“He Descended into Hell…”

We say this every time we recite the Apostles Creed, but what in the world does it mean? Why would the Lord Jesus descend into hell? What did He do while He was there? God going to hell sounds too strange and paradoxical to have any real meaning. Yet there it is, in the middle of the Creed, set amidst the most essential Christian beliefs.

Take a look at the picture above. This was the standard depiction of Easter in every Christian Church for a thousand years. It’s not the picture we’ve become used to, of Christ rising at sunrise, victorious from His tomb. The old ikon doesn’t show Easter morning at all. For 50 generations, our Christian ancestors knew the Easter Feast began not at sunrise, but in the midnight depths of hell, where Christ the Lord descended to crush death and destroy every human fear.

That’s what the ancient Easter ikon depicts. Christ has descended to hell. He’s knocked down its doors (notice the shape they fell into), broken its chains and shattered its locks (see them laying in the blackness). He stretches out his hands to an old man and woman, lifting them from their graves. They’re Adam and Eve, our first father and mother. Around them stand other figures of the Old Testament, particularly the prophets. They look on in adoration, rejoicing that the Day they so long ago predicted has come at last.

Christ descended into hell. He submitted His humanity to the death common to us all so His divinity could break the grip in which death held every one of us.

St John Chrysostom said:

“Hell took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and was crushed by what it could not see.”

It was necessary for Christ to descend into hell, as it was necessary for Him to be born, necessary that He be tempted, necessary for Him to be crucified, necessary for Him to rise from the dead, appear to His disciples and commission them as His Apostles, to ascend in His glorified humanity to Heaven, necessary for Him to send on His Church the Holy Ghost. His birth, death, descent to hell, resurrection and ascension are all one thing: the way He redeemed mankind.

Christ descended to hell because that’s where we're all headed without Him. Since Adam, every single one of us had made the same choice Adam did: we choose ourselves over God, selfishness over generosity, sin over holiness. What we don’t grasp is that in making those choices, we’re choosing death over life. The ikon shows Christ lifting Adam and Eve from death; in lifting them, He lifts us from death, too.

The great sixth-century bishop and poet, Venantius Fortunatus, in his hymn The Royal Banners, depicts Christ on the Cross, not as a suffering victim, but as a victorious King: “God is reigning from the Tree.” Christ descended into hell not as its victim but its Conqueror.

What is death and hell to you and me? To us, who share the redeemed humanity of Christ (that’s what your baptism really means), death has the same power a third-grade bully holds over an adult. Christ has risen and we are free. Rejoice for these fifty days—and live a life worthy of that which Christ has given you. Always and in all things rejoice. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia,—Fr Gregory Wilcox