We Believe: He Suffered Death and Was Buried
In the Nicene Creed, we confess that Jesus “suffered death and was buried.” The one who created and sustains all things willingly submitted himself to the common death of man. The dark reality that we will all face, the separation of soul and body, is one that our Savior has already embraced and overcome. Through his assumption of our death, he shows his desire to be with us, his heart for the lost, and his call for us to embrace the spiritually dead with the Gospel.
Through His Death and Burial, Christ Embraces Us
One of the mysteries of the incarnation is the juxtaposition of the uniqueness of Jesus with his willingness to be with us by being like us. At the same time, he is both exalted and debased, filling all things in heaven and earth and standing in Solomon’s Colonnade with his disciples, piercing through the veil of every mind and not knowing the day of his return.
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This juxtaposition of things divine and human meets no less a climax than for Life itself to be subject to Death. What is true of us in our death is true of him. He does not experience some exalted, pseudo-death like Obi-Wan Kenobi at the hands of his former apprentice, but he offers his life to the Father naked, beaten, alone, and bloodied for the sake of the world. We find Christ, even at the end, not insisting on glory, but willing to be numbered among the dead.
Placed in the Tomb
When Christ expired after his passion, his body was removed from the cross and prepared for burial. Joseph of Arimathea requested his body from Pontius Pilate in order to bury him (Mark 15:44-45). His body was wrapped in a linen shroud and placed in the unused tomb of Joseph (Matthew 27:59-60). Nicodemus brought seventy-five pounds of myrhh and aloes to give Jesus a traditional burial (John 19:39-40).
After his burial, the women, who had seen where he was laid, prepared additional spices and ointments to care for his body (Luke 23:56). Most of us have consigned burial practices to professionals. Still, until very recently, it was the responsibility of the family to prepare the body of the deceased for burial. Joseph, Nicodemus, and the women do not abandon him on his cross, but in the midst of grief and pain, honor their Lord in his death. His burial is not special, but like we will one day be buried, so also was he.
Where was Christ’s Soul?
His body was in the grave, but where was his soul? As he told Mary on the day of the resurrection, he had not yet ascended to his Father (John 20:17). Jesus, like the rest of the dead, descended into Hades. While the Nicene Creed does not explicitly speak of Christ’s descent, to speak of his death is to speak of his descent. Before Christ’s ascension into heaven, when he broke down the doors of Hades (Psalm 107:16), led captivity captive (Ephesians 4:8), and opened the gates of heaven to all believers (Te Deum Laudemus), all souls entered into the realm of the dead.
Called Sheol, Abbadon, and the Pit in the Old Testament and Hades in the New Testament, this realm is marked by silence and a lack of God’s praise (Psalms 6:5, 30:9, 88:10-12, 115:17; Isaiah 38:18). Not only were the unrighteous condemned to Hades (Numbers 16:33, Deuteronomy 32:22, Psalm 49:14, etc.), but even the righteous were in Hades (1 Samuel 28, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Psalm 89:48). This realm of the dead is distinct from the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14) and serves as a holding place for the dead until the final judgement. In this realm, the unrighteous were tormented while the righteous awaited judgment in peace (Luke 16:19-31).
The Offense of the Descent
Some find the confession that Jesus descended into Hades an offense. This Biblical doctrine is so offensive that some, both inside and outside the Anglican tradition, have attempted to deny his descent. One of the core concerns is that this confession extends Jesus’ suffering from the cross into Hades. While some have suggested such an idea, it is not the confession of the early Church or the Scriptures. With the Scriptures, we confess Jesus suffered to descend, but he did not descend to suffer.
Through his death, descent, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus transformed death so that even now it has lost its sting for those who believe. No longer condemned to Hades, those who believe receive their welcome into the heavenly realm to be with Christ (John 14:2, Philippians 1:23, Revelation 7:15), while those who do not believe receive condemnation to Hades to await the final judgement. On the last day, all people, whether in heaven, earth, or under the earth, will confess Christ as Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). Thus, with St. Peter, we can read Psalm 16 in reference to Christ, whose soul was not abandoned to Hades (Psalm 16:10), but was indeed there until the day of his resurrection. In separating his soul from his body, we find Jesus not insisting on exaltation but condescending to be with the lost.
Through His Death, Christ Preaches to the Dead
Why, then, did he descend? Those who had fallen asleep in death had received no opportunity to hear the Gospel. The whole of the Old Covenant points to Jesus (Luke 24:44). Yet, that same covenant did not have the power to save (Heb. 10:4). Indeed, our forerunners in the faith looked ahead to the promises hidden in the Old Covenant. Yet, they “did not receive what was promised” in order “that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40). As the Apostle to the Gentiles reminds us, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). If all the dead are consigned to Hades, “how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14) Christ willingly submits to death that he might preach to its subjects.
Apart from Christ
Apart from Christ we are slaves to sin, condemned to death (Romans 5:12) and subject to him who has power over death, the devil (Heb. 2:14). Indeed, it was to destroy the works of the one who has power over death that the Son assumed our nature (1 John 3:8). The devil, cursed to consume all humanity (Gen 3:14), swallowed up Christ through his cross. On the outside, Christ appears to have been abandoned to his enemies (Psalm 22:1), and yet this is the means by which he will draw a people to himself (Psalm 22:22).
As the Apostle reminds us, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses” (Romans 5:14). We can imagine the loneliness, the sorrow, the regret of those who have gone on before us, who were longing for salvation from death. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, Isaiah, and others all caught glimpses of what would be, of a deliverance not from a political oppressor but from death itself. Still, they wait.
The Cosmos Reels
Finally, a voice in the wilderness cries, himself subjected to death, but still heralding the common of one whose sandals he is unworthy to untie. The one they have been waiting for is coming soon. The earth shakes. The whole cosmos reels at the injustice of the cross, and then there appears yet one more soul. Though he suffered a common death, his uniqueness cannot be veiled long, for he is free among the dead (Psalm 88:5) and has come to preach liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1). In the words of St. John Chrysostom,
Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
St. John Chrysostom, “Easter Sermon.”
Christ allowed death to have dominion over him for a moment (Romans 6:9) to “set your prisoners free from the waterless pit” (Zechariah 9:11). As St. Peter affirms, “the gospel was preached even to those who are dead” so that they, though judged in the flesh according to men, might live in the Spirit according to God (1 Peter 4:6). Those who believed in him would join him at his ascension in triumphal procession to the mountain of God, blessing the one to whom “belong deliverances from death” (Psalm 68:20).
Through His Death, Christ Comisssions Us
Christ was willing to be among the dead, not only to show commiseration and solidarity with them, but to share the Gospel with them. In this, we see a picture of his Great Commission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth, so that those who are spiritually dead may live. Just as Christ willingly became like us and was with us even in death, he calls us to draw near to the spiritually dead and proclaim the mysteries of him who died and rose again.
Those who experience spiritual death, the separation of the soul from God, will one day experience physical death, the separation of the soul and body, and at the end experience the second death, the separation of the body and soul from God, if they do not repent and believe the Gospel. Jesus took to himself our nature and submitted himself to our death so that we could take hold of his life, a life that conquers sin and reigns with God forever. As we remember his willingness to be with us in our darkness, may we be with those who are far from him that they, though walking in the shadow of death, may see his great light and be led into the way of peace.
Image: Burial of Christ by Carl Bloch. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Digitally edited by Peter Johnston.
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