8. "It is better.... that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." (1 Peter 3:17, 1817For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. 18For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:17‑18).)
The force and meaning of this, when taken in connection with the few first verses of chapter iv., is very plain, "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." No one, indeed, but one understanding the mystery of the union of Christ and the church can comprehend such things; but to such the argument is weighty and simple; Christ died for you on account and by reason of your flesh, therefore you must count it a thing crucified, and to be crucified with Him. And thus we are reminded here of the gracious way in which our God has given us His sentence against, and full estimate of, our flesh, and that in such a way as to make His sentence necessarily the plea of every one that believes against the sins of the flesh. As connected with the death of the Lord, and the lesson thence to be derived by us, I shall here make no further remark; but as there are two parts of the context which have presented to many great difficulties, I would just make a remark or two, tending perhaps to throw some light upon the subject to many minds, and which seem to me connected with the meaning which, rightly or wrongly, I attach to the passages in question.
The argument, it will be observed, is especially addressed to the Jewish Christians (see the opening and course of the epistle), and at this part, from chapter 3:18 to chapter 4:7, turns upon the question of the effect of the knowledge of God's judgment upon a believer. This, to a Gentile mind, would have been comparatively a simple thing, requiring merely the enunciation of it. But to a Jewish mind the case was somewhat different, for it had before it, not only its own state as one that had been subjected to law, but likewise the case of the antediluvian world, concerning which it might raise a question, such as, whether the statement" of the principle was so universal as to include them. And this question would arise, not from captiousness necessarily, for he that knows God and His ways aright, knows the uniformity of the principles of His conduct. It is this, as it seems to me, which leads Paul into his argument in the epistle to the Romans, chapter 5:12-11; for he was ever careful, as we should be, to establish in the minds of those with whom he had to do, that God's ways were equal; and so he shows them there, that there having been no standard of right or wrong given to any body of people in the world, until the law came by Moses, did not at all touch the question of God's judgment as to man's real state. Until Moses, there had been no standard given in the world, and no God, present daily, to mark departure from this standard, and to bring it into present judgment for it; and after Moses this had been the case: nevertheless, though in the world there might be this difference, the prevalence of death from Adam to Moses, showed that God's estimate of them all was very much the same-all died.
In the same way Peter here seems to me to anticipate such thoughts arising, and in several of the verses in the context to be laboring to show that the principle he was stating was of universal applicability as to man. I should read and paraphrase it thus, " It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing." For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just One for the many unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: and then, lest a Jew should say, as it seems to me,-" well, we see the needs-be of such a testimony and estimate to one who has been under the law, but what of those as to whose sin God bore no such testimony in themselves, as He had by the law to us Jews: say, the antediluvians?" Peter adds, and by the which Spirit (the very same whereby Christ was quickened), He went and preached (by Noah) unto the spirits (now) in prison; which formerly were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, &c.