1 Peter 3:19

in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,

In which ... The Spirit by which the preaching in view here was done was the blessed Holy Spirit, by whom and through whom all the preaching has been done throughout the ages. To make the spirit by which Christ preached, as here, to have been his human spirit, or anything else except the Holy Spirit, involves men in making distinctions that are simply not discernible in the word of God.

He went and preached ... Commentators with a theory to uphold make a big thing out of the went," encountering innumerable difficulties when they suppose that he went "while dead and buried"! As a matter of fact, "he went and preached" is just a Biblical way of saying he preached. "Such expressions (he went) are often redundant in Greek."[31] Herodotus often used such expressions as "he spoke, saying," or "he speaking, said," and we have the same kind of an expression in "he went and preached." "No particular stress should be laid on the clause he went."[32] Speaking of the preaching of the apostles themselves, Paul said that Christ "came and preached peace to you that were afar off" (Ephesians 2:17); but Christ preached to the Ephesians through human instruments, nevertheless it is said that he "came and preached" to them. Therefore, "If Christ is said by Paul to go and do, what he did by his apostles, Christ may with equal propriety be said by Peter to go and do what he did by Noah."[33]

Unto the spirits in prison ... The meaning of this is that the preaching mentioned in the previous verse was directed to living men and women on the earth at the time the preaching was done, but who at the time of Peter's mentioning this were "in prison," that is, in a deceased state, under the sentence of God like the angels who are cast down and reserved unto the day of judgment and destruction of the wicked. There is another possibility, namely, that the whole antediluvian world to whom the preaching was directed were said by Peter in this passage to have been "in prison" at the time of the preaching of Noah. If that is what he meant, then the figure harmonizes perfectly with Jesus' preaching to the citizens of Nazareth and others of that generation, referring to his message as "a proclamation of release to the captives," that is, the captives in sin (Luke 4:18). There is no Scriptural reason whatever for not referring to that whole generation which rejected the preaching of Noah as "the souls in prison"; however, Peter wrote, "spirits in prison"; and, for that reason, we must refer the words "spirits in prison" to their present status at the time of Peter's writing. They, like the fallen angels, were then "spirits in prison." Ages earlier, they were living men and women who rejected the preaching of Christ through Noah. Peter here spoke of them, by way of identification, as "spirits in prison"; but there is not a line in this passage which requires us to believe that Christ preached personally to those "spirits in prison" during the three days his body lay in the tomb! See Note 1 at end of the chapter.

It is clear then that the meaning attributed to "spirits in prison" turns altogether upon the fact of when the preaching was done. The next verse makes it certain that it was during the generation of Noah, a time when the "spirits" here mentioned were not "spirits" merely, but "souls"; therefore, "spirits in prison" is a reference to their status at the time Peter wrote.

[31] Ibid., p. 177.

[32] Ibid.

[33] James Macknight, op. cit., p. 480.