1 Peter 3.18 - Jesus Made Alive in Spirit
Because Christ also once for all concerning sins died [suffered] just in behalf of unjust, In order that he might introduce us [bring us near] to God, Being put to death, indeed, in flesh, But made alive [quickened] in spirit (1 Peter 3.18, Rotherham)
n my practice as a lawyer, there is always the danger of the proverbial smoking gun that completely upends my client’s case. Though I may be wearing the most expensive suit in town and have practiced my oratory to the point where even Cicero would be shamed, if my opponent carries in his briefcase a fact that cannot be denied, all of my efforts are much ado about nothing.
In a trial I had some years ago, my client was accused of business fraud. In preparation for trial, I spent long hours with my client discussing the facts of the case and even longer hours reviewing case documents and the expected testimony of several witnesses. In the week before trial, I even practiced the way I inflected questions to specific witnesses. Many of the witnesses against my client were going to be sweet, older women just a step below Mother Teresa.
The first day or so of the trial went extremely well for us. I was able to carefully step through the mines of the weeping women and the jury appeared to be giving my client the benefit of the doubt. That was until the prosecution called their final witness, a man named Bob. Despite all of the long hours I spent with my client preparing for trial, he never once told me about Bob. As he took the witness stand, I turned and asked my client, “Hey, why would they be calling him to the stand? What is it that he can say?” My client answered, “Honestly, I don’t know have a clue.”
After Bob settled in the chair and identified himself to the jury, the prosecutor came to the podium and asked, “How do you know the defendant?” Bob answered, “I worked for him for three years.” Upon hearing that, I turned back to my client and whispered to him, “You are going to jail.”
1 Peter 3.18 appears to stand as that smoking gun fact when it comes to the so-called Jesus born-again heresy. In researching 1 Peter 3.18, as usual I looked to all kinds of sources, books, sites, and preachers who preach that Jesus being reborn is insane heresy and none that I could find dealt with this verse. While its companion verse, 1 Timothy 3.16, has been translated with a theological slant towards a body-only crucifixion, it doesn’t appear that anyone has figured out how to apply that slant to “made alive in spirit.”
Greek
The difficult/easy thing (difficult for the pundits and easy for the rest of us) are the two lines:
Being put to death, indeed, in flesh, But made alive in spirit
The truth is, if Jesus’s crucifixion involved only his physical death on the cross, then Peter would have written something like this:
Being put to death, indeed, in flesh, but made alive in flesh
He didn’t write it that way. And because he didn’t write it that way, we, as believing Christians, have to deal with it; we cannot derive our ideas of God, Jesus, and the redemption narrative off of a few other scriptures and leave material facts such as this one blowing in the wind. A theology that ignores uncomfortable redemptive facts is no more than foolish religion.
In examining this verse closely, we see how “spirit” is written by Peter. “Spirit” doesn’t carry with it a definite article (in English the definite article would be “the”). E.W. Bullinger, in his work, Word Studies on the Holy Spirit, shows how the person of the Holy Ghost is always identified with the definite article in the Koine Greek. Since “spirit” in 1 Peter 3.18 doesn’t carry the article, the verse is speaking of Jesus’s own spirit and not the Holy Ghost.
Delving further, we see that Peter presents a stark picture with his use of the verb “made alive.” If you picked up an interlinear Bible, you’d see this:
ζωοποιηθεις δε πνευματι
made alive (having been made alive - Young) in spirit
In ζωοποιηθεις, there are a few things to see (you should be able to follow along even if you don’t know Greek). The first thing is that this verb is a compound verb which combines ζω for life (as in “I have come that they may have life”) and ποιη for “made” or “do.” When you combine them, they add up to “made alive.” But it is the last thing that puts you on the last seat on the roller coaster and that is the θε. θε is a suffix that tells us that whoever it is that is being made alive is a passive actor (i.e., instead of hitting the ball, he is being hit by the ball). θε also tells us that the “made alive” event happened at some point in the past. When you put it all together, you see that Jesus was made alive at one point in time in his spirit in the past.
And the roller coaster ride is this: If Jesus was made alive in his spirit at some point in time in the past, then he must have been “dead” in spirit at some point in the past. You can’t make something alive that is already alive.
Similar Scriptures
This reading and line of thought is consistent with the use of “made alive” in other scriptures:
who is father of us all (according as it hath been written — ‘A father of many nations I have set thee,’) before Him whom he did believe — God, who is quickening (ζῳοποιοῦντος) the dead, and is calling the things that be not as being. (Romans 4.17, Young’s Literal Translation)
In this verse, Paul refers to God as quickening or “making alive” the spiritually dead (notice that the verse cannot be speaking of the physically dead and compare that thought to 1 Peter 3.18).
So also it is written, “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving (ζῳοποιοῦν) spirit. (1 Corinthians 15.45, NASB)
In this verse, Paul states that Jesus has become a life-giving spirit. Again, life-giving has nothing to do with physical life, but everything to do with spiritual life.
And you, being dead through trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you I say, did he make alive together (συνεζωοποίησεν) with Him. (Colossians 2.13, ASV)
Here Paul uses the same word to describe our born-again experience as Peter uses for Jesus in 1 Peter 3.18 (the prefix συν means “together” or “with”).
As E.W. Kenyon writes of 1 Peter 3.18:
Being made alive in spirit means He was re-created. He was the first-born from the dead. He was the first person ever created. He became the Head, right there and then, of a new creation.
1 Peter 3.18 is the reason why Jesus is referred to as the “firstfruits of the new creation.” By being “made alive,” he became the prototype for the new creation of born-again believers - the company of Christ in you, the hope of glory - and we are joint-heirs of this new life with him.