1st Peter Chapter 3 verse 22 Holy Bible

1st Peter 3 : 22 Bible Verse Songs

• Mighty Hand by Jon Thurlow

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 22. - Who is gone into heaven. The word here rendered "gone" is that used in ver. 19, "he went and preached (πορευθείς)" (comp. Ephesians 4:9, "Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?"). And is on the right hand of God (comp. Psalm 110:1; Romans 8:34; Colossians 3:1; Ephesians 1:20; Hebrews 1:3). It is better to suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing, for he who is the signal Example, who suffered, the Just for the unjust, is now exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high; and "is able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." Angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him. God "hath set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." All the angels of God, in the various grades of the heavenly hierarchy, are made subject to Christ. The words seem to include, especially when read in comparison with Colossians 2:15, the evil angels also; they are made subject against their will to Christ; they asked him once if he was come to torment them before the time. He can restrain their malice and save his people from their power.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(22) Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God.--This verse (which partakes of the character of a doxology) serves two purposes. First, it carries on the history of Jesus Christ. How carefully, in spite of what seem at first irrelevant digressions, St. Peter holds his threads. Christ's passion and death, activity among the dead, resurrection from among them, ascension into heaven, perpetual session in glory, follow one another in due order. The second purpose of the clause runs parallel to the first. St. Peter is teaching the entire conformity of the believer to the Lord. If the believer will but retain his good conscience, he may hope for a precisely similar experience. The Latin and several other good versions, together with several Latin Fathers, add a curious sentence after the words "on the right hand of God," which runs: swallowing up death, that we might be made heirs of eternal life; but there is no sufficient authority for the sentence. The first notion of being "on the right hand of God," taken, probably, from Psalm 110:1, seems to be that of occupying the highest post of honour possible, next after that of God--i.e., the Father--Himself It is not necessary here to consider what else may be implied in the phrase as to the conditions of our Lord's human existence; but when we compare St. Paul's statement, in Ephesians 4:10, about His now "filling all things," we feel that these pictorial words, such as "heaven" and "right hand of God," are intended to convey the notion that His humanity is now entirely without conditions, though still retaining all that is truly essential to humanity. It may be observed that, assuming (as even most sceptical critics do) the genuineness of this Epistle, we have here at first hand the deliberate evidence of one who had been perfectly familiar with Jesus Christ as man with man. By what stretch of imagination can we suppose that such a person could ever have invented, or have accepted from others this mode of speaking about his former Teacher, had he not been conscious of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as simply historical facts, of the same order as the fact of His death?Angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.--There can be no doubt that this whole verse is coloured by recollection of the circular letter which St. Paul had sent to the Churches of Asia, which we call the Epistle to the Ephesians. Perhaps the heresy which St. Paul lamented in that Epistle may still have lingered in existence, in cabalistic Jewish circles, among those same Churches when St. Peter thus wrote to them. He may, for the moment, be glancing away from his faint-hearted Hebrew brethren, who, in fear of persecution, were slinking back into Judaism, and turning rather to those Gnosticising Jews who began to abound in Asia, who made "genealogies" of aeons, and gave Christ a place among them. In favour of such an opinion one might appeal to the vivid picture of licentiousness in the next chapter, and the development of the same, manifestly under Gnostic influence, in the Second Epistle and in the Apocalypse. From the expression "being made subject," or, literally, having been subdued (or, subjected) "we may infer that St. Peter meant evil spirits, this being a crowning triumph of Christ, and not only a mark of His exaltation. We need not think that St. Peter, any more than St. Paul, is distinctly teaching that there are such grades of spiritual beings; he is probably only borrowing the titles from the heretics glanced at, and saying that, whatever unseen powers there are, whatever they may be called, they are now cubdued to Christ.