“And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost” (Matthew 27:50). When Jesus died and His body was laid in the tomb, the story did not simply pause until Sunday morning. Scripture gives us glimpses—brief and mysterious—of what took place in the realm of the dead during those days. We must walk carefully here, for the Bible does not tell us everything we might wish to know; but what it does tell us is glorious.
Peter, preaching at Pentecost, declared that the tomb could not hold Him and that His soul was not left among the dead: “He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell [hades], neither his flesh did see corruption” (Acts 2:31). His body rested in the tomb without decaying; His spirit passed into the realm of the departed—and there, Scripture indicates, He had a final work to do before He rose.
Proclamation to the Spirits in Prison
Jesus Himself had spoken beforehand of a word that would reach even the dead: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live” (John 5:25). And Peter writes of a proclamation Christ made, in the spirit, to “the spirits in prison”:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:18–19).
This is one of the more mysterious passages in all of Scripture, and sincere Christians have understood it in more than one way. What we can say with confidence is this: having accomplished redemption on the cross, Christ made a proclamation in the realm of the dead—a proclamation of His triumph. He announced that the victory was won, that sin was paid for, that death was conquered, and that He held the keys. It is important to understand that this was a proclamation of victory, not an offer of a second chance to be saved after death; for “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). The gates of the enemy’s prison were, as it were, flung open, and the Conqueror announced His triumph to all who dwelt there.284
Paul describes the same triumph from another angle—the cross as the moment Christ stripped the powers of darkness of their weapons and led them in a public procession of defeat:
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it (Colossians 2:14–15).
The certificate of debt that stood against us—the record of our sins, with its legal demands—was nailed to the cross and cancelled. And in that same act, Christ disarmed the principalities and powers, the whole hierarchy of darkness, and marched them as defeated captives in His victory parade. What looked like His defeat was in fact their ruin.
The Keys of Death and Hades
And here is the crown of it. When the risen Christ appeared to John on Patmos, He announced that He now holds the keys—the keys that the enemy once seemed to hold:
Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1:17–18).
Keys are the sign of authority; whoever holds the keys holds the power to open and to shut. Once, death and hades seemed to be the domain of the enemy, a prison with no exit. But Jesus entered that domain, and He came out holding the keys. Death is no longer the jailer of God’s people; it is a defeated foe, and its keys hang on the belt of our risen Lord. He decides who is bound and who is loosed—and for all who are His, death has become merely the door home.
The Scriptures do not give us all the details of what took place in the realm of the dead; we should not speculate beyond what is written. But of two things we may be certain, because the Bible plainly says them: Christ made His proclamation to the spirits in prison, and He emerged holding the keys of death and hades. The rest we leave in reverent silence.
The Graves Were Opened
Then came the moment of His rising—and it shook the very earth and the graves within it. Paul writes of it as a descent followed by a triumphant ascent:
When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) (Ephesians 4:8–10).
And Matthew records a wonder that accompanied His death and resurrection—the tombs of the saints breaking open:
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many (Matthew 27:52–53).
Notice the careful order Matthew gives: the graves were opened at the moment of Jesus’ death, when the earth quaked and the rocks were split—but the saints did not come out until after His resurrection. Why the delay? Because Jesus must be first. He is “the firstborn from the dead”; in all things He must have the preeminence:
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence (Colossians 1:18).
The Captain of our salvation leads the way through death, and His people follow. He is the firstfruits; they are the harvest that follows. Even in this strange and awesome sign, the order of the gospel is preserved: Christ first, and then those who are His.287
Notes
- 284. First Peter 3:18–19 is a notoriously difficult text, and faithful interpreters hold several views. The main ones are: (1) that between His death and resurrection Christ descended and proclaimed His triumph (and, in older interpretation, led the Old Testament saints to glory); (2) that the risen/exalted Christ proclaimed His victory over the imprisoned fallen angels of Noah’s day (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6)—noting that “spirits” usually denotes supernatural beings and “preached” here is kerysso (“proclaim, announce”), not euangelizo (“preach the gospel”); and (3) that Christ preached through Noah to that generation. This book follows the reading that Christ proclaimed His victory in the realm of the dead. On every reading, the crucial point—and the guardrail against error—is that this was an announcement of accomplished victory and judgment, not an offer of salvation after death, which Hebrews 9:27 excludes. See Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, NAC (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 182–194; Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter, TNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 157–162, 203–239. ↩
- 287. Matthew 27:52–53 is a unique and much-discussed text; Matthew alone records it, and interpreters differ on its precise nature and timing. What the text plainly affirms is that Christ’s death and resurrection broke the power of the grave, and that His own resurrection has priority—He is “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15:20) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18). See D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), on Matt. 27:51–54. ↩