Bible Questions and Answers, Part 22

John MacArthur (0:00)

The Word of God is the source of all spiritual truth. Everything we need to know for salvation, sanctification and the hope of glory is given us in the Scripture.

Phil Johnson (0:21)

Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

From time to time, John MacArthur would set aside an evening service to answer questions from his congregation at Grace Community Church. And today, you'll get to listen in on one of those Q&A sessions. So stay here as John answers questions that perhaps you've had as you've studied God's Word. Here's the first question from a member of the congregation, and then you'll hear John's answer.

John MacArthur (0:52)

Now, the idea is not stump the pastor, okay?

I mean, I know you can ask me things that I can't answer, but what we want to do is to deal with things that are of importance, and we'll do our best to give you an answer out of the Word of God. You know, in the book of Acts, it says Paul reasoned with them out of the scripture. It means he dialogued with them. And one of the great teaching ways is question and answer. In fact, throughout the early years of the church, there was a developing question and answer mode in teaching that became sort of refined into what we know as catechism, which is a series of teachings based upon the question and answer process. So we just encourage you to feel free to ask a question, and we'll do our best to speak right to the point. Keep your questions short. Don't give us a big, long, drawn out thing, or we'll never get everybody's questions answered.

SPEAKER_3 (1:46)

The scripture I'd like to have explained, it's 1 Peter 321, the part where it says, and corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from flesh, but the appeal to God for a good conscience.

John MacArthur (2:04)

Right. What that verse is saying is that...

Peter's just talked about... We're talking about 1 Peter 318, Christ has once suffered for sins, and just for the unjust, they might bring us to God and so forth. And it talks about their Christ's provision of salvation. And then it says that when his body was on the cross dead, his spirit was alive, not the Holy Spirit there in verse 18, but his spirit. And he went and preached to the spirits in prison. And I believe these were demon beings, and the word preach is not to preach the Gospel of Euangelizzo, but K.Russo to proclaim a triumph. I believe that when he was dying on the cross, this is a marvelous truth, when he was dying on the cross, it looked to hell and the demons like perhaps they had won the victory. And so at the very moment when his body was dead, during that period of time, his spirit was alive, it says in verse 18, and he went right down into the prison where the spirits are kept. And you want to know what spirits they were. Verse 20 says, they were the ones disobedient during the time of Noah. And you remember in those days, the time of Noah, God sent the flood because the sons of God co-mingled with the daughters of men. So they were spirit beings who co-habitated with women, creating a sort of a rosemary baby race of people, and God destroyed them all in the flood. So these are demon spirits. That's all you really need to know. He went into the place, proclaimed a triumph over the demon spirits even in the midst of his death. And then it talks about the ark in which people were saved by water. The ark then becomes a symbol.

And in verse 21, the like figure under which even baptism doth also now save us.

But it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh. In other words, he is saying that as that ark was saved in water, so are we saved in water. But it is not external water. You see that? It's not the water that washes the flesh, the physical body. Not that at all. But it is that purification of the conscience.

It is the purification of the conscience that he is really referring to. In other words, it's symbolic. As the ship was saved by the water, it floated on the water. The water was its salvation. So, we are saved by a certain kind of being in water. But it is not the water of the physical baptism. What water is it? Titus 3.5 tells us, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Here it comes, by the washing of regeneration. Okay?