1 PETER 4: 6
1 Peter 4: 6 refers to verse 5. Christ is ready to judge the quick and the dead. Good news of promise were addressed to those now dead, that they might be thus judged; but not for that only, but that through grace they might live in the Spirit. In respect of their human position in flesh, they were to be judged for the deeds done in the body, but, if they received the message, live spiritually to God. Their being judged shews clearly, I think, that it is no preaching to spirits, that they might be judged for that. Read, it has been preached. It was preached to those now dead. It must be remembered that Peter is writing to the strangers of the dispersion or scattered Jews. Christ has suffered. They are suffering among the ungodly, no longer doing the will of the Gentiles as other Jews were. Now Christ, being exalted, is ready to judge. The Church has only to be complete and caught up for Him to do it. He is exalted and ready; and if He comes and judges the quick among whom they were suffering, His authority to judge extended to the dead also who had received promises (compare Hebrews 4: 2) that, if they did not live in the Spirit to God, as the believing Jews had to do now without a rest or present Messiah according to promise, they might be judged as responsible men in flesh.
+From Morrish edition.
[p. 357] He had made a previous statement to the same purport in respect of those who were in the time of Noah. The Christian Jews were now a little flock; so were the spared in Noah’s time. They had Christ only in spirit (a trial and reproach for a Jew who spoke of Messiah’s being come); and so had Noah. (Compare chapter 1: 11) But what was the effect of their rejection of Noah’s preaching? Their spirits were now in prison, a proof that the Lord knew, as he says elsewhere, to deliver the godly out of temptation, and reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished. So the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks, in contrast, of the spirits of just men made perfect. It would be a strange thing, if those of whom it was said, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man, but his days shall be one hundred and twenty years,” should be the only ones selected to be preached to afterwards. But this by the by.