, if you’re in Christ, you’re already in the favor of God. You already enjoy all of the infinite favor of God that the Son of God enjoys because you are in the Son. But out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation, are you seeking to walk after a new obedience as an expression of thankfulness for God’s amazing gift of salvation in Christ. May God grant us the grace to trust him and also the grace to show our gratitude by walking after a new obedience. Let us pray. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that through the suffering and death of Christ, his atonement for our sins on the cross, not only have our sins been atoned for, but we have been reconciled to you and you have been reconciled to us in Christ.
We thank you Jesus that you suffered and died to bring us back to God the Father. That you brought us back into a right relationship and we thank you Heavenly Father that we can address you as a loving Heavenly Father. We pray Heavenly Father that these truths would indeed so impact our hearts and lives that they change and transform us into more faithful disciples of Jesus. We pray all of these things Heavenly Father in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Let’s close our time together by rising and we’ll sing hymn number 170, God in the gospel of his son, 170.
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