God the Son: Death and Resurrection
Notes
Transcript
We’ve been talking about creeds, specifically, the Apostles’ Creed.
The earliest creed of the Christian Church was simply Jesus is Lord.
When you look at the Apostles Creed there are basically three sections, one devoted to God, the central devoted to Jesus, and the third devoted to the Holy Spirit and everything else.
The middle section is the most developed because it was meant for Christians and it was clarifying who exactly Jesus is - specifically that Jesus was both God and Man.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius PIlate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
The creed emphasizes Jesus in his birth, death and resurrection. This is why his entire life was summed up with just a comma as we discussed last week.
So far this is what we have professed regarding Jesus -
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, …”
Today we continue with:
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius PIlate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; …”
Five new statements, let’s take them in order:
Jesus Christ…suffered under Pontius Pilate,
We have already affirmed that Jesus is the Son of God, which makes him like God. Yet humans don’t have power over gods, much less the creator of heaven and earth. In a sense we are seeing the Creed writers wrestle with the tension between Jesus deity and humanity. We used the idea of the Prince and the Frog as an illustration last week. Though the prince never ceased being a prince he was at the same time a frog. Jesus though God was at the same time human and able to suffer.
This whole section rings of Philippians 2:6-8
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
That brings us to our next point,
Jesus Christ…was crucified.
People of the time didn’t need much of an explanation on what it meant to be crucified. It was brutal. Historians and scientists agree that it is the cruelest way ever invented by humans to but another human being to death. If you’ve seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ you’ve seen a glimpse.
The crucifixion process was designed to cause the convict to suffer as long as possible, inflict the maximum amount of pain, while at the same time insuring death of would be achieved.
In many ways the contrast between the person of Jesus and those instigating and carrying out the crucifixion demonstrates the ultimate distance between innocent holiness and the depravity of the human condition.
It makes those words of Jesus stand out so much more in contrast: Lk 23:34
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Jesus Christ…was dead.
Jesus Christ…was buried.
One of the myths that has been floated since Jesus was crucified was that he didn’t really die.
Here’s the thing we often forget about the time of Jesus. These people were much closer to death than most of us will ever be.
They saw death up close and personal. When relatives died it was up to the family to take care of the burial preparations, the deceased’s body was not shipped off to the local funeral home.
In our culture we are as far removed from death as possible. When someone dies “viewings” are now rare. In my experience they are more common in more agrarian cultures.
Even if we do have a viewing, funeral homes have make-up artists who work to make the person look as if they’re simply “sleeping”.
The people of Jesus time knew what death was. To speed up the death process at a crucifixion the roman soldiers as an act of mercy would break the convicted’s legs so they could no longer raise themselves up to breathe. John 19:32-33
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
So they buried him.
Finally, we get to perhaps the most challenging of the phrases we find in the Creed and one that many Christian groups actually drop.
Jesus Christ…descended into hell.
Whoa! WAIT! What!
Let me first share a story and I think it will help illustrate part of what is happening here. After graduating high school I had the opportunity to go to Europe with a student ambassador program.
Our group was staying in a hotel in a small town in Germany and one of my classmates was trying to communicate to the woman at the front desk she was expecting a phone call in an hour. Having had 5 years of German I confidently though erroneously attempted to explain what she was trying to say. The woman kept saying she’d be asleep in an hour.
I couldn’t understand it. I said, “No you won’t!” Finally a man came and I asked if he spoke English. He did. I quickly explained the situation and he rattled off one sentence and the woman said, “Ah!” with a sense of relief and it was clear she finally understood. The man turned to me and said I was using the wrong word.
German has two words for the word “hour”.
Uhr - which is the word I was using. Ein Uhr, Zwei Uhr, refers to what hour it is. Like 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock.
Stünde - is the word I should have been using which refers to length of time. One hour from now.
The problem is similar when we read Jesus descended into hell.
The renowned theologian and teacher J.I. Packer helps clarify this for us. Please forgive the extended quote here, but he does a far better job than I could.
Affirming the Apostles’ Creed Hades, Not Gehenna
The English is misleading, for “hell” has changed its sense since the English form of the Creed was fixed. Originally “hell” meant the place of the departed as such, corresponding to the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheol. That is what it means here, where the Creed echoes Peter’s statement that
Affirming the Apostles’ Creed Hades, Not Gehenna
What the Creed means, however, is that Jesus entered, not Gehenna, but Hades—that is, that he really died, and that it was from a genuine death, not a simulated one, that he rose.
Affirming the Apostles’ Creed Hades, Not Gehenna
The language of descent is used because Hades, being the place of the disembodied, is lower in worth and dignity than is life on earth, where body and soul are together and humanity is in that sense whole.
So lets review:
Jesus Christ…suffered under Pontius Pilate
he suffered.
Jesus Christ…suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified.
Was put to death.
Jesus Christ...suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead
Affirming again he died.
Jesus Christ...suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;
Yes, he was put to death, he died, he was really dead so they buried him.
Jesus Christ...suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell.
He was put to death, died, was really dead, yes, he was really, really dead.
All of this sets up the contrast of the miracle of his resurrection and what he has overcome for each one of us.
You and I as Christians must come to grips with our belief in Jesus death if we are going to fully grasp the meaning of his life in the resurrection. His resurrection is the ushering in of the abundance of God’s grace.
We need to see the disparate contrast between the religious and cultural community’s putting Jesus to death and Jesus’ willingness to suffer and pronouncement of forgiveness on the cross.
Finally, seeing these contrasts highlights God’s ultimate love and grace for the totality of humanity that has fallen and is stained by rebellion against God. Perhaps Paul phrases it best in his letter to the Romans, Romans 5:8
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Our profession of faith is more than simple religious words we repeat in church, but if they are truly what we believe, they change us.
May we all be so changed, to the glory of God. AMEN.
