Did Jesus go to hell between His death and resurrection?

Many a Christian believes that the Lord, between the crucifixion and resurrection, went down to hell, and, during the time that His Spirit was absent from the body, preached in hell to the spirits who had been disobedient in Noah's time. But it is very peculiar that Christ should preach only to the disobedient of Noah's day, and leave all the rest. He would not have been so particular as to His audience, I trow, had he gone there, but I do not believe he did. He says elsewhere, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades" (Ps. 16:10). That His soul went into hades is certain from this scripture, but we must bear in mind that "hades" is a condition, not a place. There is a hades of the blessed dead, as well as a hades of the wicked dead. Into the hades of the blessed Jesus undoubtedly passed, for He said to the dying thief, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise," and eventually, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:43-46). We may. safely conclude that the hades He went to was not the "prison" in which the spirits of the godless of Noah's day are chained.

The Spirit of Christ in Noah really preached to the people in Noah's day. How the Spirit of Christ? We have seen in the first chapter of this epistle that very expression (1 Peter 1:10-11). The Spirit of Christ in the prophets could write Scripture, and then search Scripture. So the Spirit of Christ in Noah could proclaim the Gospel to the antediluvians, while they were men on the earth. In Genesis 6 God says, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." This is the very word. The Spirit of the Lord strove with them for a hundred and twenty years. The Spirit of Christ in Noah proclaimed the Gospel all that time. It was the preaching of righteousness and coming judgment. The spirits of these men are in prison now, because they were disobedient to the word preached to them then.

We have shown that it was an impossibility that Christ was in any way quickened while His body was not yet raised, hence a visit to Hades is positively excluded between His death and resurrection. There is only another alternative. If it is true that He descended into these regions, then it must have been after His resurrection. But that is equally untenable. The so-called "Apostle's Creed" puts the descent between His death and resurrection and all the other theorists follow this view. We have shown what the passage does not mean. It cannot mean a visit of the disembodied Christ to Hades, for it speaks of the quickening by the Spirit, and that means His physical resurrection.

In the next place the earth was shaken, the rocks were rent, and the tombs opened. This statement is peculiar to Matthew; we do not find it in the other Gospel records. The death of the King shook the earth and rent the rocks. The opened tombs declared the glorious news, that His death hath broken the bands of death forever; through death He destroyed him, that had the power of death, the devil (Heb. 2:14). The interpretation that the rocks were rent and the graves opened, because the Lord in spirit descended into hades, we reject as unscriptural and fanciful, leading towards more serious errors. The Lord did not descend into hades; He went to paradise.

But besides this great sign, showing the captivity led captive, the power of death destroyed by His death, we read something else. "Many bodies of the saints fallen asleep arose, and going out of the tombs after His resurrection, entered into the holy city and appeared to many." The reader notices that the resurrection of the bodies of these saints did not take place immediately after the Lord had dismissed His spirit. They came forth after His resurrection. They could not precede Him. He is the first fruits, and these saints could not rise till He was risen on the third day. But why is it mentioned here and not in the next chapter in connection with His own resurrection? It belongs there historically. It is put here by the Holy Spirit to show the effect of the great work accomplished on the cross, the efficacy of the death of our Saviour. Death is now to be swallowed up in victory. "Where O death is thy sting? Where O death thy victory? Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin the law. But thanks to God, who gives us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinth 15:55-57). By His death the great work of deliverance has been accomplished, and this makes resurrection possible. The rising of the bodies of these saints is a solemn and glorious anticipation of the first resurrection, soon to come. These risen Saints, who came forth after He had left the grave, entered actually in the holy city and appeared to many. It was another mighty, supernatural witness of what had been wrought. But one might ask many questions in connection with this event. Who were they? What became of them? Where are they now? To whom did they appear and for what purpose? These questions and similar ones are unanswerable. It is useless to speculate about it. It is well in these days to abide very close to the written Word.

The Lord’s spirit was in hades between the time of His death and His resurrection. He Himself asserted where His spirit would be and in doing so proved where the believer’s would be for He said to the dying thief:

Peter, on the day of Pentecost, quotes from Psalm 16:10, “He [David] seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in hell [hades], neither his flesh did see corruption” (Acts 2:31).

It is evident that our Lord could not go to a place of torment, but it is evident that His soul was disembodied whilst His precious incorruptible body lay in the grave those memorable three days. Seeing the Lord was perfectly sinless, we can understand how His blessed holy body saw no corruption, for corruption is the effect of sin. Seeing that the blessed Lord had effected the full settlement of the question of sin by his atoning death on the cross, death could have no further claim upon Him. When sinful bodies die, death holds its sway and the process of corruption sets in at once.

I do not take ψυχή (Acts 2:31) in any other sense but soul. His soul was in hades, His body in the grave: but I do not see how it separates His soul from His Person; the divine nature has nothing to do with place. His soul was separated from His body, but both held by divine power, so to speak, for His resurrection and glory. I do not think leaving out ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ makes much difference, as it is in the psalm and quoted before. But I see no difficulty in the statement, for His soul was in paradise, His body in the grave; ἅδου is merely the invisible place of departed spirits without more.

But the Lord Jesus promised Him much more than he asked, with the positive declaration that, not in the distant future, but on that very day he would be with Christ in paradise. This is decisive! Though their bodies were buried, yet their spirits and souls were that day in paradise. Paradise is the third heaven, as 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 declares and Revelation 2:7 confirms; that is, the very presence of God. Some have been confused by the wording of the King James Version of Scripture in its quoting Christ as saying, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). The word "hell" in that verse is not "Gehenna," the lake of fire, but "hades" (or in Hebrew "sheol") which does not indicate a place, but a state. It is the unseen state of the soul and spirit as separated from the body. His spirit and soul were therefore in the unseen condition called "hades," but in the place called "paradise," the third heaven. In resurrection His soul would not be left in this unseen condition, nor His body allowed to see corruption: both would be reunited.

There is no possible connection between this scripture and 1 Peter 3:19. They refer to entirely different subjects. In Psalm 16 we have the Lord's experience as the dependent Man, while passing through this world, and also in the prospect of death. He is thus. seen in it more in the character of the "Leader and Completer," the perfect Exemplar, of faith. Verse 8 closes, so to speak, His earthly pathway; and it is, as in the contemplation of death and the grave, that He says, in verses 9 and 10, "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." The word rendered "hell" in verse 10 is misleading. It is more exactly hades, as may be seen from Peter's citation of the passage on the day of Pentecost. (See the Greek of Acts 2:27-31.) Now, hades is a general term to indicate the place of departed spirits, and it is thus used of such in the case of unbelievers as well as of believers. (See Luke 16:23.) But then it must be remembered that, while the term covers equally the abode of good and bad spirits, the place of "the spirits of just men made perfect" is entirely different from that where the spirits of the unsaved are kept. This is shown from the words addressed by the Lord to the malefactor, "Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise;" whereas it is said of the rich man, "And in 'hades' he lift up his eyes, being in torments." The former therefore are in a state of blessedness with Christ; the latter are in a condition of unspeakable woe, shut out for ever from the presence of the Lord. There is consequently no foundation whatever for the popular idea that our blessed Lord descended, after His death, and before His resurrection, into hell; nor, it may be added, for a prevalent opinion that the passage in Peter means that He went there to preach the gospel to the spirits of those who perished through the flood in the days of Noah. From 1 Peter 1:11 we learn that it was the Spirit of Christ that acted in, and testified through, the prophets of old. It was thus the Spirit of Christ that testified through Noah. This makes all plain when we read that Christ, having been put to death in the flesh, was quickened by the Spirit, by which also (note the word "also" as introducing an additional thing) "He went and preached unto the spirits in prison." But when? The answer is found in what follows, from which we gather that it was in the days of God's longsuffering before the flood. The Spirit of Christ thus preached through Noah to those spirits who are now in prison in consequence of their disobedience to, and rejection of, Noah's testimony.

Next comes the well-known passage of Christ's going to preach to the spirits in prison. I have no doubt that it was the Spirit of Christ in Noah; as in the same epistle Peter says, the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets; and that it is not said He preached in prison at all, but to those who are spirits in prison now, because they did not listen when He preached in Noah; and the force is then obvious. The Jews would not listen to the Spirit of Christ speaking by the apostles, and the few who did were despised and persecuted. There was no living Christ to help them on earth. Well, says Peter, it was only by His Spirit He went and preached in Noe, and there were only eight souls saved then, fewer than you; yet the others are in prison for not having listened. Let it be remembered that the passage speaks only of the disobedient in the time of Noe. Now God had said then, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." Yet these are chosen as the only ones with whom His Spirit should strive afterwards; and, mark, it was the Spirit which then strove, Christ's Spirit, which went and preached. Moreover, Peter, in another passage, says that the sparing Noe, and bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly, was a proof that God knew how to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished. How so if they were preached to afterwards to be delivered? The sense, then, to me is evident, and the whole Roman Catholic application of the passage fails. But at any rate, who ever heard of preaching in purgatory? That is not Romish doctrine. People go there to finish penance and be purged, not to hear sermons.

132 Christ said to the thief that he should be in paradise. It is monstrous, well-nigh blasphemy, to quote this. Do they mean that the blessed Lord went to purgatory? When Paul was caught up to paradise, and heard unutterable words, he did not go to purgatory, I suppose. Departed souls are in an intermediate state, no doubt, because they have not their bodies; but they are "present with the Lord," 2 Cor. 5. They "depart and are with Christ, which is far better" (Phil. I); they are the same day in paradise with Him (Luke 23); the Lord Jesus receives their spirit (Acts 7). Paul did not descend into paradise; he was caught up there. But it is monstrous and horrible to make purgatory out of the paradise the soul of Christ went to at His death. His work was so blessed, that the poor thief, justly hung for his crimes, could go straight to paradise with Christ Himself, and not go near any purgatory, because he was purged by the death of Christ. This was what the Lord told him, and teaches us — that the Lord's work was so perfect, that it takes a thief into paradise, as sure as Christ is there, for Christ had borne his sins, and His blood cleansed him from them. The thief thought he would have to wait till Christ came in the glory of His kingdom. No, says the Lord, you shall not wait till then; you shall go straight to paradise with Me to-day. His work was perfect for him — cleansed him; and those wretched teachers would make purgatory of it, and send the Lord there! The Lord forgive them.

A. To be understood, this verse must be taken with what goes before. Christ was put to death in flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient as they at one time were when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved through water; which figure also doth now save you, etc. Just as we read in 1 Peter 1:10-12 of Christ's Spirit in the prophets testifying, so we here learn that His Spirit (i.e. in Noah) preached. Those who heard were disobedient then, and their spirits are in prison now. Christ's Spirit by Noah went and preached to them when they were living men, before the Deluge came; but they rejected the Word, and now consequently their spirits await the judgment at the resurrecion of the unjust. The collocation of the Greek (τοῒς ἐν φυλακῆ πνέμασιν) is decisive, that the true connection is not with the preaching, but between the spirits and prison. They were sinners disobedient to the message, not saints comforted. The preaching was on earth, where the unbelieving rejection was; and because of it their spirits are now imprisoned (the very opposite of paradise) till judgment come.