Was Jesus In Hell Between His Death And Resurrection?

Many Christians believe that when Jesus died on the cross, his spirit left his body and went down into hell. Even if he did descend into hell, what exactly was he doing in hell for three days? Several suggestions have been made:

Jesus was preaching the Gospel to the unsaved people in hell to offer them a second chance to believe in the Gospel and be saved. The problem with this suggestion is that there are no second chances for people who have already died. Contrarily, the Bible teaches that “it is set for men once to die, then after this, judgement.” (Hebrews 9:27) No, it does not even matter that a majority of them may not have ever heard the Gospel during their lifetimes!

Jesus went to the “good part of hell” in order to bring saved people to heaven. According to this suggestion, these saved people were not in heaven in the first place because their sins were not yet forgiven, because Jesus had not yet died on the cross. The problem with this suggestion is that it assumes that the effectiveness of Jesus’ death on the cross was restricted to time. Contrarily, Jesus’ death was a timeless sacrifice, effecting forgiveness for all believers throughout all time.

No, Jesus was not in hell during the period between his death and resurrection. Let us look at the Biblical passages which have been misinterpreted, giving rise to this myth.

First Peter 3:19 says that “[Jesus] preached to the spirits in prison.” Does this mean that after he died on the cross, Jesus went to hell and preached to the dead people there? Many people have been led to think so, based on a shallow reading of that one verse in isolation from its context. Let us begin our examination of this verse by reading it in the context of its surrounding verses:

1 Peter 3:18–20 ... but having been made alive by the spirit, in which also he preached to the spirits in prison, who once having disobeyed when the patience of God was waiting in the days of Noah, an ark being prepared, into which a few ones, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.

According to verse 19, Jesus preached a message directed at “the spirits in prison.” But who are these “spirits”, and why are they “in prison?” The “prison” here refers to hadēs. Notice that I did not say that it refers to “hell”. This is because the modern understanding of “hell” does not accurately reflects what hadēs is. The Greek word hadēs refers to “the place of the dead” either literally (underground) or metaphorically (i.e. being “in hadēs” simply means to be dead). Whatever the case, these “spirits” are said to be “in prison"—in hadēs—because they were physically dead by the time Peter was writing these words.

But did Jesus preach to these “spirits in prison” when they were already dead in hadēs, or while they were still alive on earth? To answer that, we need to ask the question: When did this preaching take place? Verse 20 tells us that it took place “when the patience of God was waiting in the days of Noah.” The same verse also tells us that these people disobeyed this preaching. This means that these “spirits in prison” must have heard this preaching while they were still alive “in the days of Noah.”

This raises the following question: How did Jesus preach to those people “in the days of Noah"? Did he physically appear on the Earth and personally preach them? No, he did not. Verses 18–19 tell us that Jesus was “made alive by spirit, in which also he preached to the spirits in prison.” The relative pronoun “which” refers to the “spirit”. This means that Jesus preached to those people by his spirit. What does that mean? Earlier on in the same book, the Apostle Peter wrote:

1 Peter 1:10–11 About this salvation, prophets sought out and searched out, the ones having prophesied about the grace unto you, searching into whom or what time the spirit of Christ in them was making evident, witnessing beforehand the sufferings unto Christ and the glories after those things.

Before he was born on Earth, Jesus had been preaching the Gospel to people. However, it was not his consistent pattern to preach the Gospel supernaturally by personal appearances or voices from heaven. Rather, his consistent pattern was to preach the Gospel by his spirit through the preaching of prophets. This means that even though the prophets were the ones doing the natural speaking, it was ultimately “the spirit of Christ in them” which was supernaturally inspiring them to preach the Gospel, giving them the words to speak in the first place.

Among these Gospel-preaching prophets was Noah, whom Peter elsewhere calls “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). “In the days of Noah,” Jesus preached the Gospel by his spirit through Noah to mankind, because “great was the evil of mankind in the earth.” (Genesis 6:5) Noah’s preaching most certainly included an invitation to repent, turn back to God, and thus escape the coming judgement. Sadly, because Noah’s audience disobeyed his preaching, they were eventually wiped out in the ensuing Flood.