What practical comfort can we draw from the truth that Christ “descended into Hades”?
It is comforting to know that Jesus has gone ahead of us as our forerunner and forged the path of eternal life from the dead. He experienced death as we will experience it, and has gone through it to the other side of resurrection life for us. Jesus shared the fate of all who have died. He was once among the dead, once among those departed souls in Hades. Jesus is really human like us. Although he is the eternal, divine Son of God, this in no way detracts from his full humanity. He is the Son of God who became man, one of us, who shared our fallen human lot in every way, including the troubling, mysterious, and angst-inducing experience of death. As the author of Hebrews says, he had to be made like his brothers in every way, and he is not ashamed to call us brothers. In that capacity as our brother, by the grace of God he “tasted death” for us all (Heb 2:9).
Tertullian made this point about the true humanity of Christ. He wrote in his treatise on the soul: “Although Christ is God, yet, being also man … he fully complied [with the law of human nature], by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead man; nor did he ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth” (ANF 3.231).
Being God incarnate you might think he would be spared from tasting death in this way. You might think, once has accomplished atoning for all our sins on the cross, as soon as he expired, his human soul would go to some special place reserved at the right hand of God in heaven. But no, it was not yet time for his exaltation. Being the incarnate Son of God did not spare him one last act of humiliation. He had yet to go one step lower. The bottom of the cosmic parabola has not yet been reached. He must descend into Hades. He must go down, down to the very depths, to the farthest point symbolically from the heights of heaven. And he went there, not to suffer more for our sins, but in order to free all his own from the cords of death.
Not only did he share in our fallen humanity to the point of going down into the dead, but in that very humanity he conquered death for us. Over and over again the New Testament says, not that Jesus rose again from death in the abstract, but that he rose again “out from among the dead” (ἐκ νεκρῶν). Jesus is “the firstborn from among the dead” (Col 1:18; Rev 1:5). On the third day, he rose up victorious from among the midst of them as the firstborn from the dead, as the strong Savior, King, and Lord of Hades. We can take heart in the face of our own death, knowing that Jesus has conquered death and released us from its power.
In the first chapter of Revelation, the Apostle John says he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” In a trance he saw a vision of “one like a son of man” wearing a long robe. His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When John saw him, he fell at his feet as though dead. But the Lord laid his right hand on him to comfort him and said, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades’” (vv 17-18).
Therefore, we need not be afraid of death. When the time comes for us to cross over into that mysterious realm where the souls of the dead are, we know that we will not go there alone, nor will we face it with doom and gloom. Jesus has been there before us, and he will see us through.
Chuck Hill of RTS-Orlando gave a chapel talk on the descent into hell. It can be had from iTunes U here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/fall-2010-rts-orlando-chapel/id394126525#
Posted by: MF | 09/04/2012 at 06:23 AM