Encore Post: In the Apostles’ Creed, all of the teachings we confess are pretty straightforward, so much so that we can explain it to children — except for one. “He descended into hell.” Most Christians have a hard time figuring out what it means. Was this a part of Christ’s suffering? Was he visiting the dead to preach the good news to them? The first doesn’t seem right, since Jesus’ last words were to say “it is finished” and to commit his soul to the Father. The second seems off because Scripture tells us that no one can come to faith after death.
These instincts are correct. Scripture tells us that after Jesus rose from the dead, he went to hell to announce his victory over sin and death to Satan, his demons and the lost. (1 Peter 3:18-20) He defeated the devil and broke the power of sin and death over us. (Colossians 2:13-15) What this means for us is that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can stand up to the devil. “Scowl fierce as he will, he can harm us none.” (Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress“) In Jesus, we are more than conquerors, because he descended into hell.
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As a member of the LCMS, the following is incorrect:
“Scripture tells us that after Jesus rose from the dead, he went to hell to announce his victory over sin and death to Satan, his demons and the lost.”
In the Apostle’s Creed, we believe Jesus was “crucified, died and was buried. He decended into hell and the third day He rose again from the dead.”
Thanks for the note! According to our teaching, Jesus descended into hell, body and soul, after the Holy Spirit made him alive, but before he appeared to his disciples.
The way our formal text book explains it this way: ““For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” According to this passage, Christ, after His quickening in the sepulcher (ζωοποιηθείς) and so according to soul and body, went (πορευθείς) to the place where the souls of such men as on earth had remained unbelieving (ἀπειθήσαντές ποτε) are in prison (ἐν φυλακῇ). In agreement with this passage the Formula of Concord says: “We simply believe that the entire Person, God and Man, after the burial descended into hell.” On the order of events, Quenstedt remarks: “The exact time of the descent is according to the Petrine chain of events that moment which fell between the quickening (ζωοποίησιν) and the resurrection (ἀνάστασιν) of Christ strictly so called”43 [the resurrection in the sense of appearance on earth]. On the mode of the descent, Hollaz writes: “While the descent was true and real, it was nevertheless not a physical and local, but a supernatural motion.”
Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, electronic ed., vol. 2 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 314–315. My post simplifies this all by saying he descended after he rose from the dead. Sorry for the confusion.
In “The Satan Seller,” Michael J. Warnock said Jesus went down to hell in victory to wrest the keys if he’ll from Satan. This makes the keys physical instead of the spiritual, all-powerful Gospel.
The Bible indeed says that on Jesus’ second visible and final return, no one can come to faith, but it also says, in Philippians 2, that at Jesus’ name every knee shall bow, over, under and on the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord/Savior to the glory of God the Father. As the devils now believe and tremble, so will unbelievers, knowing they dismissed their true Savior, tremulous, gnash their teeth in darkness for an eternity in hell.
Perhaps Jesus’ victory sermon/speech plays over and over again in hell, which the Father has always controlled, and over which Christ has turned the tables on sin, death, the world, our depraved nature’s and the devil and all fallen angels, for all eternity.
Jesus suffered maximally and eternally on the cross and Gloriousclimaxing His state of humiliation as the God Man conceived and born under condemnation. Once Jesus physically died, and was buried, He was in His state of exaltation. His descent into hell was His first act under Good News, a Triumphant descent as the Gospel
Victorious and Glorious. The devil , our tormentor, and his demons cronies, if Dante is correct, will suffer the worst, in the lowest bowels of hell, all alone, as they should be.
A thought: I’ve read that the Greek Orthodox Church refers to Christ’s decent into hell as “Christ’s first resurrection.” “Christ’s second resurrection” was when he arose from tomb and showed himself to the living. Does Lutheran thought ever refer to two different resurrections?
No. We talk about the end of the state of humiliation. We don’t dwell on the particulars, since since Scripture tells us Christ went to hell to proclaim his victory over sin, death and the devil.
Thank you Pastor