The Harrowing of Hell

Tricky Topics

Can I be totally honest with you guys? The topics and questions you submitted were mostly topics that are difficult to preach on. I’ll admit, we started off with one that wasn’t too hard - the topic of Adam and Eve is pretty straightforward. But then we dove into stuff like how we deal with sin that society accepts, into the realities of heaven and hell, and we still have on the schedule a message on saying no to friends and literally just a sampling of difficult pieces of theology. Those topics are hard because of the impact that they have on people personally. Then there’s a whole different category of difficult to preach on, that’s what this sermon falls into. There are a handful of topics that were submitted that tend towards academic theology and those can be hard to preach on because it can be tricky to keep them from becoming “knowledge for the sake of knowledge” and keep them in line with helping us as a community better understand who God is and who He calls us to be. So I’m going to do my best to walk that line this morning as we talk about the Apostles’ Creed.

This is the creed that we say every other week, trading off with the Nicene Creed, and it’s something that has been passed down from the early church. The Apostles’ Creed is a quick summary that encapsulates what it means to be Christian, an easy way to say “this is what I believe,” and has been used a variety of different ways throughout history. Today, we say it regularly in the church for several reasons - a few of them are to connect us to the larger church that also confesses this creed, to remind us about the core of what we believe, and even just as a regular statement of belief.

The Father Almighty

And the creed starts like this, saying

We believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Simple enough statement right? Central to our belief is one God, who created everything that exists. And every time I hear this part of the creed, I remember the church I went to in middle and high school, the church were my Dad is still a pastor and where I was confirmed, married, and ordained. In the sanctuary, there were three stained glass windows. On the left side there was a window that was probably the size of this stage and it had picture of Adam and Eve surrounded by birds and animals and trees - a beautiful picture of God’s creation. It was a window to celebrate the creator and to be a reminder of what God the Father did for us.

I get that same kind of feeling, that same kind of reminder, when I see incredible things out in nature. When Chris and I are hiking out at Skyline, and the sun hits the mountains just right on its way down, it makes me stop for a second and think about how incredible our God is. Or when I lived in the Southeast and a powerful thunderstorm came rolling through, I looked at the powerful storm and listened to the clashes of thunder and thought to myself how powerful our God is. Even in the things man has made, when I walk through a big city and look up at all the skyscrapers and the monuments to human engineering - God enabled all that, God is behind all of it. It fills me with awe and respect.

When we say that we believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth - that’s the kind of stuff that comes to mind, all of it is a reminder of a world God created out of love. And I want to challenge you, when you come across those things that just make you pause in amazement - let it remind you of your faith in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Descent into Hell

That wasn’t the core question that I got asked though, the questions that led to this sermon were regarding the second article of the creed which says

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

Additionally, the Nicene creed makes the clarification that

And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father.

The two questions were about these two lines: “He descended into hell,” and “He rose according to the Scriptures.” Now I want to handle these in reverse order.

First, “according to the Scriptures.” This points to the reality that Jesus’ resurrection was pointed to by the Old Testament. The fact that God had been promising and pointing people to the amazing gift of His Son for generations. It’s a statement that this faith in Jesus is not some new thing, but something that God had been setting up for all of human history.

Second is this declaration that Jesus descended into hell. This part of the creed tells us about Jesus’ work of salvation. He was born as a man, He suffered and died, and with His death He paid the price for all of our sins. We are saved because of this work that was finished on the cross. So why did Jesus descend into hell? The Bible tells us that it happened, but we don’t get too much more than that. 1 Peter 3 says he was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison that didn’t formerly obey. So we know that He went to hell and proclaimed His victory to the condemned. He went in His role as the divine Judge, to proclaim judgement on the condemned. And what specifically that entailed and why that was necessary - I mean, assuming people in hell would know they were condemned already - I can’t tell you for sure. But when I went digging for answers, I did come across three teachings that we reject about this event, called the harrowing of hell.

Christ preached salvation or the Gospel in hell.

Christ descended into hell to continue His suffering.

Christ’s descent into hell is to be taken in a figurative and not in a real sense.

These are three ways people have approached this event historically that don’t track with what Scripture tells us. But what I can say for sure is this, you are never beyond Christ’s reach. If He can go to hell and back with the news of His victory, if He can overcome death, hell, and the devil, there is no sin and no distance that He cannot overcome through faith to save you.

The Holy Christian Church

Finally, there is the third article which talks about the work of the Holy Spirit like this

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

And in this, we close the creed. When we stand back and think of the whole thing, it kind of looks at the life of a Christian. We are born, created by God the Father, then our sinful condition is redeemed, we are saved by God the Son, and then we are led to grow as disciples by the Holy Spirit.

And I’m going to geek out for a second here. For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m currently studying part time in a Doctor of Education program in Christian Leadership and my concentration is in Spiritual Formation. And in the course of my studies I’ve come across research that has been very impactful for me. There’s a neuroscientist who looked at what it takes to shape disciples, to shape character, and he discovered that “our instantaneous reactions to our surroundings (what we say and do) are created before our conscious mind is aware of them.” He concludes that “if we want to grow and transform our character into the character of Jesus, we must involve activities that stimulate and develop the” emotional, instinctive responses of the brain. And what he found was the most prominent way to shape that was “out of our community, the people we call ‘my people.’”

Studying the New Testament we see that same thing played out, in Paul we see that “Spiritual formation is corporate formation. The church is not a collection of individuals who devote themselves to spiritual formation but a community that shares the destiny of Christ together.” That’s why it’s so important that we believe in the holy Christian Church, why it’s so important that we meet together every week, why it’s so important that we spend time with other faithful people as often as we can - it shapes us in ways that we simply cannot do on our own.

We believe in God the Father who created us, God the Son who redeemed us, and God the Holy Spirit who shapes us into the image of Christ through the people He puts into our lives. Amen.