If you are going to wait for someone, one of the first things you will ask them is, “How long will you be?”  If they call out, “I won’t be a moment”, or “I’m coming in half a tick”, you then know that you’ve probably got at least five minutes longer to wait!  People have always been like that.  Think of what has happened to the word ‘presently’.  At one time ‘presently’ meant ‘at the present moment’, ‘now, at once’, but people who said they would do something ‘presently’ used to wait so long before doing it that the word has come to mean ‘soon’ or ‘later on’.

The word ‘Hell’

In the same way there is a word in the Creed which has changed its meaning from the time when the Prayer Book was first written, and that is the word ‘Hell’, where we say that Jesus “descended into Hell”.  The word ‘Hell’ comes from an old English word meaning to ’hide’; so Hell was the hidden place or, as we say, the unseen world.  That is to say, at one time it meant just the place where the souls of those who have died are.

Now, however, the word ‘Hell’ means the place of the wicked, the place where people go who do not love God and are not sorry for all the wrong they have done in this life.  The Devil is there too.

But when we say that Jesus, after he had died on the Cross, descended into Hell we are using the word in its old meaning, that he went to the place of the dead or Paradise as the Jews called it.  That is what Jesus himself said on the Cross, a short time before he died.  “Truly I tell you”, he said to one of the thieves dying next to him, “today you will be with me in Paradise” (NRSV, Luke 23:43).

Why Jesus descended into Hell

You’ll notice that the Creed says ‘descended’ or ‘went down’.  This is because people used to think of Paradise as being below and Heaven as being above.

From the evening then of Good Friday when he died, until early on Easter Day when he rose again, Jesus spent his time with the souls of the people who had died since the human race appeared on earth.  Jesus came to this world in order to bring us one day to Heaven, if we love him enough to want to go with him, and so it was only fair that those people also should have the opportunity to see him and to hear him preach the Gospel.

We all have to decide some time or other whether we really want Jesus or not, and that is why he went at once to these souls who had been waiting so long for him to come (1 Peter 3:18-20).

There are three places, then, where the souls of those who have died can be: Hell, Paradise or Purgatory as we call it, and Heaven.

Hell

Permanent separation from God

Hell is the place where people are who are not a bit sorry for the wrong things which they have thought and said and done; in other words, the place where unrepentant sinners are.  When people sin, they separate themselves from God.  When they are sorry, or repentant, they come back to God again; but otherwise they stay away from God by their own choice.  Just as sin is a state of separation from God, so Hell is that state of separation made permanent, a place where God is unfelt, unseen and unwanted.

That is why it is a place of misery, because in the end there can be no happiness apart from God, for God is the source of all true joy and of all beauty and goodness.  In this life, of course, people who have separated themselves from God by their sins can find plenty of other things to keep them interested or busy or amused.  It may be their work, or the newspaper or the television or the Internet.  But there are no such things as these in the next world.  So the people in Hell are for ever discontented, always trying to find something that will satisfy them, but never succeeding simply because only God can satisfy the true needs of the human soul, and they refuse to have God.  St Augustine summed up our need for God, “You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You”. (1)

So sin is actually its own punishment.  By separating themselves from God, unrepentant sinners also separate themselves from happiness.  The Jews called Hell “Gehenna”, the same name they gave to the valley outside Jerusalem where all the refuse of the city rotted and burned, and which was the most horrible place they knew.  And that is also the name which Jesus himself used.

God does not send people to Hell

But it is very important to understand that God does not send people to Hell.  They go there of their own free-will, simply because they really prefer sin to holiness and themselves to God.  And even God cannot save people against their will when they prefer Hell to Heaven.  God says, “…go away from me” (NRSV, Matthew 7:23) only to those who have already gone away from God because they wanted to.

The pure in heart will see God

For Heaven is where God is seen, and the Blessed Saints, who are there, not only see God but are filled with him like a clear crystal ball is filled with the sunlight – the two cannot be separated.  That is why they are for ever happy, because they love God more than all else besides.  But unrepentant sinners would be more miserable in Heaven than Hell because they have no use for God or for his holiness.  So the soul of an unrepentant sinner would be like a ball of dark glass into which the sunlight could not enter.

Nor could the unrepentant sinner see God, for, as Jesus has told us, it is the pure in heart who will see God (Matthew 5:8).  So when St Paul, or Saul as he was then called, was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christians there, and Jesus appeared to him, he did not see Jesus.  All he could see was a bright light in the sky (Acts 26:13).  But shortly before St Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death because he was a Christian, he saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55,56).

Hell, Purgatory and Heaven

Hell, then, is the place where unrepentant sinners are who do not love God and do not want God. 

In Purgatory are all those who love God but are not yet ready to live in his visible presence.  These we call the Faithful Departed, and that is where we hope to go when we die.

In Heaven are those who, having become perfect, now see and live with God for ever.  These we call the Saints.

SUMMARY

1. During the past 300 years the word ‘Hell’ has changed its meaning.  In the Creed it means the place of the dead, but now it means the final place of unrepentant sinners.

2. Sin is a state of separation from God.  Hell is that state of separation made permanent, a place where God is unfelt, unseen and unwanted.  That is why it is a place of misery.

3. People go to Hell of their own free choice and even God cannot save anyone against his or her will.

Reference

1) St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Confessions I(1). Available from: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110101.htm  (Accessed 16 November 2010) (Internet).