Chapter 23

The Petrine Epistles — Preaching to the Dead and the Patience That Means Salvation

Introduction

Imagine a man drowning at sea. He has been under the waves for what feels like an eternity. His lungs burn. His arms have given out. And just before the darkness closes in, a hand reaches down through the water and grabs him. Not a hand thrown carelessly in his direction. Not a hand extended and then withdrawn when he fails to reach it quickly enough. A hand that comes to him—that plunges beneath the surface, finds him in the deep, and pulls him up.

That image captures something essential about what we find in the letters of Peter. Of all the New Testament writers, Peter gives us the most startling and direct statements about God’s willingness to pursue people even beyond the boundary of death itself. Christ preaches to the dead. The gospel is proclaimed to those already in the grave. God’s patience holds back the final curtain because He is unwilling—genuinely, passionately unwilling—for any to perish. And that patience, Peter tells us, does not merely offer the possibility of salvation. It means salvation.¹

If you have been following the argument of this book, you already believe in the postmortem opportunity. You already believe that a just and loving God would not condemn the billions of people who never heard the name of Jesus through no fault of their own. You already believe that Christ’s saving work extends beyond the grave. The question before us in this chapter is simple: how far does that saving work extend? Does God’s patience eventually reach a hard limit—a deadline after which He stops pursuing, stops caring, stops saving? Or does Peter’s remarkable testimony point us toward something bigger—a patience that never gives up, a gospel that reaches every ear, a love that truly will not let any soul be lost?

Peter is an especially important voice on this question. He knew Jesus personally. He walked with Him, ate with Him, denied Him, and was restored by Him. He experienced firsthand the terrifying, relentless, pursuing love of a Savior who would not let him go even after his worst failure. When Peter writes about God’s patience and God’s willingness to preach to the dead, he is not theorizing from a distance. He is writing as a man who was himself pulled back from the edge by a God who refused to give up on him. That personal experience colors everything Peter says about the scope of God’s saving work.

I believe it does. And I want to show you why.

We are going to walk carefully through four key texts: 1 Peter 3:18–20, 1 Peter 4:6, 2 Peter 3:9, and 2 Peter 3:15. Together, they form one of the most powerful witnesses in the entire New Testament to the hope that God will ultimately restore every person He has ever made. Along the way, we will deal honestly with the debates about these passages—and there are real debates, as you’ll see. But I believe that when you look at the full picture Peter paints, you will find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Peter’s God is a God who never stops reaching into the deep to find the drowning.²

The Positive Case for Universal Restoration

Christ Preached to the Spirits in Prison — 1 Peter 3:18–20

Here is the passage in full:

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.” (1 Peter 3:18–20, NIV)

I need to be upfront with you: this is one of the most debated passages in the entire New Testament. Scholars have argued for centuries over who the “spirits in prison” are, what Christ “proclaimed” to them, and when this proclamation happened. One commentator called it “perhaps the most difficult passage in all of the New Testament epistles.”³ So we need to take our time here. Let me walk you through the main interpretations and show you why the one that best fits the text points powerfully toward universal restoration.

There are four main ways scholars have read this passage.⁴

The first interpretation says that Christ, “in spirit,” preached through Noah to the people of Noah’s day while they were still alive. On this reading, the “spirits in prison” are people who are now spirits in prison but were alive on earth when the preaching happened. This was Augustine’s view, and in more recent times it was championed by Wayne Grudem.⁵ The idea is that Christ’s Spirit was working through Noah as he warned people about the coming flood.

The second interpretation says that after His death, Christ went and preached to the spirits of dead humans in Hades—specifically those who had been disobedient in Noah’s time—offering them a genuine chance to respond to the gospel. This was the dominant view in the early church and has been held by a wide range of scholars throughout history.⁶

The third says Christ preached to sinful angels—the “sons of God” from Genesis 6:1–4—who had been imprisoned in a place of punishment. On this reading, the proclamation is not an offer of salvation but a declaration of victory and judgment. This view is probably the most popular among contemporary commentators, largely due to the influence of W. J. Dalton and E. G. Selwyn.⁷

The fourth, a Roman Catholic view, says Christ went to release repentant souls from a kind of purgatory—people who had turned to God at the last moment before drowning in the flood.⁸

Now, which of these does the text itself best support? I want to make the case that the second interpretation—Christ preaching to dead human beings in Hades—is the most natural reading. Here is why.

First, look at the structure of the passage. James Beilby has shown that 1 Peter 3:18–22 follows a well-known early Christian doctrinal formula: crucifixion, death, descent, resurrection, and ascension.⁹ Verse 18 gives us the crucifixion and death: “He was put to death in the body.” Verses 19–20 give us the descent: “He went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.” Verse 21 gives us the resurrection: “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And verse 22 gives us the ascension: “who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand.” When you see this pattern, the “going” in verse 19 falls naturally between death and resurrection. It describes what Christ did after He died and before He rose. The 19th-century scholar J. B. MacCulloch put it bluntly: “No other interpretation than that of the work of the discarnate Spirit of Christ in Hades seems natural and self-evident here.”¹⁰

Second, the word Peter uses for “preached” (Greek: ekēryxen, from the verb kēryssō) is important. In the New Testament and in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint), this word is consistently used for evangelistic preaching—the proclamation of good news, not a message of doom.¹¹ Thomas Schreiner, who does not hold the postmortem interpretation, conceded that the word’s normal usage is “the greatest difficulty” for those who argue Christ was merely announcing condemnation to fallen angels.¹² If Peter had meant a message of judgment, he had perfectly good Greek words available to him—words like katakrima (condemnation) or krisis (judgment). He chose the word for preaching the good news.¹³

Third, the reference to the “spirits” being those who “disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah” makes far more sense as a reference to human beings than to angels. The Genesis flood narrative is clear: it was human wickedness that provoked God’s judgment. Genesis 6:5–13 repeatedly identifies human sin as the cause. God said He was sorry He had made man—not angels.¹⁴ Furthermore, notice the phrase “when God waited patiently.” Why mention God’s patience unless He was waiting for someone to repent? The Old and New Testaments never describe God patiently waiting for fallen angels to repent. But God waiting patiently for human beings to turn from their wickedness? That is a theme we see over and over in Scripture—and Peter himself returns to it in his second letter, where he tells us God is “patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish” (2 Pet. 3:9).¹⁵

Fourth, while it is true that the word “spirits” (pneumasin) is often used of angelic beings, it is not always so used. Hebrews 12:23 uses the same word to describe the “spirits of righteous people made perfect”—clearly referring to human beings. Grudem himself identified at least ten other places where the word refers to humans.¹⁶ Since the people Peter is describing are dead, it makes perfect sense that he would call them “spirits.” That is what dead humans are in the intermediate state—disembodied spirits awaiting the resurrection.

Fifth, if Christ was proclaiming condemnation to already-imprisoned angels, why would He bother? As Beilby points out, it would seem far more relevant to make a proclamation to Satan, who was not imprisoned and whom Peter himself warns about two chapters later: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion” (1 Pet. 5:8).¹⁷ What purpose would a victory announcement serve to angels who were already locked up and already knew they were defeated?

Now here is the question that changes everything: Why would Christ preach to the dead if not to offer them salvation?

Think about it. If the proclamation was merely a declaration of doom—“You’re condemned and there’s nothing you can do about it”—that would be entirely inconsistent with everything we know about Jesus’ character and ministry. As Millard Erickson observed, while Jesus could speak harsh words to the Pharisees who were alive and had every opportunity to repent, the idea of Him “lording it over” people who were already imprisoned and helpless is deeply uncomfortable.¹⁸

And notice who these spirits are: the people who disobeyed in Noah’s day. These were the people whose wickedness was so extreme that God sent a worldwide flood to judge them. If there is any group you might expect God to write off permanently, it would be this one. Yet Peter tells us that Christ went to them. He sought out the worst of the worst. He preached to the very people whose rebellion had provoked the most catastrophic judgment in Old Testament history.

Do you see what that means? If God’s saving reach extends even to the generation of the flood, then who is beyond His reach? If Christ preaches to those who represent the extreme limit of human rebellion, then there is no one He will not pursue.

There is something profoundly important about Peter’s choice to mention Noah’s generation specifically. The people who drowned in the flood were not casual sinners. Genesis 6:5 says that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” That is the most extreme description of human depravity anywhere in the Old Testament. These were people whose corruption was so total, so pervasive, that God brought the most catastrophic judgment in history upon them. If there were ever a group of people you might expect God to abandon forever, it would be this one.

And yet Christ went to them.

Not to the people who had lived decent lives but missed the gospel through no fault of their own. Not to the righteous pagans who had followed their conscience as best they could. Christ went to the very worst of the worst—the people whose evil was “only evil all the time.” He went to the people who had provocation for the most devastating divine judgment in all of Scripture. And He preached to them.

If Christ pursued those people, the universalist asks, on what possible basis would He stop pursuing anyone else? If the generation of the flood is not beyond the reach of God’s saving gospel, then who is? The logic moves in one direction only: toward universal scope.

The great 19th-century New Testament scholar Henry Alford captured this beautifully. After surveying all the possible interpretations, Alford concluded that Christ’s Spirit went to the place of departed spirits and preached salvation to the disembodied spirits of those who had refused God’s voice in Noah’s day. Then Alford asked the question that haunts every reader who takes this passage seriously: “Who shall place a limit to His power or will to communicate with any departed spirits of whatever character?” If Christ preached to the generation of the flood, Alford insisted, it would be “presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficacy.”¹⁹

That is precisely the point. The universalist does not read into this passage something that is not there. The universalist simply refuses to place a limit on what Peter has told us. Christ preaches to the dead—to the worst of the dead. And the purpose of preaching is always, everywhere in the New Testament, to bring people to saving faith.

The Gospel Was Proclaimed to the Dead — 1 Peter 4:6

If 1 Peter 3:18–20 is the earthquake, 1 Peter 4:6 is the aftershock that confirms what just happened. Here is the text:

“For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.” (1 Peter 4:6, NIV minus the insertion of “now”)

I need to point out something about the NIV translation right away. The NIV reads, “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.” That little word “now” is not in the original Greek. The NIV Study Bible admits this in a footnote, explaining that the word was added because the translators believe the Bible teaches elsewhere that there are no opportunities for salvation after death.²⁰ In other words, the translators inserted a word into the sacred text based on a theological assumption—the very theological assumption we are examining in this book. As Beilby rightly argues, this is an egregious case of imposing the translator’s theology onto the text. If they wanted to suggest a particular reading, they should have done so in a footnote, not by altering the words of Scripture.²¹

With the added “now” removed, the passage says exactly what it appears to say: the gospel was preached to the dead.

As with 1 Peter 3:18–20, there are competing interpretations. Some say “the dead” means people who are “spiritually dead”—alive on earth but dead in sin. Augustine held this view. But it has serious problems. The text says the gospel was preached “even to those who are dead.” That word “even” (Greek: kai) makes no sense if “the dead” means the spiritually dead, because spiritually dead people are exactly the people you would expect to receive the gospel. The word “even” signals something surprising, something that stretches beyond the expected.²² Furthermore, Peter never uses the term “dead” (nekrois) anywhere else to mean spiritual death. And just one verse earlier, in 4:5, he speaks of Christ being ready to “judge the living and the dead”—where “dead” clearly means physically dead.

Others say “the dead” means people who heard the gospel while alive but have since died. This is the “now dead” reading that the NIV tries to support. But David Horrell has argued persuasively that this interpretation does not fit the immediate context.²³ Peter is talking about people who heap abuse on Christians for refusing to join them in riotous living, and he reminds these persecutors that they “will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (4:5). Then, in the very next verse, he explains why: “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are dead.” Since “the living and the dead” in verse 5 is a general reference to all people, we should expect “the dead” in verse 6 to carry the same general meaning—those who are physically dead, period. Not a narrow subset of recently deceased Christians.²⁴

Moreover, it seems very unlikely that Peter would need to reassure his readers about the fate of deceased believers. There is no indication in 1 Peter that the readers doubted whether their dead fellow believers were saved. That kind of worry is what Paul addressed in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18—but projecting that same concern onto Peter’s audience, in a completely different context and situation, is a stretch.²⁵

The most natural reading—and the one that fits both the grammar and the context—is the straightforward one: the gospel was preached to people who are dead. Joel Green affirms that “the dead” in this verse are “dead members of the human family given Postmortem Opportunity to hear the good news.” F. W. Beare takes it even further: “the dead” are “all the dead from the beginning of time, all that are to stand before the judgement seat of Christ.”²⁶

But here is the detail that should stop every reader in their tracks. Look at the purpose Peter gives for this preaching: “so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.”

So that they might live.

The purpose of preaching the gospel to the dead is not that they might hear the bad news and then be destroyed. Not that they might have one final, hopeless encounter with a God who has already made up His mind. The purpose is that they might live—live in the spirit, live according to God.

The 19th-century scholar Frederic William Farrar, who was no radical but rather a respected Dean of Canterbury, put the matter as directly as anyone has. He noted that the plain meaning of 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6 is clear “to every unobscured and unsophisticated mind.” The attempts to explain it away, he said, “arise from that spirit of system which would fain be more orthodox than Scripture itself, and would exclude every ground of future hope from the revelation of a love too loving for hearts trained in bitter theologies.”²⁷

That is a remarkable sentence, and I want you to sit with it for a moment. Farrar is saying that the attempts to deny what Peter plainly teaches do not come from careful exegesis. They come from a theological system that has already decided what God is allowed to do after death—and then forces the text to comply.

The universalist simply reads Peter and takes him at his word. The gospel was preached to the dead. The purpose was that they might live. And the God who preaches to the dead is the same God who, as we are about to see, is not willing that any should perish.

The Connection Between 1 Peter 3 and 1 Peter 4

Before we move to 2 Peter, I want to highlight how these two passages reinforce each other. Some commentators try to disconnect 3:19 from 4:6, arguing that they describe completely different events. But even Beilby, who is careful not to overstate the connection, notes that both passages describe “a proclamation made by the crucified and risen Christ in a realm other than that of the world of living humanity.”²⁸ The parallels between the two passages are striking. In 3:18, Christ is put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit; in 4:6, the dead are judged in the flesh but live in the spirit. The pattern mirrors: flesh/body brings death and judgment; spirit brings life. The symmetry is not accidental.²⁹

And here is what the symmetry tells us: the same God who raised Christ from the dead is working to bring life from death in everyone who hears His gospel—even the dead. Christ’s death-to-life pattern becomes their death-to-life pattern. He is put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit; they are judged according to human standards in the flesh, but they live according to God in the spirit. His resurrection power is not limited to those who happen to hear the gospel before their hearts stop beating.

Now, if all this were the only evidence in Peter’s letters, it would already be a powerful witness. But Peter does not stop here. In his second letter, he gives us two more remarkable statements that take the argument further.

God Is Not Willing That Any Should Perish — 2 Peter 3:9

Second Peter was written in a very different context than 1 Peter. Peter’s readers are now dealing with scoffers who mock the promise of Christ’s return: “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4). Peter responds by explaining why there is a delay:

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

This verse is quoted so often that it can feel like well-worn ground. But I want you to read it slowly, as if for the first time, and notice what Peter is actually saying.

He is explaining a cosmic delay. The entire eschatological timetable—the second coming of Christ, the final judgment, the new heavens and new earth—is being held back. And the reason for the delay is God’s unwillingness for any to perish. God is literally rearranging the timetable of the universe because He does not want to lose a single person.

That is an extraordinary claim. Think about what it implies. If God is patient enough to delay the end of the world to give people more time, how can we say that His patience has a hard expiration date? If the reason for the delay is that God wants everyone to come to repentance, then what happens if some people die during the delay without repenting? Does God’s passionate unwillingness for them to perish simply evaporate the moment their hearts stop? Does the God who held back the apocalypse for their sake suddenly stop caring about them when they cross the threshold of death?³⁰

Let me state that more directly. You already believe in the postmortem opportunity. You already believe that God’s saving reach extends beyond death. You accept this precisely because you recognize that a God who loves everyone and desires everyone’s salvation would not let the accident of dying before hearing the gospel be the final word. If that is true—and I believe it is—then the logic of 2 Peter 3:9 extends naturally and powerfully toward universal restoration.

Here is the logic: God does not want any to perish. God is patient—so patient that He delays the entire eschatological timetable. And yet people continue to die without repenting. If God’s patience is limited to this life, then His patience fails every time someone dies unrepentant. The very thing He was trying to prevent—the perishing of someone He loves—happens over and over and over, millions of times, despite His unwillingness. But if God’s patience extends beyond death (and 1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:6 have just shown us that it does), then the logic changes completely. God’s patience is not a stopwatch that runs out. It is a reflection of His character—the character of a God who never gives up.

Now, you might say: “But the verse says God wants everyone to come to repentance. It does not say everyone will.” That is technically true. And I will address that objection in detail below. But let me point out something that is easy to miss. Peter uses the Greek word boulomai here—a word that expresses not a mere wish but a deliberate intention.³¹ This is not a God who casually hopes things work out. This is a God who has set His will against the perishing of any person He has ever made.

And the universalist simply asks: does God get what God wants?

Calvinists and Arminians have argued for centuries about how to handle these universal-sounding texts. Calvinists, committed to the doctrine that God only elects some individuals to salvation, have tried to argue that “not wanting anyone to perish” means “not wanting any of the elect to perish” or “not wanting any kinds of people to perish.”³² But that requires a strained reading of “anyone” and “everyone” that the text does not support. Peter says anyone. He says everyone. There are no qualifiers. Arminians take the text at face value—God genuinely wants all to be saved—but then say His desire can be permanently frustrated by human free will. The universalist agrees with the Arminian that God genuinely wants all to be saved, but also agrees with the Calvinist that God’s sovereign purposes are not ultimately thwarted. Put those two convictions together, and universal restoration follows with logical force.³³

The early Greek-speaking church understood this. Nobody before Augustine in the late fourth century saw anything other than a universal saving will in passages like 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Timothy 2:4.³⁴ The native speakers of the language Peter wrote in read this verse and concluded that God genuinely intends to save everyone. Should we not at least take that seriously?

There is one more thing I want to point out about this verse. Look at the way Peter frames the delay. He does not say, “God is patient because He wants to give the elect more time to be converted.” He does not say, “God is patient because the number of believers is not yet complete.” He says God is patient because He does not want anyone to perish. The scope of God’s concern is not a subset. It is not the elect. It is not believers. It is anyone. Every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live is encompassed by that word.

And notice what perishing means in context. Peter has just been talking about the flood in verses 5–6: the ancient world was destroyed by water. In verse 7, he says the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire. The perishing he has in mind is the kind of perishing that happened in the flood and that will happen in the coming judgment. Now hold that alongside 1 Peter 3:18–20: Christ went and preached to the very people who “perished” in the flood. God was unwilling for them to perish—and when they did perish, He still sent His Son to preach to them. The pattern could not be more clear. God’s unwillingness for anyone to perish is not limited by the boundary of death. It crosses that boundary. It preaches to the dead.

Our Lord’s Patience Means Salvation — 2 Peter 3:15

Now we come to what I consider one of the most overlooked verses in the entire eschatological debate. Just six verses after telling us that God is not willing for any to perish, Peter writes:

“Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.” (2 Peter 3:15)

Read that first clause again. “Our Lord’s patience means salvation.”

Peter does not say God’s patience offers salvation. He does not say it makes salvation possible. He does not say it gives people a chance at salvation. He says it means salvation. Patience is salvation. The patience achieves its goal.³⁵

The Greek word here is hēgeomai—“consider” or “regard.” Peter is telling his readers to consider, to understand, to recognize that the Lord’s patience is equivalent to salvation. It is not merely correlated with salvation or instrumental to salvation. It is salvation. Where God is patient, salvation happens.

And we have already been told, in verse 9, what the scope of that patience is: “not wanting any to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” If God’s patience is directed toward everyone, and if that patience means salvation, then the conclusion writes itself.

The author of Patristic Universalism made this connection with striking clarity. If God’s patience really means salvation, as Peter states, then it makes far more sense to believe that after we die, God would “patiently” work with us—by whatever means He deems necessary—to bring us back to Himself, rather than casting us off the moment we cross the threshold of death.³⁶ And he quoted Clement of Alexandria, one of the earliest and most brilliant Christian theologians: “If in this life there are so many ways for purification and repentance, how much more should there be after death! The purification of souls, when separated from the body, will be easier. We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life.”³⁷

There is another important detail in 2 Peter 3:15 that we should not miss. Peter says that “our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him” about these matters. And then, in the very next verse, Peter acknowledges that Paul’s letters “contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (3:16). If Scripture itself tells us that Scripture can be hard to understand, how do we handle that? With humility, certainly. But also with a willingness to follow the text wherever it leads—even when it leads to conclusions that surprise us.

And where does it lead? Peter has pointed us to Paul, and Paul is the author of Romans 5:18 (“just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people”), Romans 11:32 (“God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all”), 1 Corinthians 15:22 (“as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive”), and Philippians 2:10–11 (“at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”).³⁸ When Peter endorses Paul’s writings as Scripture and connects them to the theme of divine patience and salvation, he is reinforcing the very texts that form the heart of the universalist case.

The Flood, the Fire, and the New Creation — 2 Peter 3:5–13

There is one more thread in 2 Peter that deserves our attention. In the broader context of chapter 3, Peter draws an explicit parallel between the flood of Noah’s day and the coming judgment by fire:

“By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” (2 Peter 3:7)

The word “destruction” here (Greek: apōleias) sounds final. And it is certainly severe. But we need to notice what Peter says the fire leads to:

“But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13)

The fire is not the last word. The fire clears the ground for the new creation. It is not random destruction; it is purposeful purification that makes way for something glorious.

This fits perfectly with the pattern we have traced throughout this book. God’s judgment is real, severe, and terrifying. But it is never purposeless. The flood destroyed the old world—but out of the flood came a new beginning. The fire will consume the present order—but out of the fire comes a new heaven and a new earth “where righteousness dwells.” And if we read this through the lens of Peter’s own theology—a God who preaches to the dead, who is unwilling for any to perish, whose patience means salvation—then the “destruction of the ungodly” is not the annihilation of persons but the destruction of their ungodliness. The fire burns away the sin, not the sinner.³⁹

Remember the connection to Noah. In 1 Peter 3, Christ preaches to the dead who were disobedient in Noah’s day. In 2 Peter 3, Peter draws a parallel between Noah’s flood and the coming fire. The generation of the flood was judged—and Christ went to preach to them. The coming generation will be judged by fire—and Peter has told us that God is not willing for any of them to perish. The pattern is judgment followed by continued divine pursuit. The means change—water, then fire—but God’s purpose remains the same: salvation.⁴⁰

Sodom in 2 Peter — Judgment That Does Not Have the Last Word

One more passage in 2 Peter deserves attention. In chapter 2, Peter uses several examples of divine judgment—the rebellious angels, the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah:

“If he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…” (2 Peter 2:6)

At first glance, this seems to support the idea of final, irrevocable destruction. Sodom was burned to ashes. And Peter says it is “an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.” Case closed?

Not so fast. As we explored in detail in Chapter 11, the story of Sodom does not end in Genesis. Ezekiel 16:53–55 contains an explicit, unambiguous divine promise: “I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters.” God names Sodom by name and promises restoration by name. If Sodom is truly “an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly,” then Ezekiel tells us what the full example looks like: devastating judgment, yes—but then restoration.⁴¹

The word Peter uses for “condemned to extinction” is katastrophē—our English word “catastrophe” comes from it. But notice: it describes what happened to the cities, not necessarily the eternal fate of their inhabitants. Sodom the city was destroyed. But the people of Sodom—according to Jesus Himself—will appear at the judgment (Matt. 10:15; 11:24). And Jesus said that it will be “more bearable” for them on the day of judgment than for the cities that rejected His disciples. Degrees of bearability only make sense if judgment is corrective—if how much you suffer is related to how much correction you need.⁴²

The Early Church Read Peter This Way

I want to make one more point before we turn to objections. The early church overwhelmingly understood the Petrine descent passages as teaching that Christ went to Hades and preached salvation to the dead. The historian Huidekoper documented that “in the second and third centuries, every branch and division of Christians, so far as their records enable us to judge, believed that Christ preached to the departed.”⁴³ Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Shepherd of Hermas, Hippolytus, and many others all affirmed that Christ descended to the realm of the dead and proclaimed the gospel there.⁴⁴

The Apostles’ Creed itself preserves this conviction: “He descended into hell.” The Descensus clause was included in the creed precisely because the early church believed Christ’s saving work extended to the dead. The creed does not say He went to announce condemnation. It does not say He went on a sightseeing tour. The early Christians understood this descent as a saving mission—Christ the conqueror entering the stronghold of death to set captives free.⁴⁵

The Petrine tradition in early Christian literature extends this further. In the Greek Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Peter, dating roughly from Origen’s time, Peter speaks of the cross as “the turning and repentance of humanity.” In Pseudo-Linus’s Martyrdom of Blessed Peter, produced in Rome in the fourth century, Peter declares that Jesus cured bodily ailments “that the souls of all might be saved.” And in section 20 of the same text, Peter announces that through the crucifixion, “the whole world was freed from the chains of eternal death.”⁴⁶

The early Christians who were closest to Peter’s own time and language heard in his letters a message of universal hope. The modern attempts to restrict Peter’s meaning are, as Farrar said, the products of “bitter theologies” that cannot bear the breadth of what Peter actually wrote.

I find this historical point deeply significant, and I want to make sure we do not glide past it. When the Apostles’ Creed was being formulated, the Christian community included the Descensus clause—“He descended into hell”—because they believed it. They believed it because they found it in 1 Peter 3 and elsewhere in the New Testament. They understood Christ’s descent as a saving mission, not a sightseeing tour. And they drew the conclusion that if Christ’s saving work extends beyond death, then death is not the final barrier to salvation that later theology made it out to be.

Clement of Alexandria, writing around AD 200, explicitly taught that Christ’s preaching in Hades was for the purpose of salvation. He argued that those who died before Christ’s coming were given the opportunity to respond to the gospel in the underworld. Origen, the most brilliant theologian of the third century, connected this to his broader theology of apokatastasis—universal restoration. The Petrine descent passages were, for Origen, one of the biblical pillars supporting the belief that God’s saving work would eventually reach every person who had ever lived.⁶¹

Even those church fathers who did not embrace full universalism typically affirmed that Christ’s descent was salvific in nature. The consensus of the first several centuries of Christian thought was that 1 Peter 3:18–20 teaches Christ preaching salvation to the dead. The attempt to domesticate this passage—to turn it into a mere victory announcement to fallen angels, or to relocate it to Noah’s time—is a modern development driven by theological systems that had not yet been invented when the earliest Christians read Peter’s words.

Addressing Common Objections

“1 Peter 3:18–20 May Refer to Christ’s Victory Proclamation, Not a Salvation Offer”

Someone might respond by saying that Christ’s “proclamation” in 1 Peter 3:19 was not a gospel offer but a victory announcement—Christ declaring His triumph over the powers of evil.

This is a serious objection and deserves a serious answer. I grant that the word kēryssō can sometimes mean a general proclamation rather than specifically an evangelistic sermon. But three things weigh heavily against limiting it to a mere victory announcement here.

First, as we have seen, 1 Peter 4:6 clarifies the nature of what was preached. Peter explicitly says that “the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, so that they might live.” The word in 4:6 is euangelizō—which means specifically to proclaim good news, to evangelize. If 4:6 is even loosely connected to 3:19—and the parallels between the two passages make it very difficult to disconnect them entirely—then the preaching in 3:19 has a salvific purpose.⁴⁷

Second, a victory announcement to already-imprisoned spirits serves no obvious purpose in Peter’s argument. Peter is encouraging persecuted Christians to endure suffering for doing good. How does it encourage them to know that Christ went and gloated over imprisoned angels? But if Christ went and preached salvation even to the worst sinners imaginable—the generation of the flood—that is deeply encouraging. It means that no suffering, no death, no failure can ultimately separate anyone from the reach of Christ’s saving work.⁴⁸

Third, the early church overwhelmingly read this passage as salvific, not merely as a victory lap. When the people closest to Peter’s time and language consistently understood the passage one way, we should at least give their reading serious weight.

“‘Might’ in 4:6 Implies Possibility, Not Certainty”

Someone might respond by saying that the subjunctive mood in 1 Peter 4:6—“so that they might live”—implies mere possibility, not certainty. The dead might live, or they might not.

But this misunderstands how the subjunctive works in Greek purpose clauses. The subjunctive with hina (“so that”) expresses purpose or intention, not mere possibility. When Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish” (John 3:16), the subjunctive does not mean God was unsure whether His plan would work. It describes God’s intention.⁴⁹

Likewise, “so that they might live in the spirit according to God” describes God’s purpose in preaching to the dead. God’s purposes are not frustrated. When God sets out to accomplish something, He accomplishes it (Isa. 46:10). The subjunctive tells us what God intends; the whole testimony of Scripture tells us that what God intends, God achieves.

“2 Peter 3:9 Teaches God’s Desire, Not a Guaranteed Outcome”

Someone might respond by saying that 2 Peter 3:9 tells us what God wants, not what God will accomplish. God wants everyone to come to repentance, but some people’s free will permanently prevents it.

I take this objection seriously because it touches on the deepest questions of theology—the relationship between God’s will and human freedom. Here is my response.

First, the universalist does not believe God overrides human freedom. What we believe is that God is powerful and patient enough to bring every person to genuine, willing repentance—not by forcing them, but by removing the bondage of sin that prevents a truly free choice. As we will explore more fully in Chapter 28, persistent rejection of God is a sign of bondage, not freedom. Jesus said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). A truly free choice—made with full knowledge and an unbound will—always tends toward the Good, because God is the Good.⁵⁰

Second, there is a significant theological question behind this objection: can God’s will be permanently frustrated? If God genuinely wills that none should perish and some do perish permanently, then God’s will has been defeated. The Calvinist recognizes this problem and resolves it by denying that God truly wills the salvation of all—which requires them to strain the plain meaning of texts like 2 Peter 3:9. The Arminian takes the text at face value but accepts that God’s will can be permanently frustrated. The universalist takes the text at face value and trusts that God’s will is ultimately accomplished. Which of these readings best honors both the text and the character of God?⁵¹

Third, notice the word Beilby highlighted: Peter uses boulomai here, which conveys not a mere wish but a deliberate intention. Marvin Vincent, commenting on the related word thelō as used in 1 Timothy 2:4, says it “indicates a determined purpose.” The author of The Triumph of Mercy made the same point: the Psalms declare that “whatever the LORD pleases he does, in heaven and on earth” (Ps. 135:6), using the same family of words. If what God wills, God does—and if God wills that none should perish—then none will ultimately perish.⁵²

“2 Peter 2:6 Uses Sodom as an Example of Permanent Destruction”

Someone might respond by saying that Peter’s reference to Sodom in 2 Peter 2:6 shows that he believed in permanent, irreversible destruction. Sodom was burned to ashes as “an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.”

But as we have already seen, the Sodom narrative in Scripture does not end with ashes. Ezekiel 16:53–55 promises the restoration of Sodom by name. And Jude 7—which uses Sodom as an “example of eternal fire” (aionios fire)—actually demonstrates that aionios fire is not fire that burns forever. The fire that destroyed Sodom is not still burning today. It accomplished its purpose and ceased. The CI advocate already agrees with this reading of Jude 7. The universalist simply carries the logic one step further: if the fire of Sodom was aionios (age-long, purposeful) rather than literally everlasting, and if Sodom’s restoration is promised, then the pattern is judgment-then-restoration, not judgment-then-nothing.⁵³

“If Christ’s Preaching to the Dead Offers Salvation, Why Persevere in This Life?”

Someone might respond by saying that if the dead are given an opportunity for salvation, this undermines the call to persevere through suffering in this life. Thomas Schreiner raised this objection: “It makes no sense contextually for Peter to be teaching that the wicked have a second chance in a letter in which he exhorted the righteous to persevere and to endure suffering.”⁵⁴

This is an important objection, but it rests on a misunderstanding. The postmortem opportunity is not a “second chance” in the sense of a cheap do-over that makes this life irrelevant. As Beilby has argued carefully, the postmortem opportunity theorist does not claim that decisions in this life are inconsequential.⁵⁵ Every day lived apart from Christ is a day of unnecessary suffering, broken relationships, and bondage to sin. The urgency of the gospel is not diminished by the postmortem opportunity—it is intensified. If you knew a prisoner would eventually be released, would you say his present suffering does not matter? Of course not. You would want him released now.

Moreover, this exact objection applies to the conditional immortality position with the postmortem opportunity—a position the reader already holds. If you believe God offers salvation after death and you do not think this undermines perseverance, then you have already answered Schreiner’s objection. The universalist is not introducing a new problem. We are simply extending a principle you have already accepted.⁵⁶

Think about it this way. A parent who tells their child, “If you don’t study, you’ll fail the exam,” is not undermined by the fact that they would also help their child recover if they did fail. The warning is genuine. The consequences are real. But the parent’s love does not have an expiration date. Similarly, Peter’s exhortations to persevere are genuine and urgent. Suffering for righteousness matters. Living faithfully matters. But the fact that God’s saving work extends beyond death does not make those exhortations meaningless—it makes them expressions of a God who cares about every moment of His children’s lives, not just the moment of their death.

In fact, I would argue that the universalist reading actually strengthens Peter’s argument for perseverance. Peter is writing to persecuted Christians who are wondering whether their suffering is worth it. His answer is not merely “Hold on, or you’ll be destroyed.” His answer is that they serve a God whose saving power is so vast, so unstoppable, that it reaches even into the realm of the dead. That same power is at work in their suffering right now. The God who preaches to dead sinners in Hades is surely powerful enough to sustain living saints in Asia Minor.

“The ‘Spirits in Prison’ Were a Unique Group—You Cannot Universalize This”

Someone might respond by saying that even if Christ did preach salvation to the spirits of Noah’s generation, that was a one-time event for a specific group. You cannot extrapolate from it a general postmortem opportunity for everyone, let alone universal salvation.

This is a fair question, and it was anticipated by the historian Millard Erickson, who argued that two steps must be taken: first, you must show that 1 Peter 3 teaches Christ preaching salvation to the dead; and second, you must show that this applies to all people who die, not just the generation of the flood.⁵⁷

I think both steps can be taken. The first step is what we have been building throughout this section. The second step comes from 1 Peter 4:6 itself, which broadens the scope significantly. Peter does not say the gospel was preached to the spirits who were disobedient in Noah’s day (that was 3:19). He says the gospel was preached to the dead—a far broader category. F. W. Beare understood this as “all the dead from the beginning of time.”⁵⁸ The shift from the specific (the generation of the flood in 3:19) to the general (the dead in 4:6) is exactly what we would expect if Peter is moving from a concrete example to a universal principle.

Beyond this, the theological logic is compelling. Why would God extend His saving grace to the generation of the flood—the worst sinners of the ancient world—and not extend it to everyone else? If Christ preaches to the most notorious rebels in human history, on what basis would He refuse to preach to a Hindu grandmother who never heard His name, or a child who died too young to understand the gospel? As Alford insisted, if Christ preached to the generation of the flood, “it would be presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficacy.”⁵⁹

Conclusion

Here is what the Petrine letters have given us.

In 1 Peter 3:18–20, Christ descended to the realm of the dead and preached to the spirits of the most notorious sinners in Old Testament history—the generation whose wickedness provoked the flood. The word Peter used for “preached” is the standard New Testament word for evangelistic proclamation. The structure of the passage follows the early creedal formula of death, descent, resurrection, and ascension. The most natural reading is that Christ went to the dead with a saving message.

In 1 Peter 4:6, the scope broadens: the gospel was preached to “the dead”—not just one specific group, but the dead as a category. And the purpose was not judgment alone but life: “so that they might live in the spirit according to God.”

In 2 Peter 3:9, God’s patience is the reason the entire eschatological timetable is being held back. He is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” The scope is universal—anyone, everyone—and the word Peter used for “wanting” expresses deliberate intention, not idle wishing.

In 2 Peter 3:15, Peter delivers the clincher: “Our Lord’s patience means salvation.” Not “might lead to salvation.” Not “gives an opportunity for salvation.” Means salvation. The patience achieves its aim.

When you put all four of these together, the picture is breathtaking. We have a God who preaches to the dead. A gospel that reaches beyond the grave. A divine patience aimed at every single person ever born. And a patience that means—achieves, accomplishes, produces—salvation.

If that is not the foundation for universal restoration, I do not know what would be.

In the chapters ahead, we will build on this foundation. In Chapter 24, we will turn to the book of Revelation and discover that even in the most judgment-heavy book of the Bible, the gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut, the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations, and the invitation to drink the water of life remains permanently open. In Chapters 27–29, we will develop the full case for the postmortem opportunity and the mechanism by which God’s love ultimately prevails for every person.

But for now, I want to leave you with the image of the drowning man. He is under the waves. His strength is gone. He cannot save himself. And a hand reaches down through the water—not thrown carelessly in his direction, not withdrawn when he fails to grab it fast enough. A hand that comes to him, in the deep, in the dark, in the place where all hope seems lost. That is the God Peter describes. That is the God who preaches to the dead. That is the God whose patience means salvation.

And if that hand reaches into the deepest waters for the worst sinners in the history of the world, then who is beyond its grasp?⁶⁰