Six freshmen squeezed around a cafeteria table during orientation week, voices competing with the din in the room. We were all posturing in our own ways, trying to impress our peers. A moment of rare silence passed, and then she shared about her parent’s recent divorce. Her voice wavered, and her eyes welled with tears. It was a crack of vulnerability in a conversation marked by ego and self-protection.

We didn’t have the maturity to handle such depth. A beat passed, and then someone jumped in and shared about his parents’ divorce in a way that diminished the vulnerable girl’s pain. And the moment was over. I never spoke to that young lady about how that moment made her feel. Like so many orientation-week relationships, this wasn’t a friendship that stuck.

I wish I had the courage as an eighteen-year-old to fight for silence. I’m disappointed my faith was not deep enough to appreciate the value of sitting in pain. It would be years before I that it is a sign of maturity (not immaturity) to accept the inability to formulate an answer to every question.

Sometimes, the deepest faith is found in silence.

On Holy Saturday, our faith steps into silence. To give quick answers to the mystery of the execution of the Son of God and the rending of the eternal Trinity is to belie one’s immaturity.

Let’s listen to John’s account of the end of Jesus’s life:

28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. 35 He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. 36 For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. 39 Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. (Jn. 19:28-42)

The Son of God: dead. The soldiers pierce his side with a spear and blood and water spill to the ground (a process called hemothorax, where the heavier red cells and lighter watery plasma separate out in a dead body most likely caused by the fierce flagellation on his chest).[i] The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) add that after Christ died, the Roman Centurion overseeing his crucifixion wondered at his death. Matthew records that he said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54).

At Jesus’s death, all four of the gospel writers keep us in the seen (natural) world. What happened to Christ from his death at sundown on Friday to his resurrection Sunday morning? We are told nothing. All we hear from the gospels is silence.

The Apostles Creed, written by the early church, and endorsed by most Christians, includes a phrase identifying where Christ was on Holy Saturday: hell.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
      and born of the virgin Mary.
      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
      was crucified, died, and was buried;
      he descended to hell.
      The third day he rose again from the dead.
      He ascended to heaven
      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Is the Apostles’ Creed true in declaring that Christ was in hell? It depends what we mean when we say hell. If we believe he descended to a place with demons, pitchforks, and the damned, we are probably off-base. Most theologians believe the physical location of hell either doesn’t exist or is not occupied until Christ’s return. In Revelation 20, we learn that the devil will be defeated and judged at the end of the millennium. “The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).[ii]

Some of you might say, “But what about 1 Peter 3?” Some have indeed interpreted Peter’s words in 1 Peter 3:19-20 as meaning that Christ, upon his death, went down to the physical location of hell to complete his redemptive work. Peter says Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey” (1 Pet. 3:19-20). It’s beyond the scope of a simple post like this to get into the details, but I believe that the context demonstrates that Peter is speaking here of Christ coming to earth to proclaim the gospel. We are the “spirits in prison”—those enslaved to our flesh.

What then, does it mean that Christ “descended to hell,” and is it an accurate statement?

I believe it is a true statement. While the permanent physical location of eternal suffering does not yet exist (hell, “the lake of fire,” etc.), the reality of hell does exist. What is the essence of hell? Separation from God; nothing good happens in hell. It is the presence of constant, unrelenting agony. The voice of God, which echoes in his creation and our hearts is silenced.

Jesus descended to hell. He entered into utter spiritual silence.

The cross wasn’t an act. It wasn’t a show. Christ didn’t partially take on sin or play-act, enduring punishment we deserved. He became sin for us. In 1 Corinthians 5:20, Paul explains justification, “For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Romans 6, Paul tells us that there was a moment when death did have dominion over Jesus. “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom. 6:9).

The Son of God, the second person of the Eternal Triune God, took on sin and died. At that moment, the Triune God was torn. For the first time, he was ripped away from the most sacred, harmonious, and divine relationship he had known. This is why Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). This is why Christ was so emotionally distraught that he sweat blood in the Garden.

Sometimes, we throw our attention to the wrong questions. Jesus' most profound suffering on the cross was spiritual, not physical. The most painful torment of Jesus’s death was not that he went to the physical location of hell, but that he was separated from God the Father.

This rending is the most horrific reality of hell: not the physical pain or torment, but the separation from God, the eternal silence of our Creator. He will have spoken judgment on the damned and will never speak again.

Jesus “descended into hell” that we might ascend to heaven. He bore God’s silence that we might hear his voice.

We are left with more questions than answers. How can a sinless, unchanging God become sin? How can the Triune God experience separation? What does the time of separation from God before the final judgment and being cast into the lake of fire look like for human beings? How long did his time in the tomb seem to Jesus?

Silence.

Our theology meets an end. We stand before our Savior in worship and gratitude and marvel at Christ in the tomb, separated from the Father for Holy Saturday.

[i] Kathleen N. Hattrup, “A doctor on why ‘blood and water’ gushed from Jesus’ heart,” Aleteia, June 22, 2019, https://aleteia.org/2019/06/22/a-doctor-on-why-blood-and-water-gushed-from-jesus-heart/.

[ii] Revelation 20 is one of the most challenging and debated chapters of the Bible, but most premillennial and amillennial Christians agree on this part of the interpretation.