Over the past month, we've been learning the basic building blocks of the Christian faith by taking a look at the Apostles' Creed, a summary of what Christians are supposed to believe, the core story that motivates us and empowers us. We started by proclaiming that we “believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” And we also confessed our belief in “Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” Although his biography is without beginning, we jumped ahead to where his divine life intersected our human world by confessing that God's Son was “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” After his birth into human life through the Virgin Mary, Jesus – Israel's Messiah and the Last Adam – grew to human manhood, ministered, preached, healed, battled the darkness... but then, we say, he “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” at a given time in history. Not only that, but he “was crucified” – nailed to a cross, in the cruel Roman punishment for lowlife criminals and slaves. And there on that old rugged cross, Jesus “died,” after which, his body “was buried” in a nearby tomb, courtesy of a friendly Sanhedrin member named Joseph of Arimathea. That's what happened to his body. But there was more to Jesus to his body, wasn't there? We know what happened to Jesus' body when it came down from the cross. But what about his soul?
The Creed answers that question, too. And it might surprise us. The next line reads: “He descended into hell.” Now, when you hear that, you might be saying, “Whoa, what? Jesus went to hell?” Well, sort of – if we suspend our preconceptions of what the word 'hell' means. Jesus did not have any further suffering to do. No torture, no torment, no burning. That is not part of the story. To understand why our Creed talks about him descending into 'hell,' we need to ask the question: what happened to Old Testament folks when they died? What is the Old Testament's picture of life after death?
Because there is one, and it isn't terribly rosy. In the Old Testament, when people die, they descend into what we today might call 'the underworld,' the realm beneath. Sometimes, the ancient Israelites called it “the Pit,” or various other nicknames. But the most common word they used for it was Sheol. If you flip through the pages of your Bible, there's a good chance you'll find that Hebrew word here and there in the Old Testament: Sheol. Later, when the Old Testament got translated into Greek, the translators had to decide on an equivalent Greek word, and they went with Hades. So this pre-Christian underworld – we might call it Sheol, might call it Hades. But that's what happened to the souls of the departed.
If 'heaven' is a way of describing what's far up, 'Sheol' was their way of describing what's far down. Psalm 71 describes it as “the depths of the earth” (Psalm 71:20). One of Job's friends describes something mysterious as “higher than the heights of heaven” and “deeper than Sheol” (Job 11:18). God tells Amos that he'll capture people no matter where they hide: “If they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; if they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down” (Amos 9:2). So Sheol is deep, Sheol is somewhere you might imagine digging to. And when Isaiah offers King Ahaz a sign, he says, “Let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven” (Isaiah 7:11). Sheol is as far from heaven as you can get. It's down, down, way down deep. And it's where everybody was to end up: “What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” (Psalm 89:48). Nobody, that's who. No mortal man, woman, or child can rescue him- or herself from Sheol's grip. In the end, it's going to pull you in. So what's it like?
Well, the Old Testament describes it as very dark. Job calls it “the land of darkness and deep shadow” (Job 10:21). Psalmists call it “the darkness” (Psalm 88:12) or “the depths of the pit, the regions deep and dark” (Psalm 88:6). To call something else dark, they might compare that thing to being “in darkness like those long dead” (Psalm 143:3) or “in darkness like the dead of long ago” (Lamentations 3:6). People who'd been dead went to a place without light, a dark place. And it's also quiet. One psalmist said that “the dead... go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17), and another described Sheol as “the land of silence” (Psalm 94:17). It's so quiet in part because not much happens there, there isn't much to do. “They have come down, they lie still” (Ezekiel 32:21). “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest; there the prisoners are at ease together” (Job 3:17-18). And so those confined there become weak and powerless – they might say to a new arrival, “You have become as weak as we are” (Isaiah 14:10). But the worst part is that, being so far down from heaven, there's no perception of God there. “There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you're going,” one book warns (Ecclesiastes 9:10). Living people might pray, “Sheol does not thank you, death does not praise you, those who go down to the Pit do not hope for your faithfulness” (Isaiah 38:18). “In death, there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol, who will give you praise?” (Psalm 6:3).
In Ezekiel 32, Sheol is pictured like a giant underground tomb that everyone can share. He draws a picture in which all the armies of the great empires can be found there: “Assyria is there, and all her company, her graves all around it … Elam is there, and all her multitude around her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who went down uncircumcised into the world below, who spread their terror in the land of the living, and they bear their shame with those who go down to the Pit...” (Ezekiel 32:22, 24). And the Old Testament also gives the impression of Sheol as a kind of prison, with bars and gates. We already heard from Job about “the prisoners” there (Job 3:18). But Jonah laments, “I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever” (Jonah 2:6), while Job asks, “If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, if I say to the Pit, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother' or 'My sister,' where then is my hope, who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?” (Job 17:13-16). Sheol is described as having bars. Sheol is also pictured as having gates. Hezekiah worries, “I am consigned to the gates of Sheol” (Isaiah 38:10). God asks Job, “Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?” (Job 38:17). And people can pray for God to “lift me up from the gates of death” (Psalm 9:13). The overall picture we get is that strong gates with bars lock up the dead souls in a dark prison, a giant underground tomb that all nations share, where things are quiet, weak, dull, and not particularly hopeful of anything beyond that.
There's a story in the Book of Numbers about people who try to challenge the authority of God's appointed leader Moses, and the leaders of that rebellion – Korah, Dathan, and Abiram – are warned that the consequence of their challenge will be that “the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol” (Numbers 16:30). And that's exactly what happens: “The ground under them split apart” (Numbers 16:31), and “they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly” (Numbers 16:33). So being sent to Sheol can definitely be a punishment. But even the righteous expected to end up in Sheol, or somewhere in the neighborhood. Jacob, fearful over the son he thinks is dead, complains, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Genesis 37:35). After the Prophet Samuel dies, when King Saul hires a witch to summon his spirit, Samuel's spirit doesn't descend from heaven but rises up through the ground – because it's coming up from Sheol (1 Samuel 28:13-14). Even Hezekiah, a righteous king, can worry, “I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years” (Isaiah 38:10).
Later Jewish writings, like one author who lived around the same time as Jesus walked the earth, say that Sheol or Hades “is a common eternal home and fatherland, a common place for all, poor and kings.”1 But the emphasis is usually on the wicked, for whom Sheol is a place of “darkness, nets, and burning flame.”2 When Jesus tells his story about Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man is in a part of Sheol that has fiery torment (Luke 16:19-31). But Jewish writings become less clear about where the righteous go when they die. Some say that there are righteous and holy souls deposited in Sheol,3 but it can also be said that there's a separation between different moral grades of people, and “the souls of the righteous are separated by this bright spring of water with light upon it.”4 So when Jesus then tells his story set in Sheol, not only is there a fiery place, but distant from it is also a well-watered place in which Abraham welcomes those righteous dead (Luke 16:19-31).
Now, we've just spent quite a while sketching out what the underworld looked like in the Old Testament and the Jewish imagination. Why? Because now we have a question. When Jesus surrendered his last breath on that cross, his body and soul – though each was still united to God – became separated. We've already discussed what happened to his body: it was buried in the tomb. But where did his soul go? Did it fly up to heaven? No. The soul of Jesus went down to the realm of the dead, to Sheol. The English version of our Creed says that he “descended into hell,” but there's controversy over whether the Latin text originally said 'descendit ad inferna' (“descended to hell”) or 'descendit ad inferos' (“descended to the underworld”). So says our Creed. But can we know that our Creed is right? What does the Bible say? What does the Church say?
First of all, Paul says that Jesus “descended into the lower parts of the earth” (Ephesians 4:9). Bible scholars are still arguing what Paul means there. Some think that 'the lower parts of the earth' is just a fancy way to talk about the earth itself. But other scholars say that it's similar to the depths of the earth, and that means Sheol. The early church heard him that way: Paul is saying that Jesus descended into Sheol, into Hades. Jesus also points to the story of Jonah and says that, in imitation of Jonah, Jesus is going to spend three days “in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Does he just mean being buried in a tomb that's lowered a few feet below ground level? Not likely. 'Heart of the earth' suggests Sheol. And, in fact, Jonah himself described himself as praying “out of the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2:2). And then in Acts, Peter says a line where our Bibles often say that Jesus, after the cross, was in “the pangs of death,” or the agony of death (Acts 2:24)... but Peter is quoting Psalm 18:5 which in the Greek Bible spoke of the agony of Hades. And some early Christians read copies of Acts where that's exactly what Peter says: that Jesus was the sorrows or travails of being in Hades, in Sheol.5 So it sounds like Jesus, Peter, and Paul might all be saying that after the cross comes a descent of Jesus' soul into Sheol. And, in fact, other early Christians agreed. Early in the second century, one Christian poet said that after dying on the cross, Jesus “goes to the house of Adonis.”6 (What's that mean? Well, Adonis, in Greek mythology, was a figure who, as a baby, was taken to the underworld – Hades – to be raised there by its queen, and who later died a tragic death. So that poet is saying that Jesus, dying on the cross, goes to the underworld.) And that's what happened. As his body was placed in the tomb, his soul descended into Sheol.
So then the question becomes, what did Jesus do there? One of the psalmists had asked God, “Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” (Psalm 88:11-12). The psalmist expected a 'no' to each of those questions. And in his time, that was true. But now Jesus has come to deliver a personal 'Yes!' to that psalmist and the others. Yes, God's steadfast love is declared in the grave! Yes, God's faithfulness is declared in the place of destruction! Yes, God's wonders are known in the darkness! Yes, God's righteousness is known in the land of forgetfulness! Why? How? Because Jesus has gone there to flip that 'no' to a 'yes'!
Peter tells us that “the gospel was preached even to those who are dead” (1 Peter 4:6). Picking up on what Peter is saying, a few decades later, a Christian poet will describe Jesus' mission in Sheol as “announcing the resurrection to the dead.”7 In the middle of the second century, some Christian writers thought there was a deleted verse from the Old Testament that was supposed to say, “The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, remembered his dead that slept in their graves, and he descended to preach to them his salvation.”8 Later in that century, another writer said that while Jesus was dead, he “preached to those who sleep.”9 By the end of the century, another Christian writer would say that “the Lord preached the gospel to those in Hades.”10 And early in the third century, another Christian poet will depict Jesus in Sheol “announcing hope for all the holy ones”,11 while a Christian writing in Rome will say that Jesus “was reckoned among the dead, preaching the gospel to the souls of the saints.”12
I want us to picture this scene. Take every impression we've gotten from the Old Testament – that dark prison, those impenetrable gates that prevail against every attempt to resist, that feeble quiet, that wide chasm between the fire and the water. Suddenly, the dark underworld fills with light. Among the shades long dead, a light has dawned. A soul has entered, and this human soul belongs to the Eternal Word of God. The divine presence has invaded death. All those who died throughout all of human history up to this point have been wasting away, pining hopelessly... but now there's an answer. And from this bright soul that illuminates the darkness, the good news is announced. Good news that there is hope. Good news that death doesn't have the last word. Good news that there's now a force against which the gates of hell can't prevail (cf. Matthew 16:18). Good news that victory is at hand!
From a distance, the souls of pagans hear the announcement – Hammurabi and Tutankhamen, Nebuchadnezzar and Qin Shi Huang, Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and Buddha, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. They listen in awe, wonder, maybe wistful yearning. And among them are the wicked who have all met their end. Cain hears the message of one whose blood speaks a better word than Abel's. The Pharaoh of the Exodus hears the message of the one who plagued him before. Korah and Dathan and Abiram hear the message of the true priest. Goliath hears the message of the one who came against death with the sticks of the cross and won. And even Judas is there, having forsaken the hope that could have been his, had he repented – Judas listens to the message of the one he betrayed, who would have forgiven him.
But they listen from across a chasm. Others listen up close, for their God stands now in their very midst. Adam and Eve are there, hearing the good news after who knows how long. Methusaleh is there, marveling at a story much older than he. Noah is there, delighting that a new ark has been built to lift him above death's flood. Abraham and Sarah are there, overjoyed that God has supplied a full sacrifice at last. Jacob is there, with his wives and his sons, hailing the Lion of Judah to whom the scepter has finally come. Job is there, beholding his Redeemer without a whirlwind. David and Solomon are there, bowing to their Lord who came for them. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets listen attentively as all they glimpsed is laid bare. For Jesus has come with a message of great hope and good news into the midst of their death. And I would have to imagine that Joseph, Mary's husband – his soul was there too, wasn't it? Think of that moment, the moment Joseph's soul senses the proximity and hears the voice of Jesus, coming for him! Surely Simeon, who lived until he could cradle the infant Messiah in his arms, was there, having departed in peace from the world above. And John the Baptist was there, having gone ahead as a forerunner yet again.
Naturally, they must have all praised Jesus. After all, even those “under the earth” bow the knee and confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:10-11). And what's not to praise? Here he was, God invading death, God invading the underworld, and his proclamation – which included an explanation of what was soon to come – was a breath of fresh air and a beam of bright hope to those who had died in expectant faith that God was not done with them. This was great news for those on the right side of the chasm of faith! But what about those on the other side? Well, in the early church, some – not all, but some – suggested that maybe Jesus' postmortem preaching was indeed beneficial to dead pagans – people who hadn't died in faith, due in part to having lived in ignorance. One third-century Christian wrote that “when [Jesus] became a soul unclothed by a body, he conversed with souls unclothed by bodies, converting also those of them who were willing to accept him...”13 Can we imagine this being an opportunity for, say, the soul of Julius Caesar or the soul of Buddha to respond with faith to the gospel as presented by Jesus himself? We can't know for sure. But some, at least, held out for that very kind of possibility.
Now, by descending into Sheol to preach to the dead, Jesus did more than just that. He cornered Satan in the devil's own house. And he burgled Death, ransacking the place. Okay, that calls for some explanation. During the days of his earthly ministry, some people challenged Jesus' practice of exorcism, in which he would kick demons out of people they'd wormed their way into and infected. And Jesus, in his defense, made some very interesting remarks. He said, “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house” (Mark 3:26-27; see also parallel in Matthew 12:29).
What is Jesus saying there? He's saying that his exorcistic ministries were a way of binding the powers of darkness, tying them up, with Satan being the ultimate strong man – and the intent was for Jesus to plunder Satan's goods, which are the people whom demons had possessed. But in the early church, this language also came to then be applied to what Jesus did on Holy Saturday, when his soul was in the underworld. In going to Sheol, he entered into the house shared by the 'strong man' Satan and the 'strong man' Death and the 'strong man' Hades. And on getting there, he bound them, tied them up, so that he could plunder the house, plunder Sheol itself, and take away their goods!
So, for instance, one of the oldest Christian hymns sings that “Sheol has been vanquished.”14 In the late first or early second century, one Christian writing described how, after dying on the cross, Jesus “descended to the angel who is in Sheol.”15 And what does it say he did there? It says that there, Jesus “plundered the angel of death.”16 So what, exactly, does Jesus take?
Well, the New Testament explicitly tells us one thing. Later on, when John has a vision of the exalted Jesus quite some time after this, Jesus says, “I died..., and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18). When Jesus ransacked the underworld, he repossessed the keys to the place. And that's pretty important. But the church has long held that the main goods Jesus came to burgle from the bound strong man were souls – the souls of the righteous, the souls for whom God had better plans. Adapting words from Psalm 68, Paul had already told us that when Jesus descended, his came down there to “lead captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8). What does that mean? Well, what appears to be an even earlier Jewish writing expresses hope that the Messiah, when he comes, will “make war against Beliar” – ('Beliar' is an Old Testament word for 'worthlessness' that later came to be applied to the devil – check out 2 Corinthians 6:15) – and it says that the Messiah “shall take from Beliar the captives, the souls of the saints, and he shall turn the hearts of the disobedient ones to the Lord and grant eternal peace to those who call upon him, and the saints shall refresh themselves in Eden, the righteous shall rejoice in the New Jerusalem, which shall be eternally for the glorification of God.”17
And the church kept up this way of thinking. One of the disciples of the apostles is said to have taught that “the Lord went down under the earth to proclaim to [the ancients] his coming, the remission of sins for those who believe in him. They all believed in him, those who set their hope in him...: the righteous and the prophets and the patriarchs. And he remitted their sins like ours...”18 In the middle of the second century, a century after Paul, a Christian writing imagines Jesus saying, “I have descended to the place of Lazarus and have preached to the righteous and to the prophets, that they may come forth with the rest below and go up to what is above...”19 A bit later, in France, a Christian leader was talking about how Jesus' “descent into Hades was salvation for the departed,”20 for he came “freeing those who follow him from Hades.”21 Around the same time, a preacher in Turkey imagined Jesus declaring, “I am he who destroys Death and triumphs over the Enemy and crushes Hades and binds the strong man and bears humanity off to the heavenly heights.”22 By the start of the third century, a Christian in Rome said Jesus went to “descend to ransom the souls of the saints from the hand of death.”23 But it was in the fourth century, just over 300 years after Jesus' burial, that a Christian in Persia imagined a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and Death himself in the underworld. Read it to believe it!
When Jesus, the Slayer of Death, came and clothed himself in a body from the seed of Adam and was crucified in his body and tasted death, and when Death perceived that he'd thereby come down to him, [Death] was shaken from his place and was agitated when he saw Jesus. And he closed his gates and wasn't willing to receive him. Then [Jesus] burst his gates and entered into him and began to despoil all his possessions. But when the dead saw light in the darkness, they lifted up their heads from the bondage of death and looked forth and saw the splendor of the King Messiah. Then the powers of the darkness of Death sat in mourning, for he was degraded from his authority. Death tasted the medicine that was deadly to him, and his hands dropped down, and he learned that the dead shall live and escape from his sway.
And when [Jesus] had afflicted Death by the despoiling of his possessions, [Death] wailed and cried aloud in bitterness and said, “Go forth from my realm and enter it not! Who then is this that comes in alive to my realm?” And while Death was crying out in terror (for he saw that his darkness was beginning to be done away, and some of the righteous who were sleeping arose to ascend with [Jesus]), then [Jesus] made known to him that when he'll come in the fullness of time, he'll bring forth all the prisoners from his power, and they'll go forth to see the light.
Then, when Jesus had fulfilled his ministry among the dead, Death sent him forth from his realm and suffered him not to remain there. And to devour him like all the dead, he counted it not pleasure. He had no power over the Holy One, nor was he given over to corruption. And when [Death] had eagerly sent him forth and [Jesus] had come forth from his realm, [Jesus] left with him, as a poison, the promise of life: that, little by little, his power should be done away. Even as when a man has taken a poison in the food given for life, when he perceives in himself that he's received poison in the food, then he casts up again from his belly the food in which the poison was mingled, but the drug leaves its power in his limbs so that, little by little, the structure of his body is dissolved and corrupted – so Jesus dead was the Annihilator of Death, for through him life is made to reign, and through him Death is abolished...24
After hearing that reflection, that holy imagination of the church, does it even make sense to ask what practical difference this line in the Creed makes – why it matters that we say that Jesus “descended into hell,” went down to the underworld, to Sheol, to Hades? But it's still our question. So let's remember a few things.
First, when we confess in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus “descended into hell,” we're confessing that the Lord Jesus Christ knows what it's like to be dead. Jesus did not just lose consciousness, and everything went dark, and then he woke up thirty-six to thirty-nine hours later. He was fully aware of what was going on. In him, a person who is God didn't merely go through the event of death, he went through the extended experience of death. He experienced it “so that, by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). The person of the Word was tied to a human corpse that rested in a specific tomb in a specific geographical location outside Jerusalem's city walls, but was tied also to a human soul unclothed by body, a human ghost (as it were), that descended into Sheol. He saw the insides of Sheol. God went undercover as an inmate. He got the feel for the place and for the experience. He understands. We have a high priest who is not “unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15), and that includes the human weakness endured in Sheol.
Second, what we confess here matters because it means that Jesus really did square off with Satan, Death, and all their powers. And Jesus won! They exhausted themselves trying to get a hold on him. They've got no more ferocity left. They're drained, they're sapped, they're toast. Jesus made mincemeat out of 'em! He stripped them and embarrassed them on their home turf, for all their shadowy cheerleaders to see. There's nowhere that a truly decisive victory can be won better than on the enemy's home turf. It was one thing for the Allied forces to fight the Nazis in occupied France; it was a whole different thing for the Allied forces to do it in the streets of Berlin. Just the same, it's one thing for Jesus to fight Satan in the occupied wilderness; it's a whole different thing for him to invade Satan's house and to fight with Death in the heart of Sheol. Jesus put the darkness to shame. The darkness doesn't like it. But the darkness can't do a thing about it. And there, Jesus poisoned Death and Hades, poisoned them with the promise of his victory, poisoned them with an infection of life that will be the death of them. Death is getting weaker. Hades is getting weaker. They grow weaker all the time.
And that underscores why, as a third point, Jesus is so important, why he's the touchstone, why he's the fault line. When we confess this line in our Creed, we're unveiling a profound truth: all who will not cling to Christ are clinging instead to Death (and to a beaten Death, for that matter!). All who will not hear and receive the word of Christ will instead remain in Death's thrall, listening to Death's disheartening whispers. That's really what we're seeing played out on Sheol's stage in this scene. What people refuse Christ, all that they can be left with is an uneasy negotiation with the nefarious powers that threaten the world but are ultimately doomed to oblivion. Isaiah pictures Christ-refusers as saying, “We have made a covenant with Death, and with Sheol we have an agreement: when the overwhelming whip passes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter” (Isaiah 28:15). And there is only one alternative to doing that. There is only one alternative to living on the earth and dwelling beneath the earth seeking refuge in lies. And that alternative is found in the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). He is the only sure foundation, the only cornerstone laid by the Father in Zion, so that whoever trusts in him and clings to him and stands on him will endure the overwhelming whip (Isaiah 28:16). To refuse Jesus is to cling to Death. And the only alternative to clinging to Death is clinging to Jesus Christ, the Light who invades Death's darkness.
Fourth, to confess this line in our Creed is to say that Jesus has changed what it means to die. Those who die in the Lord now are blessed (Revelation 14:13). Abraham is not below! Moses is not below! David is not below! Isaiah and Jeremiah are not below! And neither must you be. That realm of doom and gloom is no more the destination for those who die in the Lord. When you die, your body may go down to the earth, but your soul has no need for that direction. Paradise has a new address, a higher one. We can forward our mail upward now. To die in Christ is to have a different expectation than anyone who died during the era of the old covenant. To die in Christ is to have a hope to “depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23), “for we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Adam and Eve couldn't say that when they died. Abraham couldn't say that when he died. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam couldn't say that when they died. But now they can! Now they have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And so can we. In Christ, we have the privilege of saying, with the psalmists who anciently hoped for better things, “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Psalm 49:15). “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24)!
Fifth, to confess this line in our Creed is to believe that Jesus really does have those keys in hand – the keys of Death and Hades, the keys to the underworld. Death has no more authority to dictate to Jesus the fate of any one of us. Death doesn't even have the key to his own house any more! Jesus didn't just make a duplicate, he repossessed the master! Jesus, right this instant, has authority to raise the dead. One turn of the key, and Sheol is emptied, heaven is emptied, and the graveyards start getting lively. And Jesus, right this instant, has authority to make you immortal. One turn of the key, and nothing can separate your soul and body. And get this: the one who has that authority, the one who holds those keys, loves you! He loves you, and he's out to pursue your best interest, within his broader vision of life and glory to the world! Whenever he allows one of our loved ones to stay put in death, it's because he has a purpose in mind that's for the good. Whenever he lets a moment go by in which you are vulnerable, it's because he has a purpose in mind that's for the good. All these things are signs of his mercy we just don't understand yet. But he has the keys. And he wields them with you and me in mind!
And finally, to confess this line in our Creed is to know that the deceased are not hidden or obscured from the Lord's sight. Ancient Israel was told in the Law to have a special place in their heart for strangers and to treat them equally, since Israel should remember what it was like to be a stranger when they lived in Egypt (Leviticus 19:33-34). In much the same way, Jesus has a special place in his heart for the deceased, for their severed souls and bodies, precisely because he remembers what it was like to be a separated soul and a separated body. Jesus remembers the dead. He marks them all by name. He knows their stories. He identifies with their situation. Whenever we grieve over the demise of a loved one, we can know, from this confession, that they are not exceptions from Jesus' rule of love. He has his eye on them. He can relate to them, even in their experience of what comes after a final breath. And in that, we can take great hope and joy in the midst of every parting grief!
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