Christ's Descent Into Hell
Christ’s Descent into Hell
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. The third day, He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. (LSB, back cover).
The 2nd Article of the Apostles Creed briefly summarizes Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. While Jesus’ life is clearly described in the narrative of the Four Gospels, the sentence “He descended into Hell” is unique. The Gospels simply tell us nothing of what Jesus did between His death on Good Friday and His resurrection on Easter morning. This one sentence in the Creed is primarily based on 1 Peter 3:18–20a: “For Christ also suffered, once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey…”
Because Scripture has so little to say about Christ’s descent into Hell, various controversies and false ideas arose over time. In order to refute such ideas, this is what we can confidently say based on 1 Peter 3:18–20.
1. Christ descended into Hell as both man and God. Peter clearly teaches that Jesus descended into Hell after He had been made alive by the Spirit. Although the descent into Hell was supernatural, Jesus did not descend into Hell only as God. We confess that after the Incarnation, Jesus’ divinity and humanity cannot be separated even by death: “Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ” (Athanasian Creed: 32). Therefore, Jesus descended into Hell as the God-man, both natures unified in one person.
2. Christ did not descend into Hell to suffer. 1 Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also suffered, once for sins.” Jesus’ suffering for the sins of the world was completed upon the cross, as He Himself said, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
3. Christ descended into Hell to proclaim His victory. He proclaimed His defeat of sin, death, and the Devil by invading their realm. Therefore, by His descent, Christ demonstrated once and for all that Christians no longer fear death since He has conquered it.
4. The descent into Hell is part of Christ’s exaltation, not His humiliation. Christ’s humiliation is the time when Jesus did not use His full divine power from His Incarnation until His death. Jesus’ exaltation began after His death when he fully used His divine power, beginning with His descent into Hell and continuing forever. Christ used His divine power to descend into Hell to proclaim victory, and after the resurrection, he continued to make full use of His divine power, shown most clearly in His Ascension.
5. Christ did not descend into Hell to rescue the Old Testament saints (sometimes called the Harrowing of Hell). This idea contradicts God’s promise to the patriarchs. All the Old Testament saints were saved by their faith in the coming Messiah just as we are saved by our faith in Jesus the Messiah who came and will come again. Both Enoch (Gen. 5:21–24) and Elijah (2 Kgs. 2:1–14) were raised to Heaven without dying, demonstrating God’s promise to save His people.
6. Christ did not descend into Hell to proclaim the Gospel to unbelievers and save them from Hell. Similar to the Old Testament saints, the people who lived before Christ’s life and death heard the Gospel of the coming Messiah through the nation of Israel and the books of the Old Testament. Those who rejected the promise were condemned to Hell because of their unbelief. Jesus’ descent into Hell was a proclamation of His victory over His enemies, not a second chance for unbelievers to be saved.
1 Peter 3 is the clearest passage addressing Christ’s descent into Hell, but Psalm 16:10 is also cited in defense of this doctrine: “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.” The apostle Peter cited this verse as a defense of Christ’s resurrection in Acts 2:27, explaining that “it was not possible for [Jesus] to be held by [death]” (Acts 2:24). In his Torgau Sermon of 1533 (cited by The Formula of Concord, Article IX), Martin Luther argued that Psalm 16 and Acts 2 both teach that Jesus, the Holy One of God, descended into Hell to defeat the power of sin, death, and the Devil. In the same sermon, he explained how this doctrine can only be understood by faith based on the passages listed above and that we should not try to use reason to explain how Jesus did this. He openly admitted that there are things we will not understand about this doctrine: “But how this may have happened that the man lay there in the grave and yet went to Hell, that we should and must leave unfathomed and not understood. For it certainly did not happen in a bodily or comprehensible way, although one must depict it and think of it crudely and in a bodily way…” (Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 37). Luther argued that the main point Christians should take from Jesus’ descent into Hell is that our Savior defeated and crushed the power of sin, death, and the Devil.
Thus, the descent into Hell is a doctrine of comfort to Christians. Not only did Jesus Christ conquer sin, death, and the Devil, but He even invaded their realm to proclaim this victory. We no longer fear these enemies. As one of our hymns describe: “Jesus has come! Now see bonds rent asunder! Fetters of death now dissolve, disappear. See Him burst through with a voice as of thunder! He sets us free from our guilt and our fear, lifts us from shame to the place of His honor. Jesus has come! Hear the roll of God’s thunder!” (LSB 533, stanza 2).
Blessings to you as we celebrate Christ’s death, descent, and resurrection,
Vicar Mars