-Strength for Today- "Where Did Jesus Descend After His Death?" - 1 Peter 3:18–20
We read in Matthew 27:50 that, Jesus, when He had cries again with a loud voice, yielded His “spirit to God,” and was elsewhere. So, where's the where? 1Peter 3:18-20, enlightens us about what happened in those “three days” between Jesus’ “death and resurrection.” “By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison” - 1 Peter 3:19. Jesus’ decent was into “Hades,” and not “hell.” Because nowhere in the Bible are we told that Jesus visited “hell.” The idea that Jesus went to hell in order to continue His suffering is unbiblical. Jesus’ suffering ended when He said, “It is finished.”
Hades is a “temporary holding place.” A place which refers to “those lost souls who had rejected God.” And the immediate mention of Noah would indicate that these “spirits,” be understood as the “souls” of those who heard his message, and rejected it, and were now experiencing “universal judgment.”
Now here’s the what. What Jesus accomplished here was God’s outward” show of His Son’s triumph over death on the cross, which sealed the fate of those “doomed” souls’” who had rejected God’s divine saving plan. So, at some time between His death and resurrection, He also visited a place where He delivered a message to “spirit beings,” and according to Jude 1:6, probably to fallen angles as well, because they were somehow involved in a grievous sin before the flood in Noah’s time - 1 Peter 3:20.
Peter doesn’t tell us what Jesus “proclaimed to those imprisoned spirits, “but it couldn't have been a message of “redemption,” because angels can’t be saved - Hebrews 2:16.What Jesus proclaimed was probably a declaration of His victory over Satan and his hosts - 1 Peter 3:22; Colossians 2:15.
And that’s exactly our message today, “the gospel.” That was the message that Jesus gave through Noah. In Jesus’ day, the “spirits” of those men to whom Noah had preached were in prison, for they’d rejected the message of Noah. So, where are you? You need to know that God isn’t mad at you! He isn’t counting your sins, and holding them against you. He wants, so much, to have a personal relationship with you that He sent Jesus, His only Son, to shed His blood, die on the cross, and then be raised from the dead. He did all that so that you can be set free from the bondage of sin and the fear of death, and enter into everlasting life with Him.
Author: Plez Lovelady, JR., PhD