Spiritual Warfare - Jesus and Hades

Again, this is another chapter that I wrote in The Battle:  An Anthology of Spiritual Warfare, which is available in two volumes for Kindle.

Link to the Battle (Volume 1) on Amazon.com !

Link to the Battle (Volume 2) on Amazon.com!

 

 

What, exactly, happened between the moment that Jesus died on the cross and his resurrection three days later? Your mind might instinctively go to thinking of the rousing section of the song “The Lion Of Judah” – “he descended to hell yet was raised up to reign at the Father’s side.”   Or, if you are of a slightly older vintage, you might think of the hymn which contains the words “he hell in hell o’erthrew.”  Is this poetic language strictly correct from a theological perspective?   One might think so if you simply looked at the Apostles Creed which contains the words “he descended to hell.”  But it is not as simple as that and this chapter may perhaps remind us that we should not base our beliefs on songs or hymns and not even theological statements that aren’t taken straight from the Bible!

 Let’s deal with the Apostles Creed issue first.  The Apostle’s Creed was a theological summary which has been used by many Christians as a statement of belief for over 1,500 years and right up to the present day.  However, unlike the Bible, the content of the Apostles Creed was fluid for hundreds of years.  The oldest available version is a Roman one from Bishop Marcellus of Ancyra (around A.D. 337) and it does not contain the clause about “descending into hell”.  Apparently this clause first appeared in the Eastern church with Sirmium's version of 359 A.D. The first mention of the descent in the Western church appears in the writings of Rufinus of Aquileia, who included it in his baptismal creed around 400 A.D. Over time, the Latin church absorbed it and officially integrated it into the Creed in 750 A.D, over 400 years after the earliest version we have!  It has also been said that this clause was mistranslated from the original which makes the problem even worse!  The only option is to look directly at the verses in the Bible that could relate to this “alleged” event:

“’When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.’ (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)”  (Ephesians 4:8-10)

“by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”  (Hebrews 2:14-16)

“He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits - to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand - with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.” (1 Peter 3:18-22)

“For David says concerning Him: ‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face, For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades. Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’ “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God…”’ (Acts 2:25-33 NKJV)

“I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Revelation 1:18)

 “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.”  (Luke 11:21-22)

“Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” (Luke 23:43)

These verses have been interpreted in different ways by eminent theologians through history and here are just a few of them:

• Augustine believed Christ literally descended into hell but he admitted several uncertainties over the meaning of the proclamation to “spirits in prison” in 1 Peter 3:19.  Why, for example, should these people be singled out for such an honor, and who, if anyone, did Christ save with his preaching in hell?


• Thomas Aquinas said that Christ descended to two places—hell and purgatory—and that his purpose in each was different. In hell, he put unbelievers to shame, while in purgatory, he gave sinners hope for glory and the righteous deliverance.


• Martin Luther, though he believed Christ descended to hell, would offer no clear cut explanation for the event.


• John Calvin went so far as to describe the descent as symbolic, pointing to Christ's suffering at Gethsemane and the cross.

 

   So what are we to make of it all?  The nineteenth-century church historian Philip Schaff made an important distinction which really helps to clarify things.  He deemed the translation “descended into hell” unfortunate and misleading saying: “we do know from His (Jesus’) own lips that He was in Paradise between His death and resurrection. The term Hades is much more comprehensive than Hell (Gehenna) which is confined to the state of the lost.”

Precise terminology in our use of Bible words is important here.   “Sheol” and “Hades” and interchangeable terms which are quite distinct from “tartarus”, “gehenna” or the “lake of fire” – each of which refers to a permanent place of residence.  Hades is a temporary holding place.  We understand from the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 that there is a divide which we arbitrarily denote by upper, also known as Paradise or Abraham’s bosom (a place of rest), and lower designations (when it should actually be right and left!). Ephesians 4 makes it clear that Christ did descend – but where exactly? Acts 2 tells us the part of the answer – Hades, temporarily for God would not leave Him there.  Luke 23 gets more specific – Jesus told the thief on the cross that he would be with Him in Paradise - so we deduce that Christ went to upper Sheol where Lazarus was - the (then) temporary abode of righteous departed souls.  (We will have to leave aside the separate question regarding the detailed criteria to determine who is sent to Upper or Lower Hades and trust to the sovereignty and justice of God).

The next question to be tackled is what actually happened there and what do the extremely cryptic verses in 1 Peter 3 relate to?  The respected commentators, Gill, Clark and Barnes, take the same view as John Miller in his “Notes”, with the following general interpretation:

·    Christ rose from the dead being made in alive in the (Holy) Spirit in which He had (previously) preached in Noah's time (through Noah) to those who were then ('once') disobedient to the preaching

·    As a consequence of this disobedience, the spirits of these contemporaries of Noah were imprisoned in (lower) Sheol.

·    Christ never visited lower Sheol at any time and there was no opportunity for these souls to repent (see Hebrews 9:27)

 In other words, 1 Peter 3 should not be linked with the descending of Jesus mentioned in Ephesians 4 at all – they are not related.  Why mention Noah in the first place?  Perhaps Peter was trying to draw some parallels between Noah’s experience and his readers experience – readers who were going through a pretty tough time:

-          A righteous minority surrounded by an unrighteous majority

-          God’s judgement near or may be near (1 Peter 4:5, 7; 2 Peter 3:10)

-          The need to witness boldly in the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 3:14-17; 4:11)

-          Salvation will come in the end (1 Peter 3:13-14; 4:13; 5:10)

-          The symbolic value of water - made meaningful by Christ’s resurrection

But we digress. Having ruled out 1 Peter 3 as a commentary on the descent to hell, where next?  Are we to believe the various members of the “Word of Faith” movement who teach that Jesus endured three days and nights of unimaginable abuse at the hands of Satan and his hordes of demons?

Frederick K.C. Price explains it this way:  “Do you think that the punishment for our sin was to die on a cross? If that were the case, the two thieves could have paid your price. No, the punishment was to go into hell itself and to serve time in hell separated from God...Satan and all the demons of hell thought that they had Him bound and they threw a net over Jesus and they dragged Him down to the very pit of hell itself to serve our sentence.”

Kenneth Hagin teaches that: “He (Jesus) tasted spiritual death for every man. And His spirit and inner man went to hell in my place. Can’t you see that? Physical death wouldn’t remove your sins. He’s tasted death for every man. He’s talking about tasting spiritual death.”

Kenneth Copeland asserts: “When Jesus cried, ‘It is finished!’ He was not speaking of the plan of redemption. There were still three days and nights to go through before He went to the throne...Jesus’ death on the cross was only the beginning of the complete work of redemption.”

As ever, we have to go back to what the Bible actually says – and when we do, we find that the above teaching is wholly false.  As a general point, this erroneous teaching seems to overlook the important fact that Jesus is an omnipotent being whereas Satan is not – the inequality in any “struggle” would lead to a complete mismatch and any “referee” would stop the fight before it had even begun.  But, specifically, Hebrews 2 makes it quite clear where the battle was won.  It was won totally, utterly and once for all at the cross – it was at the moment of Jesus’ death that Satan’s power was completely destroyed – it was here, not later, that the “strongman” of Luke 14 was overcome.  The work was done and he was entering his rest.

It is Ephesians 4 which tells us what was also going on in those three days and any reader in the first century would have spotted the meaning of Paul’s picture language in an instant.  Subjects of the Roman Empire would have seen a victorious conqueror returning to their home base with a string of prisoners in their train, proof and token of the victory just won on the battlefield – and freely giving gifts in celebration.  But here, the scene is turned upside down – Jesus the Victor is not bringing His prisoners with him on his return journey back to the base of heaven, he is bringing those He has liberated from prison in two senses – the prison of the fear of death which had enslaved them all their lives and the actual prison of Hades which they had experienced once they had died. 

And so we see this descent, in part, as a victory parade where Jesus collects the trophies of grace that were already won at Calvary, the gates of Hades having been opened by his victorious death.  And the victory parade has one more set of gates to go through – the gates of heaven.  What a scene for our minds to ponder on, as F.A. Perigo did in the following extract from NT magazine in 1951:

“Consider the welcome at the home-going of the Lord Jesus, so graphically illustrated in Psalm 24. Here are angels upon angels - there are perhaps 100,000,000 (see Revelation 5) all rendering homage to this great and glorious Person.  They had, with wonder and amazement, watched His lowly, but holy, pathway on earth, while He mingled with the human race, supremely perfect in word and work, so dignified in every way that it even calls our cold, poor and unresponsive hearts to deep and glad worship! Yes, myriads of these celestial beings - seraphim, those so near the throne that they become the celebrants of God's holiness, and constantly cry, "Holy, holy, holy;" cherubim, executants of God's governmental dealings with this earth; these all, with welcoming joy, state how fittingly it is that the Son of God should be granted the overlordship of creation, by virtue of: (a) Creatorial right, (b) Redemptive right and (c) Right of birth.  Perhaps the Spirit of God by the Psalmist gave a hint of this, in the words:

 

“Lift up your heads, you gates;

be lifted up, you ancient doors,

that the King of glory may come in.

Who is this King of glory?

The Lord strong and mighty,

the Lord mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, you gates;

lift them up, you ancient doors,

that the King of glory may come in.

Who is he, this King of glory?

The Lord Almighty —

he is the King of glory.”

 

His entrance into heaven was majestic, and He is lauded as "the LORD strong and mighty". Truly, the triumphant entry of the Victor! Nor did He enter alone, for there were the spoils which He had won in His victory.  Rising from among the dead, the glorious Victor led forth a multitude of captives from Satan’s domain, the Old Testament saints whose souls had been waiting in upper Sheol, to accompany Him in His triumphant entry into the glory. What a profound shock to Satan and the wicked spirits in the heavenlies as they witnessed the Son of God, His humiliation and sufferings over, passing upward to the heavens to the right hand of God!”

We thank God for the truth of this and also the wonderful reality that, due to the cross-work of Christ we no longer have to face a temporary existence in Upper Sheol when we die – it is now an empty place because post-resurrection, all believers who die go straight to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) – what a prospect!  Hallelujah!

 

Joel and the Problem of Suffering

Joel had it tough. Not only did he have to suffer a locust plague eating the people out of house and home, he then had to inform his neighbours that their suffering was entirely their own fault. Even worse, the suffering was deliberately and directly inflicted by their God - the graphic army of locusts being described as the Lord’s!

Though unlikely to win any popularity contests, at least Joel could console himself that he had an answer which has eluded many suffering people today who ask, "Why?!"

This isn’t some dry philosophical debating point, but a cry borne of bewilderment, frustration and pain. "Why me? Why not someone else? It’s not fair! Why didn’t God stop this? What have I done to deserve this? I thought He cared!" Instinctively, we assume that suffering is ‘deserved’ as part of a relatively simple ‘cause and effect’ model (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah).

But when a tower collapsed in Jerusalem, killing eighteen people, Jesus warned against prematurely concluding that this tragic event was a summary judgement by God on people who were more wicked than anyone else. (Luke 13:4). Plainly, God was not involved in that calamity in the same way as he had been in Joel’s locust plague. He permitted it but He did not prescribe it.

Similarly, the Pharisees assumed a man born blind was ‘"steeped in sin from birth"‘ and asked who was to blame. Jesus told them the real point was that the affliction afforded an opportunity to bring glory to God by its removal (John 9:1-3).

In answering, "Why?" it may be helpful to consider three sources of suffering: 1) humanity, 2) ‘nature’ and 3) God Himself.

We have to concede that much of the suffering in the world is caused by what has been called ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. God has given us the gift of free will to act as we please, but operating within a universe of cause and effect. The physical, moral and social consequences of what we do are therefore inescapable, and so our responsibility is equally inescapable. How easy would it be for God to stop each wrong decision or act, and the next one ... and the next one ...? But very quickly there would be no free will at all. And so God has graciously honoured that gift of free will by allowing its natural, and often terrible, consequences to occur even to today.

The constant stream of natural disasters that occur can also be traced back to a consequence of free will - the disobedience of Adam (Gen.3). In some sense, the cursing of the ground reflects the dislocation in the relationship between Creator and created, whether human or not. Until the relationship is restored, the created will continue to malfunction - a situation first to be addressed in the millennial reign of Christ, but comprehensively only when there is a new heaven and a new earth. Until then, none are guaranteed immunity from so-called ‘acts of God’, irrespective of their moral condition or spiritual status. We can be sure it’s always safe to treat calamitous events as ‘a wake-up call’ in realizing how small, frail and exposed we are, and how much we need to rely on God for our very breath and, vitally, our spiritual future.

Thirdly, as in Joel’s experience, suffering can be caused by God’s judgement, against believers or unbelievers. The end purpose of each, whilst we are still in the age of grace, is to turn us back to Him. This type of suffering can therefore be a catalyst for vital change in our lives - although it doesn’t seem pleasant, helpful or even warranted at the time.

It’s facile to suggest such a complex question can ever be completely answered! But it has helpfully been said that a fabric viewed through a magnifying glass is clear in the middle and blurred at the edges. We only know the edges are clear because of what we see in the middle. Life’s fabric has many blurred edges - events and circumstances we do not understand - but they must be interpreted by the clarity we see in the centre: the cross of Christ.

We aren’t left to guess about the goodness and intentions of God from isolated bits of data. God has clearly revealed His character and dramatically demonstrated it to us in the Cross. ‘He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ (Rom.8:32).

A Meditation on the Cross and the Tomb

The man worked with almost casual efficiency.  He might as well have been hanging a picture on his living room wall.   But the nail he was hammering wasn’t going into the wall. It was going into the hands of Jesus of Nazareth.  Infact it was a rare case that the solider even knew the name of the criminal; he’d lost count of the times he had done this.

They had found someone to carry his cross for him, but that wasn’t kindness, it was simply the quickest way to get the job done.  With all the controversy, the sooner it could all be over the better. As the nails went in, the soldier seemed oblivious to the scene around him or the pain of the crucified; all he cared about was doing a professional job and then onto the next assignment.

A few hours later - a great contrast.  Two men had suddenly realized that Jesus had died, much quicker than expected, and shortly he would be pulled down from the cross and tossed into a mass grave.  This could not be allowed to happen.  They quickly looked around to see who was going to intervene.  There was John, but he was busy caring for Mary, as instructed.   Most of the crowd had dispersed, their appetite for violence sated.  A handful of women remained – the ten remaining disciples were nowhere.

Joseph felt sick.  Nicodemus was shaking.  The time had come for them to act – but now was not the time though?  They were confused, angry, fearful and emotional.  They had no idea how to get Jesus’ body down from the cross, even if they were allowed to.  Bravely they went straight to the highest authority they could think of – Pilate.

Not bothered about their social status, they simply bowed and begged.  Amazingly he agreed to their request.  They ran back to the cross quickly to ensure the soldiers hadn’t already got on with the final phase of their job. 

Removing the body was no easy task.  Just touching a dead body made them unclean, and the special Sabbath was coming up.  They didn’t care.  Getting the body down with dignity and tenderness was all that mattered. And so it took them far longer than the soldiers would have done.

But what next? They had not thought that far ahead.  He would have to be buried quickly as per Jewish custom.  Joseph had a tomb that he had ready for his own burial and there, unhesitatingly, was the solution.  But the body needed to be prepared for burial.  They had never done anything like this in their lives, but they would attempt it for their Master.   All fingers and thumbs they clumsily applied the spices and wrapped the body as best they could.  The watching women silently noted their amateurism and came back on that third day in the hope of being able to do a proper job.

But it wasn’t required.  Jesus had arisen and folded the grave clothes far more neatly and expertly than he had been wrapped.   Despite their fears and inadequacies, the two men had been used greatly by God to protect the body and set the scene for the coming resurrection.

This imagining of part of the Easter story can practically instruct us.   Frequently, there are jobs and responsibilities in our churches – some are mundane but all are necessary.  We might look around for someone else to volunteer, someone who is perhaps better qualified for the task.

But the reality is that amongst small numbers there often isn’t someone else, or that someone else already has his or her hands full. Does this mean then that the work doesn’t get done?  Sadly, often the answer is yes.  It’s said that if you don’t do the Lord’s work, then he will find someone else to do it.  That might be true in certain circumstances, but it’s a risky excuse for sitting on our hands! Is there something you can do for Him that’s “outside your box”?

Also, when we see others attempting to do just that, maybe in an inexpert way, are we wise and gracious enough to support rather than criticize, and perhaps lend a helping hand or guiding word ourselves?