Day 2389 – OUR STRANGE LIFE – FOCUSING FULLY ON JESUS CHRIST – 1 PETER 3:18-22

Welcome to Day 2389 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Day 2389 – OUR STRANGE LIFE – FOCUSING FULLY ON JESUS CHRIST 1 PETER 3:8-17 – Daily Wisdom Putnam Church Message – 05/26/2024 Our Strange Life – Focusing Fully on Jesus Christ 1 Peter 3:18-22 Last week, we moved forward with our overall submission theme as we learned how to have A Righteous Life and a Ready Defense utilizing the nine maturity checkpoints of our Christian faith. Today, we switch the focus of why we,| as Christ Followers,| may suffer for our faith to the One who suffered all for us in a message titled, Focusing Fully on Jesus Christ. Today’s passage is 1 Peter 3:18-22, on page 1890 of your Pew Bibles.  18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive,[d] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. This passage of 1 Peter 3:18-22 is one of the most challenging passages to translate and interpret. Let’s look at this passage, focusing on its context to help us better grasp its content. — 3:18 — This section begins in the middle of a paragraph, a larger unit of Peter’s thought and argument. In the previous section, Peter referred to the believer’s appropriate response to unjust suffering (3:14-17). Believers who conduct their lives virtuously (3:8-12) sometimes incur unfair treatment as a result (3:14). Peter makes his point clear in 3:17: Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong! At this point in the paragraph, Peter turns our attention to Christ, who exemplified unjust punishment. In 3:18-22, Christ alone is the focus of our attention. Peter outlines in summary fashion the significant movements of Christ from His suffering and death on our behalf (3:18) to His resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God (3:21-22). Sandwiched between the familiar recounting of Christ’s death and resurrection, we find a few brief statements about what Christ did amid His descent (3:19-20) and how we publicly associate ourselves with Christ’s death and resurrection...