What is the meaning of 1 Peter 3:19,20? It says, “By whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison.” Who are the “spirits in prison,” and what did Jesus preach to them?

First Peter 3:18–20 states, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.”

Some have taken this passage to mean that the preincarnate Christ preached to fallen angels in the days of Noah, and that because they rejected His message, they are now in prison. Others have taken “spirits in prison” to mean the imprisoned souls of wicked humans who lived in the time of Noah. The first interpretation is doubtful on grammatical grounds; the second is doctrinally unsound, for the Bible does not teach the doctrine of the “immortality of the soul.”

The “spirits in prison” are undoubtedly fallen angels who are in some manner confined to certain boundaries, and whose disobedience was evident in the time of Noah, but it is doubtful that Christ’s proclamation to them occurred in the pre-Flood period.

The phrase “by the Spirit” is probably best rendered “in the spirit,” as in the Revised Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible. Christ died “in the flesh” and was resurrected “in the spirit.” The phrase “in the flesh” refers to His pre-resurrection state; the phrase “in the spirit” refers to His post-resurrection state. The words “by whom” are rendered “in which” in both the RSV and the NASB. The phrase refers to the state in which Christ “went and preached to the spirits in prison.”

Christ, then, died in the flesh and was made alive in the spirit, in which state (the resurrected state) He preached to the spirits. He did not preach a message of salvation to the spirits, as some have supposed. Rather, He “preached,” or proclaimed, His sovereign Lordship to them. Just a few verses later, Peter says that Christ “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities having been made subject to Him” (1 Peter 3:22). Notice that His resurrection to a new state of existence is associated with His authority over “angels and authorities.” It makes sense, then, that His proclamation to the fallen angels was made after He was resurrected.

The following paraphrase captures the essential meaning of 1 Peter 3:18–20: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death as a human being, He was brought to life in a transformed state of existence completely free of the limitations of mortal human life. In this new state of existence, the resurrected Lord proclaimed His sovereign Lordship to the spirits in confinement—the fallen angels whose disobedience was evident in the days of Noah.”

Christ proclaimed His Lordship to the confined spirits, just as He has since proclaimed His Lordship to many through the preaching of the gospel, and just as He will ultimately proclaim His Lordship to all creation.