Did Jesus descend into Hell/Hades?

Question 3063.

Few lines in the Apostles’ Creed cause more raised eyebrows than the confession that Jesus did ‘descend into hell’. What can that possibly mean? Between the cross and the empty tomb, did Jesus really go to the place of the damned? Was he suffering there? Preaching there? Triumphing there? And should Christians even say the phrase?

The confusion is real, but it is largely a confusion of words, and it clears wonderfully once we let Scripture define its own terms. So let me untangle the vocabulary first, then walk through the key texts, and then answer the question as carefully as the Bible allows.

Three Words English Flattens into One

Much of the trouble comes from the fact that English Bibles historically used ‘hell’ to translate three different terms. The Hebrew Sheol is the Old Testament realm of the dead generally, where righteous and wicked alike were said to go; Jacob expected to ‘go down to Sheol’ mourning (Genesis 37:35). The Greek equivalent is hades, used the same way in the New Testament.

Quite distinct is gehenna, the word Jesus used for the place of final punishment, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched’ (Mark 9:47-48), which ultimately issues in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15). Keep the two apart and the question sharpens at once. Nobody credible claims Jesus went to gehenna. The real question is whether, and in what sense, he entered hades, the realm of the dead. I have mapped these terms more fully in my article on what Hades is.

What Happened When Jesus Died

Start with what Jesus himself said in his dying moments. To the repentant thief: ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). To the Father: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23:46). And the great cry tetelestai, ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30), announcing the atoning work complete on the cross, not awaiting some further instalment below.

So the Gospels give us a clear itinerary for that Friday: his body to Joseph’s tomb, his human spirit to paradise, into the Father’s hands. In the sense that he truly died and entered the state and realm of the dead, Jesus did descend into hades, as Peter’s Pentecost sermon confirms by quoting Psalm 16: ‘you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption’ (Acts 2:27, 31). Death held him no more than three days, but death truly held him. Anything less would undo the reality of his dying for us.

Did Jesus Descend into Hell to Suffer? No.

Here I must be firm, because a popular teaching, found especially in Word of Faith circles, claims that Jesus went on to suffer torment in hell to complete our redemption. Scripture flatly contradicts this. ‘It is finished’ means finished. ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ is not the language of a man en route to torment. The atonement was accomplished in the body of Jesus on the tree (1 Peter 2:24; Colossians 1:22), where he bore the wrath our sins deserved.

To say Jesus needed to descend into hell to suffer further is to say the cross was insufficient, and that is not a small error; it strikes at the heart of the Gospel. Hebrews declares that ‘when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God’ (Hebrews 10:12). Whatever the creed’s phrase means, it cannot mean penal suffering beyond the cross.

The Spirits in Prison: 1 Peter 3:18-20

The most debated text is Peter’s statement that Christ, ‘being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit… went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah’ (1 Peter 3:18-20). Who are these spirits, and what was proclaimed?

The view I find most persuasive notes Peter’s precise wording. ‘Spirits’ unqualified normally denotes angelic beings, these are linked to the days of Noah, and the word is kerysso, to herald or proclaim, not the usual word for preaching good news. On this reading, between his death and resurrection, or in his risen triumph, Jesus heralded his victory to the imprisoned fallen angels of Genesis 6, the beings Peter elsewhere says God ‘committed to chains of gloomy darkness’ (2 Peter 2:4; compare Jude 6). It was a victory announcement, not an evangelistic mission. I have examined this passage at length in my article on whether Jesus preached to demons.

What the text certainly does not teach is a second chance for the dead. ‘It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment’ (Hebrews 9:27). No passage of Scripture offers post-mortem conversion, and we must not build one out of Peter’s hardest verse.

Ephesians 4 and the Keys of Death

Two further texts fill out the picture. Paul writes that Christ ‘descended into the lower regions, the earth’ and then ‘ascended far above all the heavens’, leading ‘a host of captives’ (Ephesians 4:8-10). Whether Paul means the descent into death itself or simply the incarnation reaching down to the grave, the direction of the passage is triumph: the one who went down has gone up, victorious, distributing gifts to his church.

And the risen Jesus himself declares, ‘I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades’ (Revelation 1:18). He did not tunnel out of the realm of the dead; he came out holding its keys. Whatever doors death possessed, they now open and shut at his word alone. That is what his descent achieved: not a further ordeal but a conquest certified from the inside.

What About the Creed?

Where does this leave the Apostles’ Creed? It is worth knowing that the phrase ‘he descended into hell’ is not in the earliest forms of the creed, appearing centuries later, and the Latin behind it, descendit ad inferos, means ‘descended to the realm of the dead’ rather than to gehenna. Understood that way, the clause simply confesses that Jesus truly died, truly entered the state of death, which every Christian gladly affirms.

The creed is not Scripture, and where its wording misleads modern ears, we are free to explain or rephrase it; some churches say ‘he descended to the dead’, which is exactly right. What we must not do is let a sixth-century Latin phrase, filtered through modern English, teach a doctrine the apostles never taught. Scripture, not tradition, has the final word, and Scripture is clear on where Jesus was between the cross and the empty tomb: with his Father, in paradise, his work finished, his victory already sealed. For the fuller picture of those three days, see my article on what happened between the death and resurrection.

Preaching the Descent Rightly

Let me draw the threads together, because precision here protects the Gospel itself. If someone asks you whether Jesus did descend into hell, the faithful answer has two halves. In the sense the question usually intends, descent into the place of torment for further suffering, the answer is an emphatic no; the cross finished the work, and paradise received his spirit. In the sense the old Latin actually meant, that the Lord truly entered the state and realm of the dead, the answer is yes, and gloriously so, for he entered it as its conqueror and left with its keys.

I would counsel every believer to keep those two senses distinct whenever the phrase comes up, whether in a creed, a hymn or a conversation. To descend into hell as a sufferer would make Calvary a down payment; to descend into hades as the victor makes Calvary the full and final price, publicly receipted on the third day. The difference is not academic. One version leaves you wondering whether enough has been paid for your sins; the other lets you sing about it. Scripture teaches the second, and so should we.

One last clarification helps in conversation. When older hymns or confessions say Jesus did descend into hell, charitable listening asks which sense is meant before correcting anyone. Many who use the phrase mean by it exactly what Scripture teaches, that the Lord truly died and truly triumphed. Where someone means that he went to descend into hell as a sufferer, gently open Luke 23 and John 19 with them. To descend into hell in the biblical sense is to invade it as King; he did not descend into hell to pay, but to proclaim.

So, now what?

So did Jesus descend into hell? Into gehenna, to suffer, absolutely not; the cross left nothing unpaid. Into hades, the realm of the dead, yes, in the sense that he genuinely died, and he emerged on the third day holding death’s own keys, having announced his triumph to the powers of darkness on the way.

Here is why this matters to you. Because Jesus has been into death and back, no believer ever enters it alone or uncertain. ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ is the pattern for all who are his: absent from the body, at home with the Lord. Death has been walked through, mapped and mastered by your Saviour. Does the one who holds its keys hold you?

And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Luke 23:43, ESV