Christ the Victor

1 Peter 3:18-22 | Sermon Resources | 26 January 2025

Sermon Summary

In times of trials and temptations, fears and doubts can begin to fill our minds.  We can sometimes feel alone, abandoned, and certain of coming defeat.  In our passage this week, the apostle Peter reminds a suffering church that they have a savior who stands in victory over all these things.

Discussion Questions

  1. How do you tend to respond in times of trial and temptation?  In what ways can you fall into a defeatist attitude? 
  2. How might this passage encourage the believer who feels like giving up?
  3. How might Peter’s original audience have been encouraged (or challenged) by the truths presented in this passage? 
  4. Why do you think Peter specifically says Jesus suffered “once” for sins (v.18)?  What are the implications of Jesus having only suffered once?
  5. What significant gospel truths do we learn from the phrase “the righteous for the unrighteous” (v.18)?  What does this tell us about what Jesus did for us?
  6. What does Peter mean when he says, “that he might bring us to God” (v.18)? 
  7. What do you make of the spirits in prison to whom Jesus went and preached?  What does this mean?
  8. What are some principles we should keep in mind when trying to understand difficult passages of Scripture?
  9. How does the connection between Noah’s ark and baptism deepen your understanding of salvation?
  10. What is your biggest takeaway from our study of this passage?

Quotes

“A wonderful text is this, and a more obscure passage perhaps than any other in the New Testament, so that I do not know for a certainty just what Peter means.”  – Martin Luther

“Of course any contemporary observer who saw Christ die would have listened with astonished incredulity to the claim that the Crucified was a Conqueror. Had he not been rejected by his own nation, betrayed, denied and deserted by his own disciples, and executed by authority of the Roman procurator? Look at him there, spread-eagled and skewed on his cross, robbed of all freedom of movement, strung up with nails or ropes or both, pinned there and powerless. It appears to be total defeat. If there is a victory, it is the victory of pride, prejudice, jealousy, hatred, cowardice and brutality. Yet the Christian claim is that the reality is the opposite of the appearance. What looks like (and indeed was) the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, he was himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, he was himself crushing the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which he rules the world.” –John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.227-228

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