There is a story from the battle of Waterloo that has stayed with me. On June 18^th, 1815, Wellington and his allied forces defeated Napoleon, and the news had to travel from the European continent all the way to London by ship across the English Channel and then by flag signals along the English coast. When the message arrived at Winchester Cathedral, the flagmen at the top began to spell it out letter by letter: Wellington Defeated Napoleon. But then fog rolled in off the hills and covered the flags before the message was complete. All London could read were those first two words: Wellington Defeated.

The city fell into mourning. They had received the beginning of a message without being able to see the rest of it. What looked, in that fog, like a catastrophic defeat was in truth the announcement of the greatest military victory in a generation. The fog simply hid the full story from their sight.

Peter is writing to a scattered, suffering church living inside their own kind of fog. Real persecution, real loss, and real uncertainty about whether faithfulness to Jesus is going to cost them everything they have. It is in that fog, that it would be easy to look at a crucified Messiah and read only those first two words: Christ Defeated. Peter will not allow that. This text is his declaration that the full message has gone out. That the fog does not change what happened. That what looks like defeat on a Roman cross is in fact the most decisive victory in the history of creation. You can be anchored in that victory, Peter says. Not just on the good days, not just when you can see clearly, but even when the fog is thickest.

This is what Good Friday is about. Not grief for its own sake. Not a sentimental reflection on suffering, but the day we stand at the foot of the cross and let ourselves hear the full message. The compete sentence of victory that we must be anchored in. Christ defeated sin, death, and separation from God, forever, for everyone who will come to Him.  That is what Peter is after in this text, and it deserves to be handled carefully and fully.

Walking in Victory with Confidence

Peter structures his argument in 1 Peter 3:18 around three consecutive theological claims about what Christ’s suffering achieved. Each one of them answers a question about the human condition that nothing else in all of history has been able to answer. Peter begins: “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God.”

You have to understand what Peter is writing against. This church is suffering. They have already experienced loss, displacement, and social hostility for the name of Jesus, and Peter knows harder days are still ahead. A reasonable question for any of them to ask is, what good does it do us to follow a crucified Messiah? Peter’s answer is not to minimize the suffering. It is to show them that the suffering of Christ accomplished something so comprehensive, so final, and so sufficient that every other form of human defeat has been swallowed up inside it. He does that by unpacking three specific victories.

The first is Victory over Sin.

Peter opens with what he calls Christ’s suffering “for sins.” That two-word phrase is carrying enormous theological weight. It is not saying that Christ suffered because of sinin a vague or general sense. It is saying that Christ’s suffering was a specific transaction, a payment, offered on account of sin and applied directly against the debt that sin has run up against a holy God.

The greatest problem facing every person who has ever lived is not poverty, not illness, not mortality, or political oppression. It is sin. We tend to reduce sin down to behavior because behavior is what we can observe or even control (so we think). We think of sinning as the things we do wrong. The natural follow-up conclusion is that if sinning is what we do, then we can address our sin problem by doing better or something different. That logic is intuitive. It is also exactly what Peter is going to cut off at the root.

This matters for how we understand the cross. If the problem were only behavioral, then moral improvement would address it. But behavior is not the problem. It is the symptom. The whitewashed tomb in Matthew 23 looks clean from the outside. Walk around it. Study its exterior. You will not find a flaw in the paint. But inside, Jesus says, it is full of dead men’s bones. You can clean the outside of a tomb all day long without touching the reality of death within. Behavior modification polishes the exterior. It does not deal with what is inside.

But Christ did. “He suffered for sins once for all.” The phrase once for all, which appears also in Hebrews 9 and 10, is one of the most significant phrases in the New Testament. Hebrews 10:11 contrasts the Old Testament priesthood, where priests “stand day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins,” with Jesus, who “after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). The priests in the temple never sat down. There is a reason for that. The sacrificial work was never finished. Sacrifice after sacrifice, year after year, the blood of animals offered again and again, and none of it could permanently deal with sin. It could cover. It could point forward. It could not atone once for all.

But there was no chair in the temple for the priests because the work was never done. And then Jesus sat down. His sitting down is a theological statement. The work is finished. The sacrifice is sufficient. There is no more work to be done on the cross, no additional payment required, no supplementary offering that could add anything to what Christ accomplished. “It is finished,” He said in John 19:30. Tetelestai in Greek. Paid in full. Accomplished. Completed. This is a word that was stamped on commercial receipts in the first century world when a debt was settled. What Jesus cried from the cross was not a statement of defeat. It was a receipt. You cannot add to this. You cannot improve on it. You cannot make yourself a more worthy recipient of it by your moral effort. The victory over sin is complete, it is final, and it is offered freely to anyone who will receive it through faith in Christ.

Secondly, there is Victory over Death

Peter moves immediately from sin to its consequence. “The righteous for the unrighteous,” he writes. This is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and it is the theological core of Good Friday. Peter is not using the word substitution the way we use it in ordinary life. We think of substitutions as tolerating a lesser option when the preferred one is unavailable. The store is out of your brand, so you settle for the substitute. The substitute is acceptable, but it is not what you actually wanted. That is not what is happening at the cross. At the cross, the substitution runs in the opposite direction of what you would expect. The worthy one takes the place of the unworthy one and the innocent steps in for the guilty. Paul could not have stated it more plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus had no sin of His own to account for. He lived the perfect life that you and I cannot live and will never live. Every standard of God’s holy law, He met fully. There was no debt against His account. And He went to the cross and took yours.

Paul writes in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death.” Wages are earned. Death is what sin earns. It is the right and just consequence of rebellion against a holy God. Adam and Eve were told from the beginning that the day they sinned they would die. When they sinned, they died spiritually that day and began the process of dying physically. And every person who has descended from Adam has been born into that condition. Ephesians 2:1 describes it as being “dead in your trespasses and sins.” Not sick or wounded or struggling, but dead. You cannot fix dead with effort or sincerity. Dead requires something outside itself and that something must be life.  Jesus died the death that sin earns so that we could receive the life that His righteousness deserved. He, the Righteous One, took the place of the unrighteous. He bore the wages and absorbed the penalty. And because He bore it fully and finally, there is no penalty left for anyone who is in Him. Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”

This is what makes the resurrection mean what it means. Death could not hold the one who owed it nothing. He was raised because He had paid every debt sin and death had against humanity and walked out of the grave as the receipt, the proof that the transaction was accepted. Paul stands on all of this in 1 Corinthians 15:55 and says, “Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin. Sin has been dealt with. Therefore, death’s sting has been removed for everyone who is joined to Christ by faith.

Thirdly, Victory over Separation

Peter ends verse 18 with the purpose behind everything that has just been said: “that he might bring you to God.” These six words are the most important six words in the verse, because they tell you why the cross happened. Not just to demonstrate love, though it does. Not just to provide an example, though it does that too. The cross happened to accomplish a specific outcome, which is to bring sinful human beings back into the presence of a holy God.

When God created Adam and Eve, there was no barrier between them and their Creator. They walked with God in the garden in a relationship characterized by openness, intimacy, and unhindered communion. When sin entered through the fall, it did not simply corrupt behavior. It shattered the relationship. A chasm opened up between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity that no human effort, no religious system, and no amount of moral striving could bridge.

Think about the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. A bridge that had been crossing the Mississippi River since the 1960s suddenly gave way during rush hour, killing thirteen people. The investigation revealed that small metal gusset plates, the connective pieces holding the bridge structure together, had failed under load. The result was that what had been a crossing became a gap. There was no getting from one side to the other. And the solution was not for people on one side of the river to try harder to jump across. The solution required new engineering, new materials, and an entirely new structure built by someone with the capacity to span the distance. That is the picture of what happened between humanity and God after the fall. The chasm is real. It is not a metaphor. Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen.” The problem is not that God became mean or indifferent. The problem is that sin and holiness cannot coexist. God did not lower His holiness to accommodate our sin. He built the bridge Himself, at the cost of His own Son.

The moment Jesus breathed His last, Matthew 27:51 tells us that the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This was not a small curtain. Jewish historical sources tell us it was approximately sixty feet tall and several inches thick. It separated the outer courts, where ordinary people could go, from the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God dwelt. Only the High Priest could enter that inner sanctuary, only once a year, only with the blood of sacrifice. That curtain was the architectural expression of the separation between sinful humanity and a holy God.

God tore it from top to bottom, meaning from God’s direction, not from ours. No one climbed up and ripped it from below. God Himself tore the barrier. What that action declared is that the way is now open. The separation is gone. Anyone who comes through Christ can enter the presence of God directly, freely, and with full confidence. This is what the writer of Hebrews picks up in chapter 10: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus — he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh) — and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

Walking in Victory through Our Confession 

One of the most genuinely challenging passages in the New Testament sits in 1 Peter 3:19-20. Peter writes that Jesus, made alive in the Spirit, “went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared.” Martin Luther called this “a more obscure passage perhaps than any other in the New Testament,” and Luther was not someone easily stumped by a text. The theological debate over these two verses has continued across centuries of careful scholarship, with godly interpreters landing in different places. There are broadly three questions that scholars debate. Who are these “spirits in prison”? What exactly was proclaimed to them? And when did Jesus make this proclamation?

Some interpreters understand this to mean that between His death and resurrection, Jesus descended to the place of the dead and proclaimed either a second chance at salvation or a declaration of final judgment to those who had died in the days of Noah. Others take the text to mean that Jesus, speaking through Noah, preached to those people during Noah’s lifetime, and those who rejected that message are now the “spirits in prison” awaiting final judgment. Wayne Grudem has argued carefully for this latter interpretation, pointing to the parallel language Peter uses and the connection to 2 Peter 2:5, where Noah is described as “a preacher of righteousness.”

The second view fits the broader flow of the New Testament better. There is no clear teaching elsewhere in Scripture that a second opportunity for salvation is available after death. Hebrews 9:27 says plainly that “it is appointed for people to die once, and after this comes judgment.” If what Peter describes in verse 19 were a second-chance offer, it would stand alone against the weight of the rest of the New Testament’s teaching on death and judgment.

What Peter clearly does establish, regardless of where interpreters land on the debated details, is that the proclamation of Christ’s victory is not a quiet affair. Victory that is real is announced. And the announcement goes everywhere, to every authority and power and spiritual realm. This connects directly to verse 22, where Peter says that all “angels, authorities, and powers” are subject to Christ. There is no corner of creation, visible or invisible, where the victory of the cross has not reached.

Peter is very careful here. He says directly that baptism is “not the removal of dirt from the body.” He is ruling out any sacramental interpretation that would make the water itself the saving agent. The water does not clean the soul. The water cannot regenerate. Baptism saves in the sense that it is the “pledge of a good conscience toward God,” which means it is the outward, embodied declaration of an inward, real commitment to Christ. It is the public confession that you have died with Him and been raised with Him.

Paul ties this together in Romans 6:3-4: “Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.” Baptism is not what produces new life. It is what announces that new life has occurred. It is the public, visible statement that the invisible reality of union with Christ is real in this person’s life. The death they go under the water symbolizes Christ’s death, and the life they come up into is His resurrection life. Every baptism in the life of a church is a vivid, embodied proclamation of the gospel.

This is why baptism matters at Green Acres. Not because we are attached to a ritual. Baptism is the public declaration of the people of God that they belong to the victory that Christ won on Good Friday. Every person who steps into those waters is saying out loud, before God and before everyone watching, that they were once on the wrong side of the flood, but they have entered the ark, and His name is Jesus Christ.

Walking in Victory with Certainty

Peter closes the text in verse 1 Peter 3:22 with a declaration that is meant to settle the question once and for all. Jesus Christ “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.” The right hand of God in biblical imagery is the position of authority and rule. When someone is seated at the right hand of a king, they are not sitting there for rest or decoration. They are there to exercise authority on the king’s behalf. When Psalm 110:1 says, “The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool,'” this is a statement about dominion, not location. It is saying that the one at God’s right hand holds all power.

Ephesians 1:20-22 tells us that God “raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church.” Everything subject to His feet. Every ruler. Every authority. Every power. Every spiritual force. Every government. Every circumstance that feels like it is beyond your control or beyond any hope of redemption.

Peter wants the suffering church to understand what this means for their daily lives. The Romans who are persecuting them are subject to Christ. The rulers who are making their lives miserable are subject to Christ. The spiritual powers that are working against them are subject to Christ. And so whatever fog is rolling in around you, whatever the circumstances of your life look like right now, the victory that Christ won has not been reversed. His authority has not been diminished. His reign is not in jeopardy. He sat down because the work was finished, and He remains seated because the victory stands.

There is no authority of any government that exceeds His. There is no power of any disease or any tragedy or any loss that operates outside His sovereignty. There is no authority of Satan himself that is not fully subject to the one who went into the grave and came out the other side. Paul picks this up in Colossians 2:15, saying that on the cross Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.” The cross that looked like the defeat of Jesus was in fact the public humiliation of every power that has ever set itself against God. They thought they had won. They were wrong.

What Good Friday Requires of Us

The cross does not leave us unchanged. You cannot sit with the weight of what Peter is saying in this text and walk away unaffected. There are people reading this who have not yet stepped into the ark. You know the flood is real. You know your sin is real. You may have cleaned up the exterior considerably, and from the outside things may look respectable. But the problem was never the exterior. The problem is that apart from Christ, you are still on the wrong side of the flood, still separated from God, still bearing the wages that your sin has earned. The ark is available. Jesus Christ, crucified once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, is the provision God has made for everyone who will come to Him in repentance and faith. There is no sin too old, no life too far gone, no failure too shameful to be covered by what He accomplished on the cross. The door to the ark is open. It will not remain open forever.

For those who are already in Christ, Good Friday is not primarily a day for grief. It is a day for the deepest kind of gratitude, the kind that reshapes your whole orientation toward life. The barrier between you and God has been permanently removed. The debt against your account has been completely paid. The death you deserved has been borne by Another. The righteousness you could never earn has been given to you. The One who died for you is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for you, and all power in heaven and earth is under His feet.

That means the fog does not determine the outcome. Whatever you are walking through right now, whatever suffering or uncertainty or loss is pressing in around you, the full message has already gone out. Not Christ Defeated. The full sentence. The whole truth. Christ defeated sin, once for all. Christ defeated death by rising from the dead. Christ defeated the separation between you and God by tearing the curtain and bringing you to Himself. And Christ now reigns with all authority subject to Him, which means the victory you are anchored in is not a fragile or temporary thing. It will not fade. It will not be reversed. It will not crumble under the weight of your worst day.

It is finished.

Good Friday and Easter Services

We would love for you to be with us in person this weekend at Green Acres Baptist Church. Today, for Good Friday, we will gather at 6:00 PM to sit together at the foot of the cross and remember what this day cost and what it accomplished. Come and worship with us. Bring someone with you.

On Easter Sunday, we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ together at 8:00 AM, 9:30 AM, or 11:00 AM. Christ is risen, and we want to fill every seat in this house with people who need to hear the full message. The fog can lift this Sunday for someone sitting right next to you. Which brings us to the most important question we can ask you this week: Who is your ONE?

Who is the one person in your life who needs to hear that the curtain has been torn, that the debt has been paid, that the ark is still open? Who is the one friend, the one family member, the one coworker, the one neighbor, who has only ever read the incomplete message? Invite them. Text them today. Show up on Sunday together. Easter is one of the greatest opportunities of the entire year to bring someone into a room where they will hear the gospel proclaimed clearly and fully. Do not come alone. Think of your ONE, and bring them with you. We will see you this weekend!

You are loved and prayed for!

Michael Gossett