INTRODUCTION
Every Lord’s Day, in the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that Christ “descended into Hades,” although some of you may come from churches where you said, “descended into hell.” In Old English “hell” referred to the “underworld” or the place of the dead, which is what the original Latin and Greek words in the Creed referred to. However, over time “hell” has come to refer in common parlance to the place of eternal punishment of the damned, what Revelation calls the “lake of fire” or Gehenna, where the Devil and “death and Hades” are cast at the end of history (Rev. 20:10, 14).
This can create confusion: how could Jesus go to “hell?” The answer is that He didn’t. While it is true that He suffered the “hellish” torment due our sin on the Cross, when He cried “it is finished,” it really was, and as He told the dying thief next to Him, when He gave up the ghost, He went to “Paradise,” or what ancients would have understood as the place of the dead or Hades.
So as we celebrate the resurrection, it is fitting to ask, what does it mean that He “descended into Hades”? And the answer is: having fully suffered for the sins of all His people, Christ went down to that lowest place to release His people there and so prove that nothing can stop Him from bringing all His people to God in the highest place (1 Pet. 3:18).
The Text: “…When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?…” (Eph. 4:7-10).
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
Paul is in the process of summarizing our great unifying inheritance in Christ, and in order to do that, explains that when Christ ascended into Heaven, He led captivity itself captive and gave gifts to men (Eph. 4:7-8, cf. Ps. 68). But Paul pauses here and points out that before Christ ascended, He also descended, not merely to earth but even into the “lower regions” of the earth (Eph. 4:9). And Paul explains that Christ has descended that far and ascended above all heavens in order to fill all things (Eph. 4:10).
A BIBLICAL COSMOLOGY
In the Old Testament, the word for the grave and the place of the dead was “Sheol.” In Homer, the “underworld” was a literal place called “Hades” that Odysseus traveled to, but even in Scripture, God forbids necromancy (trying to communicate with the dead) and when the Witch of Endor summoned Samuel’s spirit, it came up out of the ground and Samuel foretold that Saul and his sons would be joining him shortly (1 Sam. 28:12-19). David prophesied, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Sheol]; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). When the Apostle Peter quoted that verse at Pentecost, he translated “Sheol” as “Hades,” using the traditional Greek name for the place of the dead, and said it was talking about the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:27).
In the parable that Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus, He pictured Hades as a place of torment for the wicked but a place of rest for the righteous: “And in hell [Hades] he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (Lk. 16:23). The ancients also refer to this as “paradise,” which Jesus referred to on the Cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk. 23:43).
A PROTESTANT “HARROWING OF HELL”
The Church Fathers sometimes allowed their imaginations to run away on this point (and some of this is probably the origin of the Roman Catholic notions of purgatory and praying for the dead, which we reject), but putting all of this together: before the death and resurrection of Jesus, all people went in spirit at death to the same place called “Sheol” in Hebrew and “Hades” in Greek, which was divided between a place of torment and a place of restful waiting (Abraham’s bosom/Paradise). But the saints of old could not enjoy the fullness of the presence of God until their sins were actually paid for, which is suggested in Hebrews: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:39-40).
Therefore, when Christ cried out, “It is finished!” and breathed His last, His Spirit left His body and descended into Hades, the place where all spirits were waiting. But He went there in order to “lead captivity captive.” He went there to proclaim His victory over sin, death, and the Devil to the damned (1 Pet. 3:19) and to release the Old Covenant saints out of Abraham’s Bosom/Paradise in Hades and usher them into the presence of God in Heaven. This is why Jesus tells John in Revelation, “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell [Hades] and of death” (Rev. 1:18). When Jesus rose from the dead, it proved that His soul did not remain in Hades, and if it could not remain there it is because He has the keys.
CONCLUSION
So this is the point: Christ went down to the lowest place to proclaim His victory and bring all of His own directly to God in the highest place. He did this to prove that nothing can stop Him from bringing His people to God. If nothing could stop Him from bringing Adam and Abraham and David to God, there is nowhere you can wander where He cannot reach you. There is no sin so dark that Christ cannot save you. There is no prison cell of sin so secure that He cannot release you.
Think of Jonah rebelling against the Lord fleeing to Tarshish into a great storm and swallowed by a great fish for three days and three nights, and Jonah prayed: “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice” (Jon. 2:1-2 ESV).
Have you run from God? Have you rebelled in your heart? In your mind? In your actions? Call out to the Lord. He will hear you from wherever you are.
The Bible is clear that after death, there are no second chances: we will all stand before God’s judgment seat (Rev. 20:12, 14-15, Heb. 9:27). If you trust your own deeds, your own righteousness, you will only sink down further, but if you place all your trust in Christ, there is no pit so deep that Christ will not find you there and bring you to God: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt. 12:40).
And so He was, and He is risen from the dead.