The Apostles' Creed

He Descended to the Dead, and the Third Day He Rose Again

The creed follows Jesus into death and out the other side. He descended to the realm of the dead, sharing fully in our death, and on the third day he rose again bodily from the grave. The resurrection is the hinge of the Christian faith: the tomb was empty, death was defeated, and the one who died for our sins was raised for our justification. Because he lives, all who are his will live also.

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:1 Corinthians 15:4 (KJV)

What this line confesses

Two movements are held together here: down into death, and up into life. The older line, he descended into hell, or more exactly he descended to the dead, confesses that Jesus did not merely faint but truly entered death, going where the dead go. Christians have understood it in more than one way, whether as the depth of his death and burial, or as his proclamation of victory to the departed. In every reading it means one thing above all: there is no part of death he did not enter and conquer.

Then comes the great turn: the third day he rose again from the dead. Not his soul only, and not merely his cause or his memory, but Jesus himself, bodily, walked out of the tomb alive. The grave that held him could not keep him. This is the event on which everything else in the creed depends.

Its biblical basis

Paul's earliest summary continues: he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. All four Gospels report the empty tomb and the risen Lord, seen, touched, and eating with his disciples over forty days. Peter preached at Pentecost that God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it.

For the descent, Peter writes that Christ was put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit, and Paul, citing the Psalms, speaks of Christ descending into the lower parts of the earth before ascending on high. The New Testament stakes everything on the resurrection: Paul says that if Christ is not raised, our preaching is vain and our faith is vain, but now is Christ risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that slept.

Why it mattered: against a merely spiritual resurrection

From the beginning, some found a bodily resurrection hard to accept. Greek thought prized the immortal soul and despised the body, so certain teachers reduced the resurrection to a spiritual idea, or claimed it had already happened only in a symbolic sense. Paul confronted this in Corinth, and the creed confronts it still.

By confessing that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, the creed insists on a real, bodily rising, the same Jesus who was crucified, now alive in a glorified body. This matters because our hope hangs on it. A ghost cannot promise to raise our bodies; a merely spiritual survival is not the conquest of death. But if Jesus truly rose in the flesh, then death has met its master, and the resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of ours.

The third day, and the witnesses

The creed is careful to say the third day, because the resurrection is offered not as a feeling but as an event, tied to a morning and attested by witnesses. The tomb was found empty. The grave clothes lay behind. And over the following forty days the risen Jesus was seen, not once or by one person, but many times and by many people, who spoke with him, ate with him, and touched his wounded hands.

Paul lists the witnesses as living evidence anyone could question: Jesus appeared to Peter, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred at once, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote, and last of all to Paul himself. The Gospels add that the first to find the empty tomb and meet the risen Lord were women, a detail no one inventing a story in that culture would have chosen, and a quiet mark of its truth.

The strongest witness of all is the change in the disciples themselves. The same men who fled and hid on the night Jesus was arrested were soon proclaiming his resurrection in the very city where he had been killed, and most went on to die rather than deny what they had seen. People do not give their lives for what they know to be a lie. Something happened on the third day, and the church has staked everything on it ever since: he is not here, for he is risen.

The firstfruits: our own resurrection secured

Paul gives the risen Jesus a beautiful title: the firstfruits of them that slept. In the harvest, the firstfruits were the first sheaf brought in, the sure sign that the whole harvest was coming behind it. So the resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated marvel but the beginning of a harvest. Because he rose, all who belong to him will rise too, in their own order, when he comes.

This means his rising and ours are bound together. Paul argues that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen, and if Christ is not risen, our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins. But now is Christ risen, and his empty tomb is the pledge and pattern of what awaits every believer. His victory over death is the guarantee of ours.

So the creed does not confess a distant, private miracle but the opening of a door we will one day walk through. The same power that raised Jesus is already at work in his people and will one day raise their mortal bodies. To trust the risen Christ is to face your own death differently, knowing that the one who is the firstfruits has gone ahead, and that you follow a Lord who has already turned the grave into a doorway.

What it means for us

Because he descended, no darkness you may pass through, not even death itself, is a place he has not gone before you and claimed. And because he rose, death is not the end of the story for anyone who belongs to him. The resurrection is God's public verdict that the cross worked, that sin is truly paid for, and that the grave is now a defeated enemy.

This is why the resurrection is not a distant doctrine but a living hope. The same power that raised Jesus is at work in all who trust him, and he promises that because he lives, they will live also. To confess that he rose again is to plant your feet on the one fact that changes everything, and to know that the last word over your life is not death but the risen Christ.

This is the hinge on which everything turns, and it turns toward hope. Because Jesus rose, you can face tomorrow, and even death itself, without despair. The tomb is empty, the enemy is beaten, and the last word over your life belongs not to the grave but to the living Christ. He is not a memory to be honored but a Lord to be met, alive and near, and he offers his risen life to all who will trust him. Come and see the One who died and is alive for evermore.

A note for all traditions: the creeds are not a fourth authority above Scripture but a faithful summary of it. Christians hold them in different ways, some reciting them weekly in worship and others rarely, yet the faith they confess is broadly shared across the church. Where believers differ on secondary matters, the creeds mark the ancient center that unites us: one God, and one Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

Related: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and buried · He ascended and will come again · Who is Jesus? · The Christian creeds