Republished from pages 87-88 of the Bible Standard April 1882

“For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.” 1 Peter 4:6

This passage has been declared by the most learned expositors to be very hard to be understood. Macknight says it is “one of the darkest passages in the New Testament;” Doddridge, that it, “must be confessed to be extremely difficult;” Bloomfield, that “the sense is here obscure;” Dr. Adam Clarke, that “there are as many different translations of this verse and comments upon it, as there are translators and commentaries;” and Dr. John Brown, that  “it would serve little purpose to state the various attempts which interpreters have made to extort an opposite meaning out of these words. Their number, and the extravagance of some of them, clearly shows that this passage is hard to be understood.”

The latter writer merely gives what appears to him the probable meaning of the passage in the following paraphrase: “For this end was the gospel preached to you when spiritually dead, that, believing it, ye should abandon sin and follow holiness; and, having gained its object, the result has been that ye are persecuted in your external circumstances, your body, your reputation, your outward condition, by men; but you are happy in your mind, in all your spiritual relations and circumstances, in God” (Expository Discourses, First Peter, Vol. ii., p. 466).

The context, however, does not seem to us to favour the idea that the apostle’s reference was to those who had been “spiritually dead,” but to believers of the gospel who were bodily dead at the time he was writing. Such is the view given of the apostle’s meaning by John Panton Ham, in his Generations Gathered and Gathering,p. 127: “The gospel was preached in the lifetime of those who are now dead; and to them for this cause, namely, that although they must be judged in the flesh after the manner of men – that is, although they must experience the common lot of man, which is to die – yet that they might live according to God in the spirit that is, that they might, notwithstanding, be made alive again in a spiritual existence namely, resurrection-when Christ shall be ready to judge the quick and the dead.”

To the same effect writes the Rev. J. C. M’Causland, M.A. (On the Intermediate State, pp. 69,70): “There is not in these words the slightest ground for the notion which has been too rashly built upon them, that the “dead” here spoken of were preached to in the intermediate state. They were called “dead” by the apostle, because they were so at the time of his writing this epistle, but they were alive when the gospel was preached to them. There is, at least, nothing in the language inconsistent with this position, while the supposing them to have been dead, when preached to, contradicts the uniform testimony of the Word respecting the disembodied state, and therefore cannot be maintained. There is no difficulty connected with the explanation here proposed, as it agrees with the testimony of Scripture which the other views oppose, and has thus a fair claim on our assent. The meaning of the latter part of the passage seems to be, that they were, according to the penalty denounced against sin, subjected to death “in the flesh,” but should yet, according to the provision of God, in Christ, “live in the spirit,” i.e., in the spiritual body, just mentioned, in the former of which the believer is “judged” to temporal death, while in the latter he will be introduced to eternal life. In fact the natural life, of which they were deprived by death, is to be succeeded by the spiritual life of the resurrection.”

The application of the passage suggested by Mr. M’Causland, seems to me very probable; it agrees entirely with the whole scope of the context, and with the whole testimony of Scripture. Only I am more inclined to Dr. Brown’s understanding of the phrase “judged according to men in the flesh,” as being equal to “judged by men” – put to death by persecutors; and in like manner regard the phrase “live according to God in the spirit” as referring to the Divine agency by which they were to live again, though put to death. Just as the same apostle had said of his Lord: “Him ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up” (Acts ii. 23, 24).

But the force of the apostle’s argument is not materially affected, whether we understand him as referring to death by persecution, or death as the effect of God’s judgment against sin, as the common lot of the descendants of Adam. By referring to the preceding context the reader will perceive that the condition of the dead, between the time of their death and resurrection, is not the subject of his discourse; he is rather seeking to strengthen the flock God, amid the sore persecutions they had to bear for their Lord’s sake. He reminds them that suffering for well-doing was not peculiar to them; that the Christ Himself had suffered, even unto death; and therefore, as their Lord had suffered for them, they should be ready and willing to suffer for Him, no longer living according to the desires of the flesh, but according to the will of God. Viewed in this light, the language of verse 6 seems to amount to this: “Your sufferings are in no respect peculiar, for the gospel was also preached to, and received by, the disciples, who have already been subjected to death, who, although it was the will of God they should so suffer, yet that by submitting themselves to sufferings and death they should live again, according to the pleasure of God, when at the resurrection they are made “alive by the spirit.” Comfort this, like the assuring words of our Lord: “He who loseth his life for My sake shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Such, we think, is the most probable meaning of the apostle’s words; but, as W. G. Moncrieff observes in his work, Spirit: “Let the full force of the text be what it may, it teaches nothing about disembodied spirits, for surely it would require a most merciless torturing of the words, “live according to God in the spirit;”  to make them express this: “live according to God, as disembodied spirits, in the unseen world”” The translators seem to have viewed the language in a similar way as we have done, seeing they have rendered the Greek verb in the past tense: “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead.” According to the view taken by those who apply the words to a missionary effort in Hades, they would require to be: “For this cause is the gospel preached to them that are dead.” Perhaps such a rendering may yet be argued for; but it would be in strange contrast to such statements as: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” “The night cometh when no man can work.” A great deal of Scripture, indeed, would require to be rewritten before we could find any warrant there for the idea of the evangelizing of the dead.

But, after all, the apostle is speaking of dead persons, while Dr. Farrar and his school are thinking of persons still alive! Those unsaved ones who are supposed to be the subjects of evangelization in the unseen state are not thought to be dead, but more sensibly alive than when in the body. It is not they, but their bodies – the house in which they lodged for a while – which has crumbled to dust. As men throw aside a worn-out garment, so they, it is supposed have left their bodies behind them, as so many old clothes, and in the unseen world whither they have gone, have the gospel which they despised here, preached to them there with so much effect that all, or nearly all, shall be saved by it!

Why take a passage, which speaks of those who are dead, to sustain a theory regarding persons who are alive? In the Scriptures there are no two greater opposites than death and life; and never do we find the Scriptures speaking of a person as dead, while he is understood to be alive, whether the reference be to natural or moral life. The persons of whom Peter speaks are evidently regarded by him as having been once alive, and now dead. It is not of bodies, as such, he is writing, but of persons; and the Scriptures uniformly speak of the person as dying-“ Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” “Man returneth to his earth; in that day his thoughts perish.”

It is only by ignoring the testimony of Scripture, and substituting for it the conceptions of men, that the pleasing fancy of reformation between death and resurrection can be held. Hence we find its advocates speaking with contempt of  “an array of texts of Scripture,” and denouncing adherence to its natural and grammatical sense as “servile interpretation.” The day is at hand when it shall be seen, who is the wiser – he who takes God’s Word to mean what it says, and obeys it, or he who wrests the Scriptures, by making them conform to his own fancy, or treating them as old-world lore, which the march of intellect has left behind!

Notwithstanding our deep sense of the sincerity, ability, and learning of Dr. Farrar, and many others like-minded, we must oppose their dream of salvation in the unseen state, for the apostle of Christ assures us that “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.”