A Sermon Preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 28 March 2021
Did Jesus go to hell? This is the question before us this morning. It is certainly a strange idea. Many theologians have abandoned it. They point out that it was the last item to be added to the developing Creed; it doesn’t appear until about AD 400. And they question whether it is taught in the Bible. When the teachers in the colleges turn against an idea, it is not long before the preachers in the churches abandon it too. Next comes the people in the pews; quite a few Christians, when they get to this place in the creed, go quiet. And, of course, many modern versions of the Creed are soft at this point. They say something like “he descended to the place of the dead,” meaning little more than that he really died.
But before we abandon something that much of the church has held as precious for many years, which the reformers of the 16th century believed, and which gets special emphasis in our Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, let us see whether there is not something in the apostles’ teaching that we have overlooked or forgotten. Article 3 of the 39 Articles says:
“As Christ died for us and was buried, so it is to be believed, that he went to down to hell.”
We need first to be clear about what we mean by hell. In the New Testament there are two words that are translated as hell. This leads to confusion. Let’s start with Jesus words of warning in Mark 9.42-48:
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea…. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
The word Jesus uses here is “Gehenna.” He often speaks of it.
Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem. In the time of the kings there was a temple there where children were sacrificed to Molech. Josiah destroyed it and desecrated the area with human bones so it could never again be used for worship. In Jesus’ day it was the Jerusalem rubbish tip, and so became the name of the cosmic rubbish dump: the place where everything evil, everything which has no place in God’s kingdom, will one day be disposed of. Gehenna is the place of final destruction. Jesus certainly did not go there. I think Gehenna does not even belong to the present time; it is not until the last judgement, when the devil and the beast and the false prophet and all who follow them are judged. It is the Lake of Fire, of the book of Revelation. When we say Jesus descended into hell we are not saying he went to Gehenna.
The other word is Hades. Hades is the place of the dead in ancient Greek understanding. It corresponds to the Old Testament Sheol, sometimes called the Pit. I imagine that is where hell gets its name from: hell equals “hole.” Hades was not usually seen as a place of punishment, but as a shadowland of souls no longer alive. Listen to this Old Testament description of Sheol or Hades from Psalm 88:
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep…. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave … or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
There is no idea here of going through a veil to a better world where we will live a full and happy life; that is not how the ancients thought of it. It was the place of not being alive, of being a shadow of the person who lived. You were no longer a living person, but a dead soul—conscious maybe, but dead.
This is the place the Bible and the Creed tell us Jesus went to, with one important caveat. The Bible says he didn’t go there as a dead soul, but as a living spirit. This is important.
Let’s have a look at what Peter says in his first letter. He is speaking of how Jesus died to bring us to God, and goes on to say:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, He was 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, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 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 3.18–20
There are things here we can skip over for now. Peter, having touched on the subject of Jesus’ sacrificial death, catches a wave and surfs it all the way through coming alive in the spirit, preaching to the spirits, baptism, resurrection, ascension and enthronement in the highest place in heaven. What is he thinking? It is like he mentions Jesus’ death and cannot help rehearsing his whole journey from humiliation to exaltation in a way that actually sounds a bit like a creed.
Like the Creed, he starts with Jesus death: “he died in the flesh”
He died in the flesh on the one hand, and on the other hand he was “made alive in the spirit.” This is an important contrast. In many years of trying to understand this passage I never understood its importance. Most people will read it to mean his body died and his soul went wherever it went. This is what many Jewish and Greek people in the ancient world thought happened when you died. But they would never have said someone came alive in their spirit. The body went to the grave and the soul descended to Sheol or Hades. Yes, but this was not life after death, but death after life.
Peter is not saying Jesus’ soul lived on; he is talking resurrection language. “Come alive” is what the dead in Hades do not do. But notice that Peter applies it to Jesus’ spirit, not to his body. Resurrection is about bodies living again. The word “resurrection” means “standing up again.” But here we are talking about Jesus’ spirit.
I beg you not to switch off here. This may be a little difficult, but what I am about to say affects how it will be for you when you die.
When Jesus was disputing with the Sadducees about whether the dead are resurrected, he uses a strange argument. He quotes God’s words to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, and God of Isaac and God of Jacob,” and then adds, “He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” But Abraham’s body is still in that cave near Hebron, so carefully guarded by the Palestinians, waiting for the great day of resurrection. But Jesus says he is alive, and that is proof of the resurrection.
So there must be a spiritual resurrection, which takes place when one of God’s people dies. You see it in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: the rich man is in Hades, but Lazarus is taken by the angels into the presence of Abraham. His dead soul is not just taken to a happier place; he is made alive with other living people. The rich man is dead, though he is conscious of it. But God has resurrected Lazarus and taken him into his presence. Listen to how John speaks of what happens to God’s children and the wicked when they die:
They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power… Revelation 20.4-5
So there are two resurrections, one spiritual now, and one physical later. Going back to 1 Peter 3.18, Jesus is made alive in his spirit, and he goes and preaches to the spirits in prison who disobeyed in the time of Noah.
These spirits are the angels we read about in Genesis 6, who early in our history jumped the fence, as it were, and interfered with human women. They are imprisoned now, kept in a holding cell, until the judgement of the last day. But why does Peter single them out and not include the souls of dead humans? The reason is that he is preaching the gospel in the form of a modified creed, whose purpose is to declare Christ’s descent to the bottom of creation and his ascent to the highest place. The journey takes Christ to the farthest point in the world of the dead and ends with Christ at the right hand of God, “having gone into heaven, with angels and authorities and powers subject to him.”
What did Jesus preach to these angelic powers? He proclaimed the gospel, his victory through dying for human sinners. Adam’s fall, and all the malicious damage done to the human race by his angels, which goes on today, and is all directed at defeating and disgracing us, is undone by Christ. Satan seeks to bring death upon us human beings. But now, says Peter, Christ has died for our sins, and this means the defeat of the whole satanic conspiracy. This was announced to those in Hades.
And now let me say that Hades will one day give up its dead. Listen to Revelation 20.13
The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged, every person according to their works.
The final destiny of the Devil and death and Hades and every human being who refuses to be reconciled to God is the Lake of Fire, Gehenna, the cosmic rubbish tip. And Jesus says, it is better to suffer anything in this life, rather than end up with the garbage, “where the fire smoulders on, and the maggot lives forever.” Of course Jesus didn’t go there.
I promised I would tell you what will happen when you die—if you die before Jesus returns. If you belong to Jesus and your sins have been forgiven, you will go straight to heaven, where God is and Jesus and all his good angels and all his people. It will be just like it was for Lazarus in the story, and Abraham and the prophets, and for the thief on the cross. Remember the thief? He was a murderer actually. He realized his life was wrong and in his last hours cried out, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom!” And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” So, those who belong to God go to heaven, though they do not stay there forever. The final home of Christ and all his people is in the renewed, healed universe, which God has promised to restore. I don’t know what sort of a body you will have until the time of the great resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns, and raises us from our graves, gives us new bodies, and welcomes us into his new world. I’m willing to bet it will work better than the one you’ve got now.
What will we do in heaven? Sit on a cloud playing a harp? I don’t know where that idea comes from; I imagine from those Renaissance paintings. No, the book of Revelation says “they came to life” (there you have it again) and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. It sounds like God’s people, when they die, share with Jesus in the task of ruling the universe, because that is what Jesus is doing now. The thousand years, of course, is a symbolic number; it stands for the time between Jesus’ ascension and his coming again. I am hoping that period does not have long to go. But only God the Father knows that.
What about those who do not belong to Jesus—the ones to whom Jesus will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you!” The ones who have no place in the promised new world. They will remain in Hades until the time of Jesus’ return, and the end of the age, and the great final judgement, when we will all be judged.
The good news is that no one needs to go there; no one needs to miss out on being made alive again and no one needs to be condemned at the end. Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me, I will never cast away. My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him, should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6)
So what does it mean to say, “I believe that Jesus descended into hell”? Most people fear death. Many have a horror of the darkness that lies beyond the grave. Perhaps sometime you have feared what might come up from the world of the dead: evil spirits, ghosts, the anger of ancestors, an unburied spirit. When you say the Creed you are saying that Jesus died and was buried and went down to the world of the dead, to the very lowest parts of Hades. You do not need to think of this as a place under the earth. We are speaking of spiritual things here, but things that are very real. He did not go there as a dead soul, but as the living, resurrected, victorious God-man. He told the captive spirits of his death for the forgiveness of sinners. He announced that Satan’s plans to disgrace the human race had been defeated, and that he—a man—was now the king of the whole universe.
And his body came alive again on the third day and ascended into heaven where now he now sits in the highest place, with all angels, powers and spiritual authorities in total submission to him.
You believe in Christ? You never have to fear death again, or hell, or any of the dark powers. But friends I beg you, if you have not surrendered your life to him yet, do so now. Say the Creed! Say it truly! Say it to God!