Acts 2:22–28

Verse 22–23. Jesus, … a man, who suffered as man, though he was both God and man.—Delivered by the determinate decree, or counsel; to wit, by that eternal decree, that the Son of God should become man. He mentions this decree, and foreknowledge of God, to signify that Christ suffered not by chance, nor unwillingly, but what God, and he as God, had decreed. Witham.—By the determinate, and so forth God delivered up his Son; and his Son delivered up himself, for the love of us, and for the sake of our salvation: and so Christ’s being delivered up was holy, and was God’s own determination. But they who betrayed and crucified him, did wickedly, following therein their own malice, and the instigation of the devil; not the will and determination of God, who was by no means the author of their wickedness; though he permitted it; because he could, and did draw out of it so great a good, that is the salvation of man. Challoner.

Verse 22–23. Jesus, … a man, who suffered as man, though he was both God and man.—Delivered by the determinate decree, or counsel; to wit, by that eternal decree, that the Son of God should become man. He mentions this decree, and foreknowledge of God, to signify that Christ suffered not by chance, nor unwillingly, but what God, and he as God, had decreed. Witham.—By the determinate, and so forth God delivered up his Son; and his Son delivered up himself, for the love of us, and for the sake of our salvation: and so Christ’s being delivered up was holy, and was God’s own determination. But they who betrayed and crucified him, did wickedly, following therein their own malice, and the instigation of the devil; not the will and determination of God, who was by no means the author of their wickedness; though he permitted it; because he could, and did draw out of it so great a good, that is the salvation of man. Challoner.

Verse 24. Having loosed the sorrows [2] of hell, and so forth In the ordinary Greek copies, of death. As to the sense of this place, 1. It is certain Christ suffered the pains and pangs of a violent death. 2. That his soul suffered no pains after death, nor in any place called hell. 3. We believe, as in the Apostles’ Creed, that his blessed soul descended into hell, that is, to that place in the inferior parts of the earth, (Ephes. 4:9) which we commonly call Limbus Patrum, not to suffer, but to free the souls of the just from thence.—As it was impossible he should be held there, either by death, or hell, his soul being always united to the divine person: and his rising again being foretold in the Psalms, in the words here cited. Witham.—Having overcome the grievous pains of death, and all the power of hell. Challoner.—Not that Jesus suffered any thing after his death; that was impossible. But these pains were loosed in his regard, because he was preserved from them, as the bird is preserved from the nets of the fowlers, which are broken before it is taken in them. Saint Augustine ep. ad. Olimp. xcv.—Moreover he loosed others of those pains. Idem, l. xii, chapter 13. de Gen. ad lit.

Verse 27. Thou wilt not leave [3] my soul in hell. This is also the Prot. translation; and the manner in which Beza translates it, is both very false and ridiculous, thou shalt not leave my carcass in the grave. For allowing that the Latin and Greek word, which is here translated hell, may signify sometimes, the grave; yet no excuse can be made for putting carcass, where the Greek, as well as Latin, signifies the soul. And for the doctrine of Christ’s descending into hell, even the learned Dr. Pearson on the Creed, observes with Catholics, that the article of the creed, wherein we say, he descended into hell, cannot be the same as to say, his body descended into the grave, because in the foregoing words we profess that he was dead and buried. Witham.—Beza plainly confesseth that he translateth the text thus: Thou shalt not leave my carcass in the grave, against the doctrine of purgatory, and Christ’s descending into hell, although he alloweth, that most of the ancient Fathers were in that error. Thus opposing himself to plain Scripture and to the ancient Fathers, perverting the former, and contemning the latter, to overthrow an article of the apostles’ creed. He descended into hell. New Test. in 1556.

or, Hell