Jesus Didn’t Go to Heaven When He Died
Most of us are familiar with the Easter narrative. In fact, many of us feel so familiar with the details that we don’t suppose there’s anything we have left unconsidered. Jesus died on the cross and rose again - that’s all there is to it. Three days no doubt felt like eternity to the disciples, but it is little trouble for us to rush between the cross and the empty tomb. We always do like to get to the good part.
But would you allow me to trouble you? If you’re still reading, I’ll take that as your permission. Now if you slow down with me and take a more leisurely pace, I’d like to throw this question your way: where did Jesus go when he died?
Instinctively, I expect you might say heaven. After all, we often say this of our loved ones who pass away in the faith - could we say anything less of our Savior? And yet consider the formula of the Apostles Creed:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of the saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen. (English Language Liturgical Consultation)
Between Jesus’s death and his resurrection from the dead, the creed states that he descended to the dead. Older translations of the creed use “hell” rather than “the dead”, but this is a poor translation of the Greek term Hades which simply denotes the place of the dead and does not signify the lake of fire which will destroy unrepentant sinners at the Final Judgment. Notice also, heaven only appears when Christ ascends, which explicitly takes place after his resurrection.
Lest we think this is just some traditional speculation, there is biblical text to consider in support of this account.
Consider first the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew:
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. [Mat 12:40 ESV]
By his own account, it appears that Jesus expected to be in “the heart of the earth” until his resurrection. This phrase aligns with the Hebrew conception of Sheol which is linguistically parallel with the Greek term Hades as the universal place of the dead to which all descend into the earth.
At this point, it is important to make some fine distinctions which I will only be able to state and not establish in the space of this post. Jesus is one person with two natures, divine and human, and he is both fully God and fully Human. The death of Jesus does not disrupt the triune relationship he shares with the Father and the Spirit as the Son of God – his divine nature remains untouched by death. However, as the Son of Man, Jesus in his human nature truly experienced death.
Every person knows what it means to suffer pain, but none of us knows with personal certainty what it means to be completely dead, however close we might come to it (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog post). Christians are divided as to whether death is an unconscious or conscious experience. Moreover, we are left to wonder if the experience of death has changed for the Christian, given that Christ’s victory might alter the spiritual resting place of the saints. All these very interesting questions must be put aside for now. Whatever the case may be for us today, it appears that Christ’s human experience of death was not in the heavenly realm.
Paul offers a similar account to Christ’s own:
But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). [Romans 10:6-7 ESV]
The abyss here to which Paul refers is used in a manner to make it comparable with Hades, given its juxtaposition with heaven.[i] If in death Christ was located merely by his body, no descent would be required at all; his body was laid in a cavernous tomb, not in the ground. The location is clearly spiritual.
Finally, we look to the apostle Peter’s comments in 1 Peter 3. This passage is the biblical source for the Harrowing of Hell tradition.
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. [1 Peter 3:18-20 ESV]
It is difficult to interpret the nature of Christ’s activities in these verses. Dr. Freeman Barton prefers the interpretation that these “are people to whom Jesus preached by the Spirit through Noah and who are ‘in prison’ now because they refused to believe.”[ii] This interpretation is certainly consistent with the Advent Christian conception of death as a state of unconsciousness, thus meaning that Jesus would be humanly unconscious in death. However, we should grant that if any human norm were to be superseded, it might be in the case of the death of the man who was also fully God. Nevertheless, all these details stand apart from the primary consideration at hand. Whatever the activities or lack thereof that Christ took up during his state of being dead, he was not in heaven.
Why is this important? Well, aside from the basic importance of knowing the true facts of any matter, knowing this about Christ’s death informs our understanding of God’s intended future for human beings. God’s purpose is not for us to flit about as ghosts. If that were the case, no resurrection would required at all. That Christ’s heavenly appearance only occurs after his resurrection reveals that material existence is God’s eternal design for mankind. We are only acquainted with the broken condition of our material existence and so we are quick to believe that our eternal state would be purely spiritual. And yet any Christian who is orthodox must affirm the future resurrection of the dead; this most basic confession should disabuse every Christian of the notion that our hope is to be rid of physical bodies. God’s intent is to redeem and restore his material creation, including human beings. That Jesus did not enter into heaven until his own human nature was restored in this fashion makes this abundantly clear.
In fact, bodily existence is so fundamental to being human, that the work of atonement was only brought to completion when Christ ascended into heaven in the form of his resurrection body, piercing the veil of the heavenly temple to present himself in his full humanity as our high priest and the sacrifice for our sins. No merely spiritual intercession would suffice. (Hebrews 2:14-18)
What does this mean for our own time between death and resurrection? It means our redemption stands incomplete. Conscious or unconscious, held in heaven or in the place of the dead, we are not yet what God would have us to be. As in life, so we are in death. There is work yet to be done.
Because Jesus conquered death in his resurrection and brought with him a transformed human nature, we can face our own deaths knowing that we will not be left unclothed, but will be further clothed (2 Corinthians. 5:4). We who have pledged ourselves to Christ will be more magnificently adorned in our material being than ever before. When heaven comes down to a new earth, when our bodies are raised up from the grave, then shall we shall be made complete unto the image of the Son of Man, the Second Adam, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
[i] Dr. Freeman Barton comments thus on this passage in his book Heaven, Hell, and Hades, p. 52
[ii] Ibid. 69