Chapter XVI: Section 3: Dead

The death of Jesus Christ was the result of His being crucified. When He died, the great sacrifice for the sins of the world was accomplished. Death was necessary for the completion of His work, and this was the fact most prominent in Old Testament type and prophecy. "Without shedding of blood is no remission,"[098] and it was to His death as the procuring cause of salvation that the Apostles directed their converts. To the Corinthians Paul wrote, "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures."[099] It was necessary that the lamb which formed the chief part of the Passover meal should be slain, and so Messiah was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and when John saw Him in vision it was as a Lamb that had been slain.[100] It is the death of Jesus that we commemorate in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The bread represents His body "broken for us"; the wine, His blood which was "shed for many for the remission of sins."[101] "We are reconciled to God by the death of His Son."[102] "We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins."[103] Statements such as these fail to convey any meaning if Christ did not really die on the cross, or if salvation comes to us in any other way than through His death as an atoning sacrifice. Of the reality of the death there is abundant evidence. It is recorded that, after six hours of suffering on the cross, Jesus gave up the ghost. The soldiers did not break His legs as they did in the case of the malefactors, because they saw and pronounced Him dead already; but one of them inflicted a spear-wound with a force that would have caused death had any life remained. The result was an outflow of blood and water, of itself sufficient evidence that death had done its work upon the Sufferer. Before Pilate permitted the body of Jesus to be delivered to Joseph, he was careful to make sure, by questioning the centurion in charge, that the wonderful prisoner who had caused him so great anxiety was dead. Thus Messiah was cut off, but not for Himself. He stood in the room and stead of sinners, and, though Himself without sin, He tasted death for every man. "He was delivered for our offences." "The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all." His death was not the result of unavoidable circumstances, for it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; and His sacrifice was voluntary, for He said, "I lay down my life ... no man taketh it from me."[104] The penalty of death which He endured did not pertain to Him but to those for whom He died. "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree."[105] We are "justified by his blood."[106] "God hath set him forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God ... that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."[107] "Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."[108]

In the statement that Jesus Christ "was dead," the Creed affirms the reality of Christ's death in opposition to certain early heretics, the Docetae, who said that His death was not real but only apparent. A similar view has been adopted by some modern writers, who assert that what the witnesses of the crucifixion saw was not death but a swoon, from which, through the ministry of His disciples, Jesus was restored after He had been taken down from the cross. It is urged in support of this view that a crucified criminal did not usually die as Jesus is said to have died, six hours after He was crucified, but lingered on for days, before being relieved from his sufferings by death. Jesus' legs were not broken by the soldiers, because they believed Him to be dead, but--say those who deny the reality of the death--the soldiers were mistaken, the seeming lifelessness was not real, and recovery soon followed, so complete that He was able to appear in public on the third day.

In considering this statement, we must take into account the physical condition of Jesus when He was crucified. On the night of His betrayal, and after His apprehension, He had been subjected to intense suffering in body and to sorrow of soul such as human thought cannot conceive. In Gethsemane He had passed through an experience of agony from which He must have risen weakened, to endure new forms of suffering. He had been scourged by Roman soldiers, whose cruel loaded weapons inflicted wounds that left deep scars upon His flesh and caused intense pain and exhaustion. His hands and feet had been fixed to the cross with nails. He had been crowned with thorns and mocked and hooted by a reckless mob. He had been hurried from the Sanhedrim to the Judgment-hall, and had carried the cross until He sank beneath its weight. He had for six hours endured intense suffering from pain and thirst, and when, after a strong Roman soldier had thrust a spear into His side, He was taken down from the cross, and declared by the centurion and his company to be dead, He was laid without food, and remained for two nights and a day, in a cold rock-sepulchre, whose door was barred by a great stone, sealed, and guarded by soldiers. Suppose for a moment that Jesus had survived this terrible ordeal of suffering, and that, having eluded His Roman guard and His Jewish persecutors, He had again entered into Jerusalem, it must have been as a weak, disabled invalid, not as a man possessing normal strength and vigour. Yet on the third day He showed Himself alive, bearing no traces of the suffering He had endured except the marks of His wounds. The feet that had been pierced bore Him from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a journey of threescore furlongs; and He passed from place to place with a swiftness of movement and a superiority to obstacles that filled the disciples with amazement.

In the light of these facts, the view we have been considering is utterly untenable. It is no matter for wonder that Jesus, after such exhaustion, died six hours after He had been lifted up on the cross. The circumstances which preceded His dying are not consistent with the opinion that while in the sepulchre He recovered from a swoon. It is not possible to conceive that a man, wounded and bruised--His hands, feet, and side pierced with nails and spear--could appear so soon, bright and radiant, strong and vigorous, undistressed by pain or weakness, and possessing power of movement not only restored, but marvellously augmented. If Jesus was not really "dead," no explanation can be given of His disappearance from history. If He had really lived as a man after His crucifixion, we should have looked for a fresh outbreak of persecution directed against Him. We have His own testimony by the Spirit, "I am he that liveth, and was dead."[109]