Question: 1 Peter 3:18-20 What is the meaning? Did Christ preach after death to the Old Testament saints?
Answer: To be understood, this verse must be taken with what goes before. Christ was put to death in flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient as they at one time were when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved through water; which figure also doth now save you, &c. Just as we read in 1 Peter 1:10-12 of Christ’s Spirit in the prophets testifying, so here we learn that His Spirit (i.e. in Noah) preached. Those who heard were disobedient then, and their spirits are in prison now. Christ’s Spirit by Noah went and preached to them when they were living men, before the Deluge came; but they rejected the Word, and now consequently their spirits await the judgment at the resurrection of the unjust. The collocation of the Greek (τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν) is decisive, that the true connection is not with the preaching, but between the spirits and prison. They were sinners disobedient to the message, not saints comforted. The preaching was on earth, where the unbelieving rejection was; and because of it their spirits are now imprisoned (the very opposite of paradise) till judgment come.