Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (1 Peter 3:21-22).
The grammar in the opening of verse 21 is difficult. To simplify, we should probably understand it in this way: “which (water) now also saves you, (who) are the antitype (of Noah and his family)—(that is) baptism.” In other words, the experience of Noah and his family in the flood is the type of which Peter’s audience and their baptism is the antitype (antitypon). (R.T.)France is especially helpful here:
The essential principle of New Testament typology is that God works according to a regular pattern, so that what he has done in the past, as recorded in the Old Testament, can be expected to find its counterpart in his work in the decisive period of the New Testament. Thus persons, events and institutions of the Old Testament, which in themselves need have no forward reference, are cited as ‘types’, models of corresponding persons, events and institutions in the life of Christ and the Christian church. On this principle, then, . . . Peter takes the salvation of Noah in the flood as a model of the Christian’s salvation through baptism.
Peter immediately qualifies the sense in which baptism saves us: it is not by the physical action itself, in which dirt is removed from the body. In other words, the physical action of baptism has no intrinsic saving power. There is no mechanical relationship between being immersed in water and being forgiven. The only sense in which baptism saves, says Peter, is insofar as it provides the occasion for an “appeal to God for a good conscience.”
“Appeal” (ESV) is the translation of eperōtēma, which others render as “pledge.” If the former is accurate, the one being baptized “appeals” to God, on the basis of the death and resurrection of Christ (or more literally, “through” or “by means of,” if dia is instrumental; cf. 1:3), to cleanse one’s conscience and forgive one’s sins. In good faith or conscience we appeal to God for vindication, that we might be considered part of his victory won by Christ in the resurrection (3:21b). It is only in this light that God uses the water of baptism to save us—as it links us to Christ and his victory and promises.
The focus of verse 22 (based on the language of Ps. 110:1; cf. Acts 2:33; 5:31; Rom. 8:34; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3, 13; 10:12; 12:2) is the exaltation and ascension of the risen Savior, which signifies his complete subjugation of all fallen and rebellious demonic powers. “Angels, authorities, and powers” is standard NT language for the fallen demonic hosts (Rom. 8:38–39; 1 Cor. 15:24–27; Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:10, 15). Their subjection to Christ is undoubtedly the content of his proclamation (1 Pet. 3:19)…By being baptized they are marked out as God’s chosen few, who, like Noah and his family, will be saved even when all those around them mock and slander them. Baptism is the symbol of their being united with Christ in his resurrection, as well as his defeat of the demonic hosts. Consequently, your baptism is the reminder of the victory in which you stand, the victory that Christ achieved by his death and resurrection and exaltation above all principalities and powers.
Adapted from ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews-Revelation
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