A popular theory of atonement portrays Christ’s death as a legal exchange: he died in our place suffering the punishment we deserved. In this model the just wrath of God was poured out on Christ at the cross in that he experienced the curse of death in our place. Within this juridical metaphor, Christ’s death is also pictured as a sacrifice that appeased God by removing sin and cleansing those who, in Christ, believe. At the heart of it, there is an exchange framed in juridical and sacrificial terms. This theory is generally known as penal substitutionary atonement, and many find it to be a distortion in that it portrays a God who can only forgive by satiating his wrath in the violent killing of his Son.^[1] Moreover, this model—especially in popularized versions—tends to disconnect Christ’s death from his resurrection. If the mechanism for salvation is primarily about trading places, Christ’s resurrection came only as a happy surprise since it seems like a non sequitur. Why didn’t he stay dead? While the juridical and sacrificial aspects of his death are integral to a biblical understanding of atonement, there is something else at the heart of Christ’s work—namely, his victory over death.

In this essay I attempt to demonstrate the congruity of juridical, sacrificial, and victorious aspects of the atonement in 1 Pet 3:18. I argue that the suffering of Christ in 3:18ab is both sacrificial and penal according to Peter’s interpretation of Isa 53 in 1 Pet 2:23c. I then offer a theological interpretation of 3:18de by considering Christ’s death in the flesh and resurrection by the Spirit in the broader metaphysical context of a patristic atonement model,^[2] which accounts for Christ’s victory over death.

1. The Righteous One Delivered Over

First Peter 3:18 seems to draw on a creedal or hymnic formulation of Christ’s suffering.^[3] As such, it is a brief glance at the redemptive significance of Christ’s death in support of Peter’s admonitions to follow Christ’s example (3:8–17), and in so doing, to participate in the salvation that he provides (4:1–19).

ὅτι καὶ Χριστὸς ἅπαξ περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἔπαθεν,^[4] δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, ἵνα ὑμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῷ θεῷ θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζῳοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι·

For even Christ suffered once for sins—the Righteous One on behalf of the unrighteous ones—in order that he might bring you to God by being put to death in the flesh yet being made alive by the Spirit.^[5]

Peter qualifies Christ’s suffering—a euphemism for his death—as a one-time occurrence, implying that it accomplished something in the past that is not repeated in the suffering of Christ’s followers. His suffering was qualitatively different in that it was περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν (“for sins”), a phrase that evokes sin-offering language in the OT.^[6] Peter’s formulation also recalls his appeal in 2:24a to Christ ὃς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν (“who himself bore our sins”), and it is reminiscent of διὰ τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν (“because of their sins”) in Isa 53:12e LXX. The substitutionary aspect of the sacrificial language becomes clear in 1 Pet 3:18b: δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων (“the righteous one on behalf of the unrighteous ones”). Whether or not δίκαιος (“righteous one”) is a christological title,^[7] here its singular form certainly refers to Christ.^[8] And given the Isaianic background already broached in 2:21–25, it seems likely that Peter’s “righteous one” alludes to the “righteous one” (δίκαιον) in Isa 53:11 LXX.^[9] In contrast, the plural ἀδίκων (“unrighteous ones”) ostensibly refers to humans generally and to Peter’s Christian readers particularly since they were called “out of darkness into his wonderful light” (2:9).

The language of 3:18 is sacrificial, but when Isa 53 is added to the conceptual background, the nature of Christ’s death is expanded beyond mere sacrificial metaphor (1:2; 3:18) and ransom imagery (1:18–19).^[10] These themes converge in the creedal material of 3:18, but the penal aspect of his substitutionary suffering does not seem immediately apparent to many.^[11] Does suffering for sins mean that Christ suffered the punishment of sin under the judgment of God? Certainly, Peter’s purpose in mentioning Christ’s substitutionary suffering is not to answer this question, but to comfort and support his readers in the face of persecution. However, the ease with which Peter accesses Isaiah and creedal material in bursts of reflection on the redemptive nature of Christ’s death betrays a theological structure to the nature of that redemptive event. He thought it accomplished something as the basis for inspiring exemplary behavior. Though much could be said about Christ’s substitutionary suffering in 1 Peter, for the purpose of understanding the penal aspect, I will focus on 2:23c as the background to Christ’s vicarious suffering in 3:18.

In 2:21, Peter transitions from imploring slaves to endure unjust suffering to the basis on which they should do so, namely, the example of Christ: “Christ suffered for you [ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν], leaving you an example” (2:21b). Peter is not being redundant here. Christ’s suffering “for you” refers to his redemptive sacrificial suffering, and it anticipates the sin-bearing language to come in 2:24.^[12] Yet Christ’s suffering, while uniquely “for you” in a redemptive sense, is also an example (ὑπογραμμός) to be followed.^[13] Peter weaves both the redemptive and exemplary themes together in his interpretation of Isaianic material in 2:22–25.^[14]

Peter portrays Jesus as the blameless Isaianic Servant who, though unjustly persecuted, did not retaliate (2:22–23b). Peter then adds an awkward clause, παρεδίδου δὲ τῷ κρίνοντι δικαίως (“But who delivered… over to the one who judges justly,” 2:23c). The active imperfect verb παρεδίδου (“delivered… over”) has no direct object, causing some interpreters to supply “his cause”^[15] or “his enemies.”^[16] In this scenario, Christ handed over his cause to be vindicated or handed over his enemies to the judgment of God. Most, however, take the participle as reflexive by supplying “himself.”^[17] In this case, παραδίδωμι expresses Christ’s committing or entrusting himself to God who will vindicate him—e.g., “he entrusted [παρεδίδου] himself to him who judges justly” (NIV).^[18] In all these cases, 2:23c completes a sequence of ways in which Peter’s readers should emulate Christ’s attitude in suffering.^[19]

Yet, rather than construing 2:23c as merely another way to emulate Christ’s attitude, there is reason to suppose that it sets up Peter’s reflection on the redemptive nature of Christ’s death in the following verses.^[20] It is a transitional clause even as it is the finishing clause in the sequence of Christ’s exemplary behavior.^[21] That is, the lack of a direct object for παραδίδωμι (“delivered… over”) causes an ambiguity that results in a double entendre: παραδίδωμι expresses both the self-abandoning devotion that Christ displayed toward God, and the realization that this giving over of himself elicited the justice of God because he took sins upon himself.^[22] The latter meaning, which is the focus here, is evoked by Peter’s employment of Isa 53 where παραδίδωμι (“delivered… over”) occurs three times (53:6, 12 [2X]).^[23] Peter’s use of the term ties into his broader appeal to the context in Isa 53 which itself contributed to the passion traditions in the NT.

Concerning the use of παραδίδωμι in the NT, wherever Christ is the subject or object of the verb the meaning always has his betrayal, suffering, or death in view. Though Christ is always the one being handed over, the one who does the handing over and to whom he is handed over varies. He is handed over from Judas to the Chief Priests, from the Chief Priests and Jews to Pilate, and from Pilate to the cross itself.^[24] With these iterations in mind, it is understandable why Paul uses the imperfect to describe “the night in which he was handed over [παρεδίδετο]” (1 Cor 11:23). Peter’s use of the imperfect in 2:23c might rely on that traditional eucharist material, but it is especially appropriate for Peter’s aim to show that Christ endured suffering and abuse repeatedly as an example to endure in the same way.^[25] In other epistles a theological or christological agency overrides any other agency in the verb—either God hands Jesus over (Rom 4:25; 8:32), or Jesus gives himself up (Gal 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25).^[26]

The complexity of who does the handing over and to whom Christ is delivered in the NT is mirrored in the experience of Isaiah’s Servant. Isaiah 53 brings out a troubling tension between the injustice of the Servant’s suffering and the fact that it was the Lord who “delivered him over to our sins” (παρέδωκεν αὐτὸν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ἡμῶν, 53:6c LXX).^[27] In other words, it looked as though the people in Isa 53 were punishing the Servant unjustly (53:4), but in fact he was being offered as an unblemished sacrifice for sins by the Lord. There was a divine sacrificial intent to the Servant’s death which operated behind and above the wicked intent of the people (53:5b, 8b, 10a, 12b).

But the imagery of Isa 53 is not only sacrificial, it is irreducibly juridical as well. In his death “he was reckoned with the lawless” (ἐν τοῖς ἀνόμοις ἐλογίσθη, 53:12d LXX), which is to say—paradoxically—that he was counted among the lawless who unjustly killed him (53:5a). Thus, in a sacrificial way, he legitimately suffered the penal consequences of “bearing our sins,”^[28] and so the injustice of his death is in fact the rectifying justice of God in action.

Peter brings out this tension in 1 Pet 2:23c: παρεδίδου δὲ τῷ κρίνοντι δικαίως (“but delivered himself over to the one who judges justly”). For Peter, Christ is the exemplar of unjust suffering according to Isa 53, but as in Isaiah so here Christ’s suffering is more complex than simple victimhood. That complexity is signaled by the awkward use of παρεδίδου, thus functioning as a transition to Peter’s reflection on the uniquely redemptive sacrifice of Christ in 2:24–25. Behind the ostensible causes of Christ’s suffering, the higher reality for Peter is that Christ willingly gave himself over to be judged by the just judge—God.^[29]

In 2:24ab, Peter makes two important connections that elucidate this meaning of 2:23c. He draws on Isa 53:4 and 12 LXX in stating that Christ “himself bore our sins” (1 Pet 2:24a), which is then qualified with two prepositional phrases echoing Deut 21:23 LXX (1 Pet 2:24b).

In its two occurrences in Isa 53:12 LXX, παραδίδωμι (“deliver over”) is passive yet it implies that the Lord is giving over the Servant (cf. 53:6c). In the second instance, it links παραδίδωμι closely with the bearing of sins.

καὶ αὐτὸς ἁμαρτίας πολλῶν ἀνήνεγκεν καὶ διὰ τὰς ἁμαρτὶας αὐτῶν παρεδόθη.

and he bore the sins of many, and because of their sins he was delivered over. (Isa 53:12ef)

This conceptual link in the background suggests that Peter’s use of παραδίδωμι in 1 Pet 2:23c should be understood in light of the description to come in 2:24a: ὃς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν (“who himself bore our sins”),^[30] which, as I’ve argued, evokes the sacrificial function of Christ’s death. The sacrificial language is then extended with the clarification that Christ’s bearing of sins was ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον (“in his body on the tree,” 2:24b), which alludes to Deut 21:22–23 LXX:^[31]

Now if there is in someone sin, a judgment of death, and he dies and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not sleep upon the tree [οὐκ ἐπικοιμηθήσεται τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τοῦ ξύλου], but with burial you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hanging on a tree is cursed by a god^[32] [ὅτι κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου]. (NETS)

As with the sacrificial and juridical matrix of Isa 53 itself, Peter’s use of Deut 21:23 with its juridical context complicates any picture of Christ’s suffering for sins that is merely sacrificial.^[33] The mode of capital punishment in Deuteronomy is not a wooden pole or tree per se. Rather the display of the body on a pole after execution signified the divine accursedness of a person who was (presumably) rightfully put to death. The Romans had managed to combine the mode of execution with the ignominious public exhibition of the criminal’s body. As such the cross itself evoked the idea of punishment, but in the covenantal context of Deut 21:23, the penal notion takes a theological turn—i.e., the display of the body ἐπὶ ξύλου (“on a tree”) entailed the curse of God.^[34] Thus, Peter’s use of the prepositional phrases (“in his body on the tree”) clarifies what it meant for Christ to bear sins: he suffered a divinely cursed death—which compliments Peter’s expression that Christ “delivered himself over to the just judge” (1 Pet 2:23c).^[35]

In sum, Peter’s use of παραδίδωμι (“deliver… over”) expresses both the self-abandoning trust that Christ displayed toward God, and also the realization that this giving over of himself elicited the just judgment of God because he took sins upon himself.^[36] Christ willingly gave himself over to the justice of God (2:23c), knowing that he was bearing sins (2:24a), and consequently incurred the penalty of death—a death that signified the divine curse (2:24b).

Though redemptive, the purpose of Christ’s suffering is also participatory—”so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (2:24c NIV). Peter returns to the death/life merism in 3:18 with reference to Christ’s redemptive suffering and he draws out the participatory implications in 4:1–7, noting later that his readers should “rejoice inasmuch as you participate [κοινωνεῖτε] in the sufferings of Christ” (4:13 NIV). This thread culminates in the expectation of eschatological judgment where Christians “who suffer according to God’s will should commit [παρατιθέσθωσαν] themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (4:19 NIV).^[37] As with the Servant in Isa 53, there is a divine intent behind the suffering of Christians which should prompt them to entrust their lives to God. In this way they are following Christ’s example of self-abandoning trust in God, but their entrusting (παρατίθημι) lacks the uniquely redemptive significance trigged by Christ’s “delivering… over” (παραδίδωμι). This notion of Christ’s sacrificial and penal death stands behind Christ’s substitutionary suffering in 3:18. Thus, the Righteous One suffered the curse of God’s judgment in his body on the tree on behalf of the unrighteous whose sins he bore. He did this ἵνα ὑμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῷ θεῷ (“to bring you to God,” 3:18c).

2. Death in the Flesh and Life by the Spirit

The effect of Christ’s penal death results in reconciled existence with God. But it is not merely so because a sacrifice and judgment took place. Rather it takes effect by virtue of Christ’s human and divine natures as he was “put to death in the flesh yet made alive by the Spirit” (3:18de).^[38] The two participles, θανατωθείς and ζῳοποιηθείς, that modify the reconciling effect of Christ’s substitutionary death are instrumental—“by being put to death” and “by being made alive,” Christ brought them to God.^[39] The juxtaposition of these events binds them inextricably together so that Christ’s death and resurrection are the how of atonement.

The two datives (σαρκί and πνεύματι) that modify the respective participles are debated. Most take them as datives of respect (“in respect to [his] flesh/spirit”) or sphere (“in the realm of the flesh/spirit”).^[40] Some argue that they are instrumental (“put to death by flesh [i.e., by humans]” and “made alive by the Spirit”).^[41] These positions maintain that the datives must have a parallel sense. Yet if the material is hymnic or creedal, a formal parallel would not necessitate such a parallel. Poetic language often omits and abbreviates for formal economy while investing the same forms with different senses.^[42] Thomas Schreiner’s interpretation seems to be the best way forward: “the two datives are not used in precisely the same way; the first is a dative of reference, and the second is a dative of agency. Christ was put to death with reference to or in the sphere of his body, but on the other hand he was made alive by the Spirit.”^[43] Or as Calvin put it: “Flesh here means the outward man; and Spirit means the divine power, by which Christ emerged from death a conqueror.”^[44]

While “flesh” certainly includes the physical body, it connotes something more. The physical body is the visible aspect of limited and perishable human existence—“σάρξ is the perishable par excellence.”^[45] Peter earlier described this frail and corruptible nature by quoting Isa 40:6: πᾶσα σὰρξ ὡς χόρτος (“All flesh is like grass”).^[46] The flesh, then, is not merely the physical body but the perishable mode in which humans live prior to resurrection.^[47] Thus, when Peter highlights that Christ “bore our sins in his body [ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ] on the tree” (2:24), he is instantiating the most conspicuous feature of Christ’s fleshly and perishable existence: the outward man, or in Paul’s terms, the descendant of David.^[48] Thus, it was in that mode and realm of existence that Christ was put to death.

But what role does the Spirit play in this two-step sequence of reconciliation? Theologically, it seems of little consequence whether the dative πνεύματι connotes respect/sphere (“in the spirit”) or agency (“by the Spirit”); for the former would certainly imply the work of the Holy Spirit. But if the statement was drawn from creedal material, it seems more likely that it refers to the agency of the Holy Spirit.^[49] While the death of Christ is obviously important, given the space that Peter allots to describing it in 3:18ab and in 2:21–25, grammatically, the first clause in the μέν… δέ construction sets up the background for the vital point in the second.^[50] Thus, the stress falls on the instrumentality of Christ’s resurrection in bringing them to God. The death of Christ in the flesh opens upon a new existence by the Spirit. Resurrection is the telos of Christ’s death because it is by the Holy Spirit—which is the Spirit of Christ (1:11–12), the Spirit of God (4:14). But how does that work? What is it about the Spirit that enlivens his body?

Thematically in the NT, Christ’s resurrection is more than a forensic vindication “by the Spirit.”^[51] In 3:18, Christ wasn’t made alive because he was judged to be righteous. Of course, he was righteous (2:22), but his sinlessness has more to do with the perfection of his sacrifice than with the efficacy of the Spirit in resurrection. In Acts, Peter proclaims the injustice of Christ’s death, but God does not raise Christ because he was exonerated; rather, he was freed from “the pangs of death because it was not possible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24).^[52] The imagery is not merely vindication but victory. It was the singular divine life of the Spirit “by which Christ emerged from death a conqueror.”^[53] Thus, as Reinhard Feldmeier observes, it is Christ’s participation in the Spirit that “brings about precisely in the sphere of death the conquest of the same.”^[54] Which is to say that the consequence of his death in the flesh can issue only in the reversal of that death because “in him was life” (John 1:4).^[55] “For what does it mean,” asks Augustine, “that he was brought to life in the spirit but that the same flesh in which alone he was put to death rose by the life-giving spirit?”^[56]

Benjamin Myers describes the development of this logic in what he calls the patristic atonement model with its attendant metaphysical assumptions,^[57] two of which are highlighted here: (1) death is the privation or corruption of being, and (2) God is being or life and he cannot by nature undergo death—he is impassible. Since death is not a positive thing against which God struggles, Peter’s language in Acts that death cannot hold Christ down or Calvin’s assertion that Christ emerges a conqueror are truly metaphorical. Christ did not overcome death in a cosmic struggle or a hard-won battle against Satan and the powers.^[58] Rather, as easily as light dispels darkness, so too when impassible divine life meets death in the flesh of Christ, the privation is filled and death itself is reversed. Gregory of Nyssa put it like this, “For it is not in the nature of darkness to endure the presence of light, nor can death exist where life is active.”^[59] Or to use a metaphor from 1 Peter, “by his wounds you have been healed” (2:24e; cf. Isa 53:5). While modern commentators usually find in this statement a paradox,^[60] a metaphysical commitment to impassible divine life dwelling in the incarnate Christ makes good sense of it. The wound of death in his flesh was met with his life in the Spirit. And as Peter’s notion of suffering with Christ is participatory (4:13), so the salvation that he provides for humanity is a participation in resurrected existence: “You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1:23 NIV). Thus, being truly human, Christ enlivens not only his own body by the Spirit but human nature generally, which had for so long suffered the corruption of sin and death. Athanasius described the participation this way:

Therefore, assuming a body like ours, because all people were liable to the corruption of death, [the Word] surrendered [his body] to death for all humanity, and offered it to the Father. He presented it to the Father as an act of pure love for humanity, so that by all dying in him the law concerning the corruption of humanity might be abolished… and [so] that he might turn back to a state of incorruption those who had fallen into a state of corruption, and bring them to life by the fact of his death, by the body which he made his own, and by the grace of his resurrection.^[61]

While theologically more developed, Athanasius’s meaning seems entirely consistent with 1 Peter’s participatory notion of atonement. The imperishable Word took on a perishable human nature “to bring you to God” so that when he succumbed to death in the flesh he brought the fullness of his deity by the Spirit to fill the gaping wound of death thereby reversing death for his own humanity and for all those who participate in him—who are born again (1:23) and baptized (3:21), which is the grace of his resurrection.

3. Atonement as Sacrificial, Juridical, and Victorious

Undoubtedly, patristic writers drew their atonement logic from the NT itself, concentrated portrayals of which can be found in Colossians and Hebrews. In Col 2:9–15, God forgives our sins by Christ absorbing their legal consequence in himself on the cross (2:14), which is simultaneously the triumph of the cross (2:15) because Paul assumes that in Christ the fullness of deity encountered death in Christ’s body (2:9). And in Heb 2:14–17, the author assumes the divine status of Christ (1:2–3) as he works out why the Son took a human nature. He did so to destroy death and the devil (2:14) and to become a priest for us (2:17). In his divinity he is able to overcome death, and in his humanity he is able to offer his death on behalf of our sins. In both Colossians and Hebrews there is a blending of the triumphant victory of Christ with judicial and sacrificial imagery respectively.^[62] The key to their effortless mixture is the humanity and deity of Christ. A seed of the same logic appears in 1 Pet 3:18de in the juxtaposition of flesh and Spirit. On the one hand, dying in the flesh, Christ died as a human for our sins (3:18ab) under the just judgment of God (2:23c). On the other hand—and what is more—being made alive by the Spirit, Christ conquered death for humanity in his resurrection because the Spirit in him is the fullness of divine life and power.

While penal substitution is a vital aspect of atonement in 1 Pet 3:18, it operates in concert with Christ’s victory over the grave. With characteristic profundity, Augustine brings together the sacrificial, juridical, and victorious threads of atonement in saying, “It was of course on our behalf that [Christ], in whom the prince of the world and the lord of death found nothing, did away with the death that he did not deserve.”^[63] Though without sin, Christ delivered himself over to the just judge to suffer a death sentence for sins that he did not deserve—the Righteous One for the unrighteous—so that in death he might discard death by virtue of his inextinguishable life-giving Spirit.^[64] In doing so, Christ has brought us to God.