Various Scriptures The Strangest Part of the Creed: He Descended to the Dead
The Familiar
Today we are resuming our series working through the Apostles’ Creed.
The Apostles’ Creed is one of the oldest, continually used summaries of the Christian faith. It wasn’t written by the Apostles, but it is called the Apostles’ Creed because we believe it to be an accurate summary of what the Apostles taught. As such, we believe it is a good summary of Biblical teaching, and it has authority in the church to the extent that it reflects what the Bible says.
Let’s stand together and recite it now:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
One of the reasons we have been reciting the Creed every week of this series, as I’ve said, is so that it will become so familiar to us that we can all say it by memory.
Now, I will admit that we probably do not say the Creed often enough for it to become second nature. By my estimation, on a normal year we probably recite the Creed 8 to 10 times (baptisms and new members and a few other times). That’s probably not enough for us to just close our eyes and say it. But hopefully, having these three months where we say it every week will help to get the rhythms and phrasing impressed on our hearts.
That’s what happened to me growing up. I don’t think I ever set out to memorize the Creed. But we recited it often enough on Sunday mornings that eventually I realized I could say it without looking. That’s one of my hopes for us during this series.
But one of the things that happens when you learn something that way: you become very loyal to the phrasing you first learn. That is to say, even though the Creed is an English translation of a Latin document, which means over time some of the English words need to change to reflect more modern ways of speaking, we can become very attached to older words which were used when we first learned it.
So, for example, the part that says Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” When I was a kid, we used the older, more Shakespearian language: “from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” It didn’t make much sense to me—was Jesus judging a foot race?—but “quick” was a word that used to be used to describe a living person. We don’t use that word that way anymore, and yet if I were to recite the Creed to you by memory, I’d be much more likely to use the word “quick” than “living”, even though “living” is easier to understand.
Another example is the line that we are going to focus on today: “He descended to the dead.” When I was growing up, that line was: “He descended into Hell.”
So, like I said, as a kid, I was intensely loyal to that phrase. “He descended into Hell.” That’s how you say the Creed. Jesus was “crucified, died and was buried; He descended into Hell.” It wasn’t until I got to seminary that I found out some people don’t like that line. In fact, I came to discover, it is the most controversial part of the Creed.
Details
Before we really dig into this, let me sort out some details.
For one thing, I’m going to say the word “Hell” a lot during this sermon. Is that Okay?
A lot of us grew up thinking of Hell as a swear word. You know, “H - E - Double Hockey Sticks.” Is it okay to say that word? And the answer is: It depends. If we are going to use the word to curse someone or something–you know “I wish you would go to…”--that’s actually one of the worst things we could ever say to someone. We should never wish that on anyone. And if we are using the word as an expletive, something we say to express anger or frustration, that isn’t so good either. That puts it in the same category as a whole bunch of other 4 letter words.
But, it is a Biblical word. It describes a bad place. But when we use the word as the Bible does, or as old translations of the Creed does, I don’t think it is wrong to say it.
For another thing, when the Creed uses the word “Hell” it may not mean exactly what we think it means. I’ll quote Ray Pritchard to explain:
[There]are three Bible words that will help us think about the phrase “he descended into hell.” First, there is the Hebrew word sheol. A very common word in the Old Testament, it refers to the shadowy realm of the dead. Sheol is where dead people go when they die. Sometimes it is translated as “grave.” Second, there is the Greek word hades, which to us means “hell” but in the New Testament, it is the equivalent of the Hebrew sheol. Third, there is the Greek word gehenna, which always refers to the place we call “hell,” the place of fire and brimstone. It is the place of eternal torment. The word gehenna comes from the enormous trash dump in the Hinnom Valley outside Jerusalem. Smoke and fire ascended from the dump day and night. It became a symbol for hell—the place of eternal suffering.
Pritchard goes on:
How does this apply to the Apostles’ Creed? When we hear that Jesus “descended into hell,” we automatically think of the word gehenna—the place of fire and smoke and suffering. But that’s almost certainly not what the writers of the Creed meant. They were not trying to say that Jesus entered the burning flames of hell. When the Creed uses the word “hell,” the real meaning is closer to sheol or hades. The Creed is telling us that when Jesus died, he fully entered the realm of the dead. He was truly and utterly and completely dead from a human point of view. (http://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/2004-04-04-The-Strangest-Part-of-the-Creed-He-Descended-into-Hell/)
So, with that in mind, our translation of “He descended to the dead” is a legit translation. The original Latin uses the word for “Hell”, but it is referring more to the “realm of the dead” than to the “eternal torment of the soul” that we tend to think of.
Controversy
So, what’s the controversy?
Well, people will point out that the Bible nowhere explicitly states that Jesus spent the period of time immediately after His death in the place we know as Hell. And, in fact, if that is what you picture when you recite this line, it can give you a very wrong impression of what it meant for Jesus to pay for our sins.
And so, there are many people who do not say this line when reciting the Creed. I read a blog post by John Piper (he’s one of my theological heroes) where he said he skips this line. I heard a story about a Presbyterian pastor who, when he led his congregation in the Creed, would say beforehand: “Today, we will NOT be descending into Hell.” Perhaps some of you prefer to leave the line out.
Personally, I’ve been back and forth. Like I said, I’m pretty loyal to the way I learned it. I went through a period in seminary where I thought the line should be left out. Today I prefer the phrasing “He descended to the dead” to the more confusing “He descended into Hell.” But, I do think it is a line that, if we work through it, can help us understand what Jesus has done for us even better.
What I’d like to do today, then, is talk about what the line cannot mean, what it could mean, and what it definitely means. I’ll be referencing a number of scriptures as we go along.
Jesus Was Not a Prisoner of the Devil
So, first, what the phrase “He descended to the dead/Hell” cannot mean. It cannot mean that Jesus went to Hell and suffered torment from Friday until Sunday. It cannot mean that Jesus was a prisoner of the Devil.
I will admit that as a child, this is the picture that this phrase created in my mind. I imagined that after Jesus died, in order to pay the full penalty of our sins, Jesus went down into Hell where He was imprisoned throughout the entirety of Saturday, suffering the torments of Hell. In my imagination, and according to so many popular depictions of Hell, I pictured Satan as a sort of jailer—the ruler of Hell—who truly believed that he had defeated Jesus at this point. And so, when I recited this line, I imagined Satan and his demons laughing at Jesus and delighting at His humiliation.
That made it all the more satisfying when we got to the line that said “on the third day He rose again,” because then I would picture Jesus breaking the chains of Hell and busting out to the astonishment of Satan and the demons and everybody else. In my imagination, it was like Rambo busting out of a Vietnam era POW camp.
But this cannot be what the line in the Creed means. That is not a Biblical picture of what Jesus did.
For one thing, there is no indication that Jesus spent the time of His physical death in Hell in the Bible. Rather, based on what Jesus says to the thief on the cross, it seems that Jesus’ soul went to heaven. In Luke 23:43, moments before dying, Jesus says to the believing thief:
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
But more significantly, it is a mistake to picture Jesus under the control of Satan. That is a revolting and even heretical notion.
We need to keep in mind that Hell is not the domain of Satan. It’s not like there is a part of the created universe that belongs to the devil where he rules apart from God’s sovereign control. It is a mistake to think of Satan as the jailer of Hell.
No, the Biblical picture is that Satan is an inmate of Hell. Hell is where Satan and his cohorts are going to be punished forever. This is what Revelation 20:10 says:
10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
It is wrong to picture Hell as a place where Satan takes control of the souls of the damned. Hell is not Satan’s domain, it is His prison.
More than that, we must avoid the error of thinking that Jesus’ death was some sort of pay-off of the devil. We must not think that it is Satan who holds the bill for our sins. When we talk about owing a debt for our sin, we need to remember that the debt is to God. It is God’s righteous wrath against evil that demands an accounting for sin. Jesus’ death was the satisfaction of God’s holy wrath. It was not payment to Satan.
So any notion we have of Jesus being a prisoner of the devil gives way too much credit to the devil, and misunderstands the true cost of our sin. If this were what the Creed were trying to say when it says that Jesus descended into Hell, then it would be best to get rid of the line entirely. I think this is why many Christians do not say the line: it can paint an erroneous and dangerous picture.
Paid on the Cross, Victory in Full
But I don’t think that is what the line is getting at. So, second, I want to talk about what the line could mean. There are two ways of understanding this line that are in keeping with the Biblical information, and which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
So, what I’ll call the “Reformed” understanding of the line is as an acknowledgement of what Jesus suffered. That is, Jesus experienced the horrors of Hell when He suffered and died.
The Bible verse for this is Matthew 27:46. Jesus is on the cross, darkness has fallen over the land, they’ve divided up his clothes, and then this:
46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Jesus is quoting a Psalm of David here, Psalm 22. That’s a Psalm that talks about a suffering King being mocked and insulted, people saying “Let the LORD rescue him.” It’s a Psalm that talks about being pierced in hands and feet, about people casting lots for clothing. It’s a Psalm written some 900 years before Jesus, and yet it seems to describe Jesus’ situation on the cross perfectly.
And Jesus says: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In other words, at that moment, as He hung on the cross, for the first time in the entire history of the universe, God the Son felt separation from God the Father. As the song says: “the Father turned His face away.”
You see, what we understand about the cross, what Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians and elsewhere, is that when Jesus went to the cross God transferred the burden of our guilt from us to Jesus. He who had no sin became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). In some mysterious, powerful way, Jesus became our sin. And at that point, the Holy God who can tolerate no sin had to turn His back on His beloved Son.
And that would have been Hell.
You see, instead of thinking of Hell as a specific place or location, if we think of Hell as being the absence of God to bless, and the presence of God to judge; then what happened to Jesus on the cross is that He experienced Hell in full. God was no longer blessing Him. God was judging Him; that is, judging our sin in Him.
And that didn’t need to take a long time for it to be effective. Jesus didn’t have to endure that from Friday to Sunday. What needed to be paid was paid in full on the cross. That’s why John 19:30 says:
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
“It is finished.” Paid in full. There was nothing left for Jesus to do.
This is the way John Calvin understood the phrase “descended into Hell.” He said:
After explaining what Christ endured in the sight of man, the Creed appropriately adds the invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he endured before God, to teach us that not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of redemption, but that there was a greater and more excellent price — that he bore in his soul the tortures of a condemned and ruined man. (Institutes 2.16.10)
The Heidelberg Catechism puts it like this:
44 Q. Why does the Creed add: “He descended into Hell”?
- To assure me in times of personal crisis and temptation that Christ my Lord
by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain and terror of soul,
especially on the cross but also earlier,
has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell.
If that is what you understand when you say that Jesus descended to the dead, then I think that is pretty good theology.
But there is another way to understand the line, common among Catholic and Lutheran theologians, and I do not think it is off base or in opposition to the Reformed understanding. The Catholic understanding of the line “He descended into Hell” is to see it as a declaration of Jesus’ victory.
The pertinent verse here is Colossians 2:15:
15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
While it is a mistake to see Satan as some sort of equal opponent to God, we also recognize that he and his cohorts are dangerous adversaries to us. Satan is going to suffer in Hell, and he wants us to suffer with him.
So what Paul is saying in this verse is that when Jesus died on the cross He took Satan and his demonic powers—that’s what the phrase “powers and authorities” refers to—and made a public spectacle out of them. He utterly defeated them.
What Paul has in mind here is a Roman victory parade. When a Roman army would march back to Rome after a victorious campaign on the frontiers of the empire, they would ride in triumph through Rome’s streets while grateful citizens cheered and threw down flowers. And then, near the end of the parade, marching in utter humiliation, bound in ropes and chains, would come the defeated opponents. A public spectacle.
And so, one way to read the phrase “He descended into Hell” is not as Jesus going down to Hell as a prisoner, but Jesus going down to Hell as victor. After the cross, we can think of Jesus as a conquering King, going out to survey the territory He has defeated.
I don’t know if we should make too much of this, but it is interesting that at this point the voice of the verbs in the Creed changes. Prior to this, all the verbs about Jesus are in the passive voice. He was conceived, He was born, He suffered, He was crucified, He died, He was buried. These are all things that happened to Jesus. But now we go from the passive voice to the active voice. Jesus descended. He ascended. He will come again. Not just things that happened to Jesus, these are things He does. He wasn’t sent to Hell. He went to Hell. Not as a victim, but as a conqueror.
This might help us understand one of the most difficult to understand passages in the Bible. 1 Peter 3:18-20 is the only Bible verse that might—maybe—say that Jesus went to Hell. It says:
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.
There are a variety of reasons this is a difficult passage: unique Greek words, unusual grammatical constructions, difficult to see what Peter is getting at. It may simply mean that Jesus, through the preaching of Noah, made proclamation to those who died at the time of the ark. But if it does mean that Jesus went to Hell to preach to the imprisoned spirits there, then it certainly means He went to declare His victory.
Ray Pritchard puts it like this:
When Jesus died, something stupendous happened in the spiritual realm. Although it was invisible to the naked eye, it was seen by all the angels and the Old Testament saints. They watched as Jesus, like some conquering Old West hero, entered the infernal regions and disarmed the “bad guys” one by one. Then he marched them in full view of his Heavenly Father so that every created being would know that he had won the victory. (http://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/2004-04-04-The-Strangest-Part-of-the-Creed-He-Descended-into-Hell/)
If you have a picture of Jesus as a conquering hero when you recite the line about Him descending to the dead, I don’t think you’re wrong.
Hope For Us
So, when we say that Jesus descended into Hell, we certainly do not mean that He was sent into the custody of Satan. But we could mean that He suffered separation from God and judgment for sin on the cross, and that He defeated the powers of darkness and evil when He disarmed them. Both those ideas are clearly taught in the Bible.
So now, let’s talk about what this line definitely means. And by that, I mean: let’s talk about the implications of this for our lives. I have three things.
- We need not fear death.
We talked about this a little bit two weeks ago, when we talked about the word buried. We said that Jesus sanctifies the graves of the saints because He has been there Himself.
But now, we can say it with even more conviction. Not only has Jesus experienced the physical reality of death, He has also experienced it spiritually. Revelation 1:18 says that Jesus has entered the “House of Death” and came out holding the keys in his hand. Dr. W. A. Criswell, in a sermon on this verse said this:
When they nailed his feet to the tree, and when they nailed his hands to the wood, and when he entered into the dark gloom of the grave, there did he trample down forever the kingdom of death. And when he arose triumphant from it, he carried death as a captive chained to his chariot wheels. (quoted by Pritchard)
I like that picture—death chained to the chariot wheels of Jesus. Our Lord could not have conquered death unless he fully entered into every dark part of the kingdom of death. Only then could he emerge victorious with the “keys” in his hand.
Or, put it like this:
Death is like a dark room that frightens us because we don’t know what’s in there. The Creed tells us that Jesus has gone into every dark room before us. The light may not be on, but Jesus is there saying, “Come on in, I am here and it is safe.” (Pritchard)
Unless Jesus returns, we are all going to die. Jesus has prepared the way.
- The Work of Salvation is absolutely complete.
When Jesus said on the cross: “It is finished,” He meant it. There was nothing left for Him or anyone else to do. There was no other sacrifice left to be made. For those who would put their trust in Him, salvation was, and is, utterly and thoroughly done.
Or, to put it another way, because Christ died for us and took our punishment, we cannot go to Hell. How did the Catechism put it? He “has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell.”
Let me say that in a stronger way: It is utterly impossible for a true child of God to go to hell. It cannot happen, it will not happen. Our Lord descended into hell so that we might never go there. He took the curse for us so that the curse could never fall on us. Romans 8:1 says:
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And then,
- The Devil is a toothless tiger.
I hope that this sermon—and, going forward, this line in the Creed—will reinforce to you that the Devil is a defeated enemy. He still prowls around like a lion, looking for those He can devour (cf. 1 Peter 5:8). But for those who belong to Jesus, it is impossible for Him to do lasting harm. He is a beaten foe. Defeated, disarmed, and disgraced.
Martin Luther said:
Through Christ hell has been torn to pieces and the devil’s kingdom and power utterly destroyed … so that it should no longer harm or overwhelm us.
All the enemies of Christ have been defeated. They remain on the battlefield, but the end is already written. We know how the story ends. Jesus wins—and we win with him. The devil cannot defeat us because we are united with the Ultimate Champion—the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love this story from Charles Spurgeon, the great London preacher of the 1800s: He said that one night he woke up to find his bed violently shaking. Disturbed, he looked out his window and up at the sky, only to see the stars shining brightly. It was not a thunderstorm that had awakened him. So he looked out his window and down at the neighboring buildings, but they were still. It was not an earthquake that was shaking his bed.
So then he looked at the foot of his bed, where he saw the devil himself grinning diabolically and shaking his bed with great vigor. The smell of sulfur hung in the air. The fires of Hell seemed to glow off the devil’s body. He had been awoken by Satan himself, shaking Spurgeon’s world.
At this point, Spurgeon says he simply shrugged his shoulders, said: “Oh, it’s only you”, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
That is exactly the attitude every Christian should have. Because of Jesus, the devil--and hell-can no longer hurt us.
