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“Did Jesus go to hell?”

If the relative likelihood of any interpretation of scripture being true has any correlation with its popularity within Christendom, the answer to this one might be yes. However, as you may have discovered for yourself over the years, many quite popular teachings are mistaken, or at very least questionable. Personally, I think the teaching that Jesus went to hell is one of them.

The writers of the Apostles’ Creed thought otherwise.

Reading the Creed

To correct any potential misunderstanding, Christ’s apostles did not write the Apostles’ Creed. It’s an extra-biblical third- or fourth-century summary of apostolic doctrine designed to combat false teaching in the early church. Tens of thousands memorized it in the years before Christians had Bibles, and it remains one of the more popular creeds in high church Christendom today. It declares, “I believe … [Jesus Christ] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell.”

Now, the only absolute certainty we can derive from that statement is that some Christians who lived more than 1,500 years ago believed Jesus went to hell. They perpetuated their belief by making the teaching easy to repeat. Myriads over the centuries then repeated it and assumed it was the case simply because they never heard anything else taught about it and didn’t own Bibles in which they might have investigated the subject for themselves and come to other conclusions.

However, to be faithful to the truth of scripture, we must assess the veracity of this and any other doctrine by standards other than venerability or popularity. For that, we must turn to the word of God.

Hell and Other Places

The first thing we’ll notice is that, strictly speaking at least, Jesus did not go to hell. In the Bible, hell is the final destination of the damned, the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. It is the “lake of fire”, the “second death” into which both Death and Hades are destined to be thrown in a future day. So far as we know, nobody is there yet.

Many Christians conflate hell with Hades, the temporary destination of the dead. This may be because they have failed to observe that New Testament writers used the Greek hades (a word that has its own baggage in Greek mythology) in two distinct ways. The first is to translate the Hebrew sheol, which simply refers to the grave, or the state where the human spirit is separated from the body by physical death, as Luke does when quoting Peter (who is in turn quoting David) in Acts 2:27 and 31. When used like this, as a substitute for “the grave” (and only in this sense), it would be technically biblical (though difficult to explain and easy to misunderstand) to say that both the righteous and wicked dead go to Hades. Perhaps confusingly, the word Hades is also used more specifically, to denote the realm of the wicked dead. One example is in Luke 10:15, where Hades stands in contrast to heaven. Many distressed people have wished to be in the grave. None wished to be in Hades, at least not in this second sense.

A Much-Needed Clarification

Jesus removed any confusion on the subject of Hades. He taught that the spirits of the dead dwelt in two distinct domains with “a great chasm” fixed between. On one side of this vast gulf was Paradise, the garden of God where the tree of life resides, the temporary home of the righteous dead, also called “Abraham’s bosom” or “Abraham’s side”. The other side was a temporary place of torment for the wicked dead.

When the Lord Jesus was dying, he promised one of the thieves crucified next to him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” I believe that’s where Jesus went between his death and resurrection. Was Paradise technically within Hades? Sure, but only in the Acts 2 sense, not the Luke 10 sense. What we can definitely affirm is that it was not hell, and that there is little hard evidence he ever went to the realm of the wicked dead at all.

The Big Three

Three passages are most frequently associated with the teaching that Christ went to the realm of the wicked dead. Let’s have a brief look at each of them:

1/ 1 Peter 3:18-20

“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, 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.”

Peter plainly says Christ “proclaimed to the spirits in prison”. The big question is when, and Christendom splits on that one. I am convinced the most reasonable and consistent interpretation of the passage is that in the years prior to the Flood, the spirit of Jesus Christ proclaimed salvation through Noah to men and women who are now “spirits in prison” awaiting final judgment. In doing so, he gave them opportunity to repent and obtain safety through the coming flood in the ark Noah was building. The spirit of Christ engaged in a similar ministry throughout the entire Old Testament period through God’s prophets and heralds. That interpretation is set out in detail here.

This is probably the strongest argument for Jesus going to the realm of the wicked dead. I don’t find it compelling. Others do.

2/ Ephesians 4:8-10

“Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)”

When Paul writes of the “lower regions”, some readers assume he is referring to the realm of the wicked dead. The venerable KJV rendered this “the lower parts of the earth”. I suppose if you believe Hades is physically underground, that’s one way you might take it. However, it seems to me the apostle is contrasting the Lord’s ascension to the Father’s right hand after his resurrection with his humble descent from heaven to earth to become a man and die on the cross. English translations vary, and appealing to the Greek doesn’t settle the matter. I like the NLT here, which reads, “Christ also descended to our lowly world”. I believe that’s the sense of it, and a large number of translators agree.

3/ Psalm 16:10-11

“My flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”

This particular Davidic psalm is prophetic, and speaks of Messiah. Paul makes that claim in his sermon in Pisidian Antioch, so we have no reason to be unsure about it. This is probably the weakest purported reference to Jesus’ alleged time in the realm of the wicked dead in that, on the face of it, David appears to be saying the opposite. But advocates of the doctrine say David’s point is not that God would not allow Messiah to go to Hades at all, but that he would not leave him there. Christ’s perfections made his imminent resurrection compulsory. Given that the word “abandon” is an accurate translation in either language, we should probably give them that.

The problem with using this to prove Jesus went to the realm of the wicked dead is that David did not say that. The Hebrew sheol simply refers to the state of being dead, as can easily be seen from Paul’s statement that “David fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption”. So then, all David is saying is that God would not leave Messiah in the grave. There’s no suggestion either in Psalms or Acts that Jesus ever traveled to the same side of that great gulf we find described in Luke.

In Summary

I will not make the argument that those who take the view that Jesus went to the wicked side of the great chasm after he died are obliged to explain to us why that might be. If they are reading the text correctly, the “why” hardly matters. I simply don’t think that’s the case. Jesus plainly stated that the day he died he would be in Paradise, and I see no reason to speculate that he may have gone elsewhere either instead of or in addition to the destination he promised. There are good, solid alternative interpretations for each passage that some allege teaches he did.

In the end, a correct understanding of whether Jesus did or did not go to the realm of the wicked dead between his death and resurrection is not a necessary component of our salvation, and those who believe he did are orthodox in the sense that they can point to large numbers of Christians who have always believed and taught the same thing. I simply find it an unnecessary inference from the text, highly unlikely given the well-established character of God and the Father’s intense love and appreciation for his Son.