Why Jesus Had to Go To HELL the 3 Days after his Death?
Why did Jesus have to descend into hell after his death? As they looked upon the cross, Jesus’s loved ones felt crushed, longing for his suffering to cease and his spirit to ascend to heaven. But that is not what happened. For three days, he was gone. No one knew where he was. From that dark Friday when he died until the bright Sunday of his resurrection, what exactly did Jesus do during those three days between his death and resurrection? Few know the answer, yet it lies hidden in scripture. The Bible offers mysterious clues about the keys of hell, imprisoned spirits, and the dominion of death itself. But what does all this really mean? Where was Jesus when his body lay in the tomb?
Jesus himself had prophesied before dying about what would occur during those three days. The Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Exactly what the heart of the earth means is a mystery, but Paul clarifies it. He explains that before Jesus rose again, he first descended into the lower parts of the earth. These two connected passages reveal something important. Jesus, after his death, did not immediately go to the Father; Jesus descended to a specific place. But is this place actually hell, and why did Jesus have to go there? A mysterious verse explains that this place contained imprisoned spirits. Christ, being put to death in the flesh, preached to the spirits in prison. The phrase spirits in prison gives us a clue about Jesus’s purpose. But if you think Jesus went there to free these imprisoned spirits, that is not the case. The answer is even more astonishing.
But to really grasp it, first we must explore the Jewish understanding of the time. This place, the heart of the earth, had a name in ancient times. In the Hebrew Old Testament, it was called Sheol. In the New Testament, written in Greek, it was known as Hades. When the Bible refers to Sheol or Hades, it does not always mean the fiery hell of eternal torment we often picture today. In Jewish thought of the time, Sheol was the general dwelling place of the dead. The souls of almost everyone who died went there, both righteous and unrighteous, awaiting final judgment. Certain Jewish traditions believed this realm was divided into separate areas: one for the righteous, a place of comfort, sometimes called Abraham’s bosom, and another for the unrighteous, a place of torment and anguish.
This helps us understand who the spirits in prison really were. They were not demons like Satan or fallen angels; they were the souls of human beings who had died before Christ’s coming. They were imprisoned because they were held in this realm of death. Unable to leave on their own, they awaited resolution. Jesus, in spirit, descended to this realm of the dead, Hades, a place filled with human souls who were waiting. Peter’s verse says that he went there and preached. The purpose of his descent was not to suffer punishment. It was a mission, but it was not a simple mission. It was an incursion into enemy territory, a realm with a powerful guardian who would oppose him. The guardian, as Hebrews indicates, is Satan. By his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.
The Bible tells us in this verse that Satan holds the power of death. This means Satan’s authority was not limited to tempting the living; his power extended into the destiny of people even after death. He had authority over this realm and kept souls imprisoned under death’s power. No one who entered there could escape by their own strength. Jesus, therefore, descended into a kingdom ruled by his greatest adversary in an act of direct confrontation. And here is where another crucial clue appears. In the book of Revelation, the resurrected Jesus himself declares his victory with decisive words: “I was dead, but behold, I am alive forevermore. And I hold the keys to death and Hades.”
Keys symbolize powerful authority and complete control. Whoever holds the keys to a place has total power to open and shut its gates at will. If Satan previously held the empire of death, and Jesus now possesses the keys to death and Hades, a confrontation must have occurred during those three days. Jesus’s descent was then an act of war, an invasion to strip Satan of his authority. But why did Satan have this power? And why did Jesus decide to take it away? To understand why Jesus had to wrest control of death from Satan, we must first understand how Satan obtained it. The origin of this power goes back to the beginning in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin entered the world, and the Bible is very clear on this point: the direct consequence of sin is death. Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all people.
Satan, as the original tempter who introduced sin, became the one who held the power of death. Jesus, however, was different. Unlike men, he was sinless. But for his victory to be complete, dying was not enough. Death’s domain was like a fortress, and the only way to enter that fortress was by dying. Jesus himself affirms this when he says, “I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” Death could trap sinners, but not someone sinless like Jesus. Jesus enters as a victorious conqueror. Paul speaks of his victory: “Where, O death, is your sting? For the sting of death is sin. God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
There is a curious and very important detail. The Bible calls Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection. This means he was the first to defeat death forever, and he is the guarantee that all who believe in him will defeat it too. Jesus’s victory in Hades was complete. He had preached to the spirits waiting in hell, had taken the keys of death, and had freed the righteous who were waiting. With this, the story seems to have reached its end. But Satan, though defeated in the decisive battle, does not surrender. His power over eternal death had been broken; however, his ability to deceive and cause suffering in the world remained intact.
Satan’s new war would not be in the depths of the earth, but on its surface, in the minds of men. His first move happened on the very morning of the resurrection. Jesus’s body was no longer in the tomb. His soul had returned victorious from Hades. Satan could no longer hold him, so his only defense was to lie. The Gospel of Matthew tells how the religious leaders, in their desperation, paid the soldiers who were guarding the tomb. They ordered them to spread a false story that Jesus’s disciples had come during the night and stolen the body. The strategy was clear: if people did not believe in the physical resurrection, the victory over death would have no meaning for them. The conquest of Hades would remain a secret, a story without proof.
But the lie was not his only response. His defeat also filled him with rage. The book of Revelation describes Satan as a great dragon who, unable to destroy Christ, turns all his fury against Jesus’s followers. “Then the dragon was enraged and went off to make war against those who keep God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” This explains what happened in the years and centuries that followed—the intense persecution against the apostles and the early church. Satan could no longer use death as a final prison for believers, so he tried to use it as a weapon of terror in life to make them abandon their faith. His defense became a vengeful attack against those who now carried the promise of eternal life, the very promise he had lost as a jailer.
Thus, Jesus’s victory in Hades did not bring peace to Earth. On the contrary, it marked the beginning of a new kind of conflict. It is a war for faith, truth, and the perseverance of believers. A conflict that, according to the Bible, will continue until judgment day when Satan himself will be judged and his defeat will then be absolute and eternal. But there was another immediate consequence of the victory over hell. At the moment Jesus died, the dead rose and emerged from the tombs in Jerusalem’s cemetery. Matthew confirms this: “The tombs broke open, and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”
Jesus’s descent into the realm of death is not just an isolated interpretation. In fact, it was so important that it was included in one of Christianity’s oldest and most respected texts, the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostles’ Creed is not a book of the Bible; it is a summary, a very ancient declaration of faith. Its earliest origin can be traced to Rome around the 2nd century. These were the words a person had to publicly declare to demonstrate their faith before being baptized. Its purpose was clear: to define the essentials of faith in a brief and direct way and also to protect the church from early false teachings which often denied that Jesus was a real man who had truly been born, suffered, and died.
But here is an interesting detail about its name. It is called the Apostles’ Creed, not because they wrote it together. Its name comes from a very popular ancient legend. It was said that each of the twelve apostles had contributed one of the phrases of the creed before dispersing throughout the world. Although today we know this is not historically accurate, the name stuck. It reflects that its content is based on the fundamental teachings that the apostles passed down. This creed, still recited by millions of Christians today, tells the story of salvation. And at the center of the narrative, we find a very clear statement about what Jesus did after dying. The creed states, “Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead.”
But the phrase “descended into hell” was not in the earliest versions of this creed. It began to appear and become more common in other declarations of faith starting in the 4th century. Over time, there were increasing questions about whether Jesus really held the keys to Hades, and it was included in the creed to eliminate doubts. But the Apostles’ Creed is not the only ancient text that holds this belief. Other early Christian texts affirmed it even more emphatically. One of the most important is known as the Athanasian Creed. This creed is different; it is almost a theological handbook, a deep and precise explanation of Christian beliefs. It bears the name of St. Athanasius, a key figure from the 4th century. Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria and the strongest defender of Christian faith against a widespread and dangerous idea of his time: Arianism. This teaching claimed that Jesus was not truly God in the same sense as the Father, but rather a created being.
Athanasius fought his entire life to defend Christ’s full divinity. That is why the creed bearing his name is so important. It was formulated as a powerful and detailed defense against these false teachings, defining with complete clarity the faith in the Trinity and in Christ’s dual nature—both divine and human. And in this creed, it states clearly about Jesus: “He suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, and on the third day rose again from the dead.” But there is another ancient Christian story that describes Jesus’s descent. It is a very popular ancient text known as the Gospel of Nicodemus. It is considered apocryphal but was immensely influential and respected throughout the Middle Ages. The second part of the Gospel does not just say that Jesus descended into Hades; it narrates with epic detail how it happened.
This story describes how a great light burst into the darkness of the realm of the dead, filling Satan and all of Hades with panic. It tells how Jesus, with a voice like thunder, commands the gates to open, and when they do not obey, he shatters them. The account describes Jesus binding Satan and then extending his hand to Adam, the first man. He lifts him up and leads him out of the darkness. And behind him emerges a grand procession: all the patriarchs, prophets, and righteous ones of the Old Testament who had been waiting for his arrival in Abraham’s bosom. Abraham’s bosom was a special section of Hades. The idea comes from a parable that Jesus himself told—the one about the rich man and the beggar Lazarus.
In the story, the righteous Lazarus, upon dying, is carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom, a place of honor and rest beside the great patriarch. The rich man, however, is in a place of torment. A curious detail the parable mentions is that a great chasm separated both places. No one could pass from one side to the other. The righteous were safe and at peace, but they remained in the realm of the dead. They were waiting. And in this place of waiting, there were no strangers. The great figures from all of Israel’s history were there: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; King David, the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist, and all the saints and prophets who had died trusting in God’s promises. They had lived and died in faith, but the final door to heaven was not yet open. They waited, some for centuries, for the Messiah’s arrival, the promised deliverer who would finally lead them out.
But something happened on the cross that seems to contradict everything we have said so far. This is one of the arguments experts use to dispute that Jesus descended into Hades. One of the thieves crucified next to Jesus repented before dying. Jesus made an incredible promise to him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” This raises an important question: if Jesus’s spirit descended into Hades, how could he be in paradise with the thief that same day? The key lies in the fact that for Jewish thought of that time, the word paradise was also used to refer to Abraham’s bosom—that is, the peaceful section within Hades where the righteous waited. It was a paradise compared to the zone of torment, an oasis of peace in the midst of death’s domain.
Jesus promised the thief that their souls would meet that very day in the place of peace for the righteous dead. And the reason is because Jesus was about to descend to triumph over Hades. There is also an intriguing detail regarding the translation of this verse. The oldest Greek manuscripts of the Bible did not contain commas or punctuation marks, as these were introduced by translators centuries later. Some suggest that the phrase could be read differently: “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.” In this interpretation, “today” is the day Jesus makes the promise, not necessarily the day it is fulfilled. Although this is not the most accepted interpretation, it shows how a small detail can open new avenues of understanding.
Jesus’s victory in Hades and his resurrection marked a turning point. With the keys in his power, Jesus became the Lord of the realm of the dead. With the keys, you can open and close cells at will, as Jesus did to free the righteous. However, this does not mean the prison was demolished. The structure of death and Hades as concepts still existed after Christ’s resurrection. Their final destruction, according to the Bible, was reserved for the end of times. The book of Revelation describes this very clearly. It speaks of a final judgment for all humanity known as the judgment of the great white throne. Before this throne, all the dead, great and small, from every era, are called to present themselves to be judged.
And here, death and Hades play their last and definitive role. The text says, “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.” At this moment, death and Hades are no longer jailers. They are forced to release absolutely all their prisoners to face God’s final verdict. Their purpose has ended. Once they have surrendered their last captives, the fate of death and Hades is sealed. They no longer have reason to exist. They are the last enemies to be conquered. Revelation narrates it with a powerful and definitive image: “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”
This is the end of the story. Death itself is destroyed. It is cast into what the Bible calls the second death—a state of annihilation and final separation from God. The very concept of dying is eradicated from the new creation. Jesus’s victory was a multi-phase plan. Its sting, sin, was removed at the cross. Its keys, authority, were taken during his descent and resurrection. And its very existence will finally be erased in the final judgment. Thus, in the new heaven and new earth that God promises, death will exist no more.
Jesus’s victory in Hades and the liberation of the righteous seems to complete his mission in hell. But were human souls the only prisoners in the underworld? The Bible hints that there were other captives, ones much older and more powerful than humans. Other New Testament letters, like Jude and Second Peter, speak of this very directly. They mention angels who did not maintain their position of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling. The text says, “God keeps them in darkness, bound with eternal chains for judgment on the great day.” The second letter of Peter adds that God sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment. These are not human spirits; they are angels from a much earlier heavenly rebellion.
And they are not in a waiting room like Abraham’s bosom; they are imprisoned, awaiting their final condemnation. When Jesus entered Hades, he did not just bring light to Abraham’s bosom. His victorious presence would have also carried his authority into these prisons of darkness—not to offer them forgiveness, as their judgment was already fixed since their rebellion, but to announce something terrible for them: that their leader, Satan, had just been defeated. There are some prophecies in older books that talk about this event. The first Christians saw this event as the direct fulfillment of ancient prophecies. The most important one is found in the Old Testament in Psalm 16. There, King David, speaking prophetically, says to God, “Because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.”
Centuries later, on the day of Pentecost, right after Jesus’s ascension, the Apostle Peter used this very verse in the first public sermon in church history. His logic was powerful. Peter reminded the crowd that King David, the author of the psalm, had indeed died; therefore, David could not have been talking about himself. As a prophet, he was speaking about the future Messiah. He was prophesying that the soul of the Christ would not be abandoned in Hades and that his body would not decay because he would rise again. Peter concluded that Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah. His resurrection was proof that this prophecy had been fulfilled.
Other texts describe what happened there as a direct confrontation and a crushing victory. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, uses very graphic military language. He describes Christ’s victory this way: “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” The powers and authorities are the ranks of demonic powers, Satan’s army. Paul says that Christ disarmed them, a word that means to strip an enemy soldier, taking away his weapons and armor. And he did not just disarm them; he made a public spectacle of them. This evokes the image of a Roman triumph, a custom where a victorious general paraded through the streets of Rome, displaying his defeated and humiliated enemies before all the people. Paul is saying that Christ did exactly that. He publicly humiliated the spiritual forces of evil, showing all creation that they had been conquered.
And after defeating the enemy and taking the keys, the victorious king releases the captives. Paul also describes this moment in his letter to the Ephesians. Quoting another psalm, he says of Jesus, “When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive.” The story of Jesus’s descent narrated in ancient texts seems clear. However, throughout the centuries, Christians have reflected deeply on the exact meaning of this event. Not everyone interprets it the same way. The main differences are found between the view of older churches, such as Catholic and Orthodox, and that of many churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation. For the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the descent was a literal and triumphant event. Christ, in his soul, united with his divinity, descended to hell or Hades, but not to suffer. His suffering had already ended on the cross. He descended as a conqueror, a light in the darkness.
But many Protestant theologians saw this differently. For them, the phrase in the creed, “descended into hell,” does not necessarily describe a journey to a place after death. They see it as a powerful metaphor, a way to describe the immense spiritual suffering that Jesus endured on the cross. According to this view, the true hell for Jesus was experiencing the full weight of humanity’s sin and the abandonment by God the Father—a torment of the soul far worse than any physical pain. Thus, for this perspective, the victory was fully accomplished on the cross. This profound belief in the descent did not remain just in books or debates; it became the heart of the most important celebration of the Christian year, the Easter Vigil, the night when the resurrection is celebrated, the day between the crucifixion or Good Friday and the resurrection.
Easter Sunday is known as Holy Saturday. Liturgically, it is a day of deep silence, stillness, and waiting. The church meditates on Christ’s body, resting in the tomb, and simultaneously on his mysterious active mission in the realm of death. It is the day when the king is in the enemy’s fortress carrying out his work of liberation. This meditation is especially visible and poetic in the Orthodox Church tradition. During Good Friday and Holy Saturday services, very ancient hymns are sung. These songs describe the scene in dramatic and moving ways. Often they are presented as a dialogue. Hades, personified as death’s guardian, screams in terror upon seeing a light that had never before entered his dark domain. He laments because the one he thought he had devoured is in reality the creator of life who has come to destroy his kingdom. It is the poetic narrative of the conquest of hell sung by the faithful.
Thus, although the details of theological interpretation may vary, the central belief remains. From ancient creeds to hymns sung today, the Christian faith affirms that Jesus’s death was not a passive end. It was the beginning of a victorious mission into the depths whose triumph we celebrate each year in the light of the resurrection. This entire story of angels, keys, and kingdoms is not just complex theology from the past. It has direct and profound implications for our lives today. It teaches us something crucial about resurrection. Easter morning, when the empty tomb was discovered, was not the beginning of Jesus’s triumph; it was the public manifestation, the visible consequence of a battle already won in the depths of the spiritual realm. Just as God works when we do not see him, Jesus did the same. And this victory completely changes our relationship with death.
Thanks to this mission, believers no longer need to fear death as a dark ending or a leap into the unknown. If Jesus holds the keys, it means the door of death is no longer controlled by an enemy; it is controlled by our Savior. So death is no longer an insurmountable wall. It has become a hallway, a simple passage from this life to the next into the immediate presence of Christ. This act of conquest and liberation is also why we have direct access to God. The gates of Hades were broken; the barriers that separated us were removed. Many people share how understanding these three days transformed their view of life. They stopped seeing funerals and death as a tragic final goodbye. They began to see them as a “see you later.” They understood that paradise, the place of God’s presence, is now open and inhabited by all the righteous who departed in faith. And it is open because Christ descended first to prepare the way.
In the end, the story of the descent into hell shows us the incredible depth of God’s love. It demonstrates a love that was not only willing to die for us on a cross, but also descended into the darkest depths. The implications of this journey into the underworld ripple through eternity. By conquering the heart of the earth, Jesus did not merely act as an observer or a visitor; he acted as a liberator who dismantled the structure of despair. Before his arrival, Hades was a place where hope was suspended, a holding cell for those who died under the anticipation of a promise they had not yet seen fulfilled. By entering that domain, Christ bridged the gap between history and promise. He validated the faith of those who died trusting in the coming Messiah, effectively validating the entire history of God’s interaction with humanity through the covenant.
Consider the sheer gravity of this event. When we speak of Christ “descending,” we are talking about the ultimate expression of solidarity. He reached into the very place where humanity was most isolated—separated by death, silenced by the grave, and held captive by the accuser. For the believer, this reality provides a profound comfort. It means that there is no depth to which we can sink where the presence of the Savior cannot reach. If he has walked the halls of Hades, if he has confronted the powers of darkness in their own citadel, and if he has emerged with the keys of death itself, then our own struggles in this life are never beyond his reach.
This truth invites us to re-evaluate our perception of the spiritual warfare we engage in. Often, we perceive the conflict between good and evil as a standoff on even ground. However, the narrative of the descent suggests that the battle was already decided in the most decisive theater possible. The victory was won in the dark. It was won during the silence of that Saturday. It was won when the world thought it had seen the end of the story. This should fundamentally shift how we handle our anxieties, our losses, and our fears of mortality. When life feels like an “underworld” experience—a time of darkness, imprisonment, or hopelessness—the memory of Christ’s descent serves as an anchor. It reminds us that our current season is not the final chapter.
Furthermore, the imagery of the “keys” is incredibly potent. In the ancient world, keys were symbols of stewardship and total jurisdiction. To possess the keys to Hades is to have the power to decide who remains and who enters, who is bound and who is set free. By holding these keys, Jesus ensures that death is never a destination of its own choosing, but a transition that remains subject to his authority. This means that for those who follow him, the finality of death is an illusion. It is a locked gate that Christ has the authority to unlock at the time of his choosing.
When we contemplate the broader implications of his descent, we see that it also serves to clarify the nature of divine justice. By announcing his victory to the captive angels—those who abandoned their proper dwelling—Jesus made a definitive statement that rebellion against the Creator will always be met with ultimate defeat. His presence in the underworld was a proclamation of the coming judgment. It was the moment where the balance of power shifted permanently in the cosmos. The forces of evil may roam the earth for a time, seeking to deceive and destroy, but their doom is already sealed. Their defeat in the underworld was the precursor to their final removal from the theater of existence.
Every hymn, every creed, and every theological reflection on the “Harrowing of Hell” as it is often called, reinforces one core truth: nothing is hidden from the reach of the Redeemer. From the heights of heaven to the depths of the earth, Christ’s authority is absolute. As we navigate our daily lives, we are often tempted to look for signs of God’s power only in the spectacular or the immediate. We want the resurrection Sunday without the Holy Saturday. We want the triumph without the descent. Yet, the story teaches us that God’s most profound work often occurs in the unseen, in the places of waiting and in the moments of greatest stillness.
Ultimately, this narrative serves as a bridge for the human heart. It transforms our understanding of history, our view of the afterlife, and our confidence in the present. If we can trust that he descended into the darkest abyss and emerged victorious, can we not trust him with our daily struggles? The story of the descent into hell is not merely an ancient curiosity or a piece of theological jargon; it is the cornerstone of hope that promises that no darkness, no cage, and no enemy can ever keep us from the promise of eternal life. It is the assurance that when we finally face the reality of our own mortality, we are not walking into the void, but into the care of the one who has already conquered the territory ahead of us.
As we reflect on this, consider the nature of your own journey. We all have seasons of darkness. We all have moments where we feel held captive by our failures, our circumstances, or the weight of our own existence. In those moments, recall that the Savior you trust is not one who is unfamiliar with the dark. He is the one who took the battle into the heart of the enemy’s fortress and came out with the keys in his hand. He is the one who turned the keys to the prison cells of the righteous and offered them the path to freedom. This is the comfort we have. This is the truth that echoes through the ages.
The story does not stop at the resurrection. It continues in the transformation of the human soul. Every time we choose to hold onto hope, every time we choose to act in faith despite the darkness around us, we are participating in the reality of that ancient victory. We are living out the legacy of the one who broke the gates of Hades. And as we continue to move forward, we carry the confidence that the end of our story is not written by the enemy, but by the one who holds the keys to eternity. There is no darkness he has not entered, no prison he has not opened, and no enemy he has not disarmed. That is the power of the Gospel. That is the victory of the King. And that is the promise that holds us through every shadow we may encounter until the day we stand in the light of his full presence.
