Jeremy L. Berg

Jesus, Peter, Paul and the rest of the New Testament understand humanity to be living in a spiritual tug-o-war match where good and evil invisible “angels, authorities, and powers” are each trying to pull humanity into its orbit. This theme of penetrates the Scriptures for the first Sunday of Lent (see previous post).

We have Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil who promises him all the kingdoms of the world if he will worship him instead of God. We have the aftermath of the Great Flood in Noah’s day which was brought on not just by human disobedience, but the wickedness of fallen angels who had sexual relations with human women producing the race of giant nephilim (see Gen. 6). The following passage from 1 Peter 3 taps into these themes as well and that is what I want to draw our attention to here:

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God….he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clean conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.”

1 Peter 3:18-22

Most church-goers in our postmodern Western society do not bring this same cosmic battle worldview into the pew with them, nor do they read the Bible and understand the gospel with an eye toward invisible “principalities and powers.” And the Father of Lies and his Deputies of Deception are laughing at our complete ignorance of their schemes. 

Christians need to wake up to the real spiritual battle plaguing our country. The Bible is very clear that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood”—that is, people of this or that political persuasion or party. The Bible says our battle is not against secularists, woke liberals, MAGA Republicans, cut throat capitalists, cultural Marxists, Joseph Biden or Donald Trump. Those are all “flesh and blood” enemies and Christians are clearly told that they are not the root of the problem. Rather, “Our battle is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). The “rulers” and “authorities” envisioned here are not human leaders, but spiritual powers at work in the unseen realm. 

Satan is the Great Deceiver and Father of lies, and he and his armies of rebel angels are having a field day sowing lies and discord and mistrust and prejudice in human institutions and political ideologies and media outlets and local churches and so on. They must get a thrill watching us turn on each other and demonize the “other side” as the enemy. The real Enemy laughs all the way to the bank—or to the next political rally, or NRA or Planned Parenthood convention, or news conference, or elder board meeting.

The real kicker is that those who are called to be holy dissidents and faithful resisters of “the wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:11), those commanded to “come out” of participation in corrupt systems of power (i.e., the Beast, Babylon, etc.), those called to be “woke to God” or “alert and of sober mind” (1 Pet 5:8) to the invisible forces trying to divide God’s people and pull them into the demonic power-games Jesus came to resist—are often found colluding with the powers, making idols of political figures, and demonizing the enemies Jesus commands his people to love. 

This week’s headline is the shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory celebration, and until we acknowledge the demonic element and deeper idolatry beneath the America’s gun problem, this darkness will grow ever darker until it swallows any hope of escape like a black hole. All of this to get us back to a strange text this First Sunday of Lent from 1 Peter 3:18-22.

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” We grasp the first point easily enough, that the good news that Christ has suffered for sins, taking our place and giving us access to God by his grace. But that’s where many us park the salvation bus: at an individual gospel of personal salvation from personal Sin. But here we must put the bus back into gear and drive deeper into the New Testament world and into the wilderness with Jesus to face down “the god of this age” and enemy of our soul.

“[Jesus] went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah.” The “spirits in prison” are the rebel spirits or fallen angels from Genesis 6. A wildly popular Jewish writing in the time of Jesus was 1 Enoch. This book describes all the  unholy shenanigans these rebel spirits were up to in the days before the flood. Peter tells us that Jesus, after his triumph of the Cross and Resurrection, went down to the abyss to announce judgment over these evil spirits. Oh, they will continue whimper and squirm and bite and  claw and cause general havoc down through the ages, but their final fate was sealed on the Cross. The question remains: Will Jesus’ followers resist their temptations and refuse to play by their rules as Jesus did? Or will we resist taking up our own cross and take up the more practical tool of the sword of political power instead?   

Peter then speaks of the flood that brought judgment on that old way of violence and rebellion as an image of Christian baptism. “And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you.” Our baptism is meant to drown the old ways of thinking—a putting to death the ways of Babylon and the Dragon and Caesar’s sword and Satan’s dangling of shiny things before our eager eyes. Peter knows that some people, like him, may need to be held under the water a few seconds longer in their baptism. Why? Because when Jesus told Peter about the Way of the Cross that is to replace the Way of the Sword for Jesus and his followers, Peter rejected it! “May it never be!” he said to Jesus.

This precipitated the harshest rebuke from Jesus in all the Gospels. “Get behind me Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s” (Matt 16:23). Peter may have grown up hearing tales of warrior angels in shining armer from 1 Enoch, just like our kids grow up on Marvel’s Avengers. It takes a great baptism flood to drown out that power-over mindset, and a slow gradual process to adopt a power-under kind of life following a Crucified King.

This passage ends not with the promise of forgiven Christians going up to Heaven, but of the exalted Christ enthroned in Heaven over the invisible powers that continue to play many of us for suckers today. “[Christ] has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.” The church in America needs spiritual eyesight to see this larger spiritual battle behind the headlines and beneath our worldly debates and challenges. We need to examine our allegiances and make sure we’re not unsuspecting pawns on the Kingdom of Darkness’s chessboard. A great place to start gaining an understanding of how the powers are at work in our politics today is reading Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophet Call to Follow Jesus as Dissident Disciples by Scot McKnight.

Finally, Peter throws one more big challenge before the church in America. He speaks of baptism as more than just washing us clean; it should set us on a road that should leads to “an appeal to God for a good conscience…” We hear less and less about a clear conscience these days. Our behavior is often driven more by external factors, than by an inner moral compass conformed to Kingdom values. I was raised on the old wisdom that said, “Always do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.” Cultivate a life of character and pursue a virtue ethics.

These days many, including Christians, have instead adopted a utilitarian-consequentialist ethic more focused on getting certain results, even if that means employing less than virtuous means or methods. This is especially true in the cut-throat tactics of culture war Christianity. “We’re under siege!” say some pastors. So out with the meek and peaceable Sermon on the Mount, and in with the Holy War scripture narratives from the Old Testament. Give us Joshua instead of Jesus. Give us Barabbas instead of the Prince of Peace. As Donald Trump, Jr. said to a room full of enthusiastic Evangelicals awhile back:

“We’ve been playing T-ball for half a century while they’re playing hardball and cheating. Right? We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference—I understand the mentality—but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.”

As this worldly logic goes, if we’re going to save our country, take America back for God, own the liberals, protect our children from the LGBT agenda, protect our freedoms, etc., then we need to get dirty and roll in the mud and hire a bully to fight for us, and so on. The problem with this ends-justify-the-means approach is that while we are fighting for desired political results for this earthly kingdom, we are forfeiting the soul of our witness and forsaking a clean conscience before King Jesus and His Kingdom. Like the well-meaning but Satan-inspired Peter, we’re out swinging a verbal sword at our political opponents, while Jesus is ordering us to put the sword away and take up our cross instead.

As I tell my students in nearly every class I teach: When I stand before God on Judgment Day, he will not ask me, “Did you Made America Great Again?” He will look into the depths of my soul (and the soul of my public witness) and ask, “Did you yield to my Spirit and try to be conformed to the Way of Christ?” Or, to echo Peter’s concern here: What did you spend your life “appealing to God for”? 

Has my life been an appeal to God for health and wealth?

Has my life been an appeal to God for success and fame?

Has my life been an appeal to God for comfort and safety? 

Has my life been an appeal to God for status and power? 

Has my life been an appeal to God to smite my enemies and bless my tribe?

Or, God-willing, has my life been an appeal to God for a clear conscience?

Let me conclude with some Scriptures about a “clean conscience” to meditate on as we continue our Lenten Journey.

Acts 23:1: “Paul looked intently at the Sanhedrin and said, ‘My brothers, I have conducted myself with a perfectly clear conscience before God to this day.’”

Acts 24:16: “….I always strive to keep my conscience clear before God and man.”

Heb 13:18: “Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a clear conscience, wishing to act rightly in every respect.”

1 Peter 3:16: “Keep your conscience clear, so that, whenever you are defamed, those who libel your way of life in Christ may be shamed.”

1 Tim 3:9: (All are called to hold) “fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.”

2 Tim 1:3: “I am grateful to God, Whom I worship with a clear conscience….”

1 John 3:21: “If our consciences have nothing to charge us with, we can be sure that God is with us.”