First Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” It is true that Christ died on the cross for our sins that we might be forgiven and redeemed. But here Peter said that Christ died for the purpose of bringing His believers to God. He not only brought us to God but also into God.
On the one hand, Christ was put to death in the flesh, so He was crucified on the cross in the flesh.
On the other hand, Christ was made alive in the Spirit. Man put Him to death in the flesh, but God made Him alive in the Spirit. One death was going on, but two things were happening. This is what happens to a grain of wheat which has been sown into the earth. On the one hand, the grain dies, but there is another element in the grain, the life element. When the grain is dying, its life element grows.
John 12:24 says clearly that Christ was the grain of wheat. He was dying on the cross, on the one hand, in the flesh. On the other hand, He was growing in the Spirit. Verse 23 says that this was Christ’s glorification. Christ gained the glorification through that kind of “dying death” and “living death.” On the one hand, He was dying a “dying death.” On the other hand, He was dying a “living death.” We need to see that while Christ was dying in the flesh on the cross, He was living.
Peter says that in this made-alive Spirit, Christ went and proclaimed to the fallen angels in prison probably the victory of God over Satan their leader through the incarnation of God in Christ and Christ’s death in the flesh (1 Pet. 3:19). On the cross Christ was made alive by God to accomplish God’s purpose and even to proclaim God’s victory over Satan.
First Peter 3:18 shows that in Christ’s resurrection, His divine part was made alive to impart divinity into His humanity, making His humanity divine. In this way God, in Christ’s resurrection, begot Christ. Acts 13:33 says that on the day of resurrection God said, “Today I have begotten You.” That begetting equals our regenerating. Christ was begotten and we were regenerated in the same resurrection, at the same time. This resurrection was a big birth, a big delivery. Among the human race, no one has ever had twelve children at once. But in the universe there was a divine birth, a divine delivery, in which millions of children were born together with Christ as their firstborn Brother.
Christ’s humanity, the flesh, was not divine but human.
In His resurrection, His humanity was designated (resurrected, uplifted) into His divinity, that is, into His divine glory (John 12:23; Luke 24:25-26).
The Spirit of holiness is Christ’s divine part, His divinity. By His divinity His humanity was made divine.
Christ’s humanity was designated in the divine power. The reality of the power of Christ’s resurrection is the Spirit.
Christ’s humanity was designated into His divinity out of resurrection, which is the Triune God embodied in Christ.
By resurrection Christ was designated the Son of God with His humanity. He is the firstborn Son of God, possessing both divinity and humanity.
This means that He was born of God in His resurrection (Acts 13:33) to be the firstborn Son of God among His many brothers, the many sons of God (Rom. 8:29).
First Peter 1:3 and Ephesians 2:6 reveal that Christ’s redeemed believers were regenerated with Him in the same resurrection.