Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried
SECTION 1.—SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE
The preceding articles of the Creed appeal to faith. They so far transcend reason that they can be apprehended only when reason is sustained by faith. This article, which affirms that Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried," is a simple historical statement. Pilate is a historic person, the details of whose life are recorded, not in the Gospels only, but in secular history. Josephus records several incidents in the life of Pilate which are strikingly in accordance with his character as set forth in the Gospels. Tacitus, a Roman historian, who wrote hisAnnalssoon after the crucifixion of Jesus, relates that, while Pilate was governor of Judaea, Jesus Christ was put to death. The testimony of the Gospels and the statement of the Creed are thus confirmed by the Roman and the Jewish historians. But, indeed, the event itself is not the subject of controversy. It is the conclusions drawn from it by the followers of Christ that are disputed. "Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,"[081]still raises opposition and kindles hostility.
The name of Pilate is inserted not with the view of branding him with infamy, but in order to fix the date of the crucifixion of Jesus. It is the only intimation of the time of His death that the Creed contains. It states that He was born, and that His mother was the Virgin Mary, and beyond this reference to Pilate there is no intimation as to the time of the nativity or the death. Bishop Pearson writes:—"As the Son of God, by His deliberate counsel, was sent into the world to die in the fulness of time, so it concerns the Church to know the time in which He died. And because the ancient custom of the world was to make computations by the governors, and refer their historical relations to the respective times of their government, therefore, that we might be properly assured of the actions of our Saviour which He did, and of His sufferings,—that is the actions which others did to Him,—the present governor is named in that form of speech which is proper to such historical or chronological narrations when we affirm that He suffered under Pontius Pilate."[082]From stating the birth of Christ, the Creed passes by what at first sight may seem an abrupt transition to His suffering, crucifixion, and death. There is no reference to His life or works, though these differed so widely from those of ordinary men. The reason seems to be that the end for which He came into the world was to suffer and die. Although He spake as never man spake, and did the works no other man did, it was not in the first place to teach or to work miracles that He emptied Himself of His glory and came to earth, but in order to suffer and die in the room and stead of sinners. Others had been prophets and teachers, others had worked miracles, others had done good in their day and generation, but none save Jesus had come in his own name or wielded power so marvellous as His. No one could share with Him the work of suffering and dying for sinners. He was lifted up that He might draw all men unto Him. "He suffered the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."[083]On the cross He tasted death for every man, and made a sacrificial atonement for the sins of the world. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."[084]His dying was the leading thought and purpose of His life. Those who were with Him fixed their eyes on His greatness as manifested in His wisdom and miracles, and looked for His setting up a kingdom of this world, but He Himself from the very beginning knew that the path to be traversed by Him was one of agony and death. He was straitened until this baptism of suffering should be accomplished.[085]At His first Passover He had intimated that, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man should be lifted up. He used this expression "lifted up" three times, and an Evangelist gives the explanation: "This he said, signifying what death he should die."[086]Again and again He told the disciples that He had come to give His life a ransom for many, that He was to be betrayed and killed, that as the Good Shepherd He would give His life for the sheep.[087]He intimated that His death was in accordance with the deliberate counsel and foreknowledge of His Father, and with His own free and full assent: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life."[088]And when betrayal and apprehension brought His ministry to a close, He would allow no sword to be drawn in His defence, but was brought as a "lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."[089]
The views which the Jews entertained with regard to the triumphant progress of Messiah did not accord with the statements of their prophets. The sacred writers who foretold His coming pointed indeed to victory as the ultimate issue of His mission, but they also clearly associated His life with conflict and suffering. From the first intimation of a Deliverer, which spoke of a heel bruised by man's malignant adversary, there was indicated in every type and prophecy the truth that Messiah was to be "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," whose triumph was to be achieved through suffering. The expectation current among the Jews that deliverance would be wrought by Messiah, without humiliation or suffering, showed that they misinterpreted the messages of the prophets. Familiar with the letter, they failed to grasp the spirit of the prophetical writings. Jesus laid this ignorance to their charge when He said to them, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures";[090]and He upbraided the two disciples on the way to Emmaus because they had failed to discover that their Redeemer's glory was to be won through conflict: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?"[091]
The suffering which Jesus endured was both bodily and spiritual. Persecution followed Him as a babe: Herod sought to slay Him, and Joseph and Mary had to flee into Egypt.[092]He was "despised and rejected" by His countrymen. His claims were refused by His kinsmen. He "endured the contradiction of sinners."[093]He "took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." He hungered and thirsted and was weary; He was spit upon, buffeted, and scourged. The cross on which He was to suffer was laid upon His shoulders, till His exhausted frame broke down; and on Calvary a thorny crown was set upon His brow, and the cruel nails pierced His hands and His feet. But the sorrow within His soul was worse to bear than bodily buffering. Travail of soul was the consummation of His afflictions, and while we do not read of a groan wrung from Him by bodily torture, soul-trouble led Him to ask His Father with "strong crying and tears," as His frame was agonized and His sweat was like drops of blood—"If it be possible, let this cup pass from me."[094]As man's Saviour Jesus was made perfect through suffering.[095]"We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."[096]The world is full of suffering, and He alone can understand and sympathise with it who has experienced it. It is the knowledge that their Divine Saviour is their Brother-man that gives to believing sufferers boldness and confidence as they draw nigh to the throne of grace.
SECTION 2.—WAS CRUCIFIED
Prophecy in the sense of prediction is a very interesting and important branch of Christian evidence. Old Testament prophets foretold minute events in the history of the Lord Jesus Christ, such as His lineal descent, the place and time of His birth, its miraculous character, His death, His burial, His three days' sojourn in the sepulchre, the casting of lots for His raiment, the piercing of His hands and feet, His last exclamation, His resurrection and ascension. Whatever view may be taken as to the dates of the various books of Scripture, it must be admitted that the whole body of the Old Testament was in circulation among the Jews hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. There can be no doubt that these prophecies were separated by great distance in time from the events predicted. Even the Septuagint Version, which is a Greek translation from the original Hebrew Scriptures, existed at Alexandria about two hundred years before His advent.
One of the most striking features of Old Testament prediction is its bearing upon the closing scenes of Christ's history. In its types as well as in its prophecies His death was foreshadowed, and the humiliating and ignominious treatment to which He was subjected minutely described. The predictions involved events that appeared contradictory and paradoxical until their fulfilment furnished the key. He Himself told the disciples again and again that He should be crucified. This form of execution was a Roman punishment reserved for slaves and the vilest criminals; and the fact that Jesus was subjected to it depended on a combination of events which no mere human sagacity could have foreseen. It required that, though he should be apprehended, accused, tried, and found guilty by Jews, His death-sentence should be inflicted by Gentiles; that the Roman governor of Judaea should, against his better judgment, surrender to the clamorous cry of a mob who demanded that the prisoner should be crucified. It required that the betrayal and condemnation of Jesus should take place during the Passover week, when it was unlawful for the Jews to put any man to death. The excuse of the Jewish rulers, that they could not inflict death, did not mean that this power had been withdrawn from them, but that it was against their law to exercise it then. Had the season been different, had the Jews themselves carried out the sentence of death, it would have been accomplished not by crucifixion, but by stoning. Such an execution would not have fulfilled prophecy or have been associated with the ignominy that marked the Roman death-penalty. Thus the Scripture was fulfilled in Him, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."[097]There is but one explanation that meets these facts, which is that they were directed by the counsel and foreknowledge of God, and that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The death of Jesus by crucifixion fulfilled in a wonderful manner the types and figures of the Old Testament. He applied the type of the brazen serpent to His death on the cross on which He was to be lifted up, and from which He was to exercise His healing power on those whom sin had bitten. The surrender of Isaac by Abraham, when he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, prefigured the unspeakable gift by the Father, who spared not His own Son, and the self-surrender of the Son, who gave Himself for us. As Isaac went forth bearing the wood on which he was to be offered, he was a type of Him who went forth from Jerusalem to Calvary bearing His cross. Had His sentence been any other than death by crucifixion, He would not have come under the doom which required that a prisoner should bear his cross. The Paschal Lamb, of which not a bone was to be broken, prefigured the Antitype in His exemption from the treatment to which the two thieves crucified with Him were subjected. In crucifixion He was numbered with the transgressors and associated with accursed criminals, and so prophecy received fulfilment.
It is a standing testimony at once to the reality of Christ's suffering, and to the power which He exercises over men's minds and consciences, that from being associated with shame and scorn, the sign of the cross has been elevated to the highest place of honour and dignity. Through his reverence for Jesus, Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, abolished crucifixion. It is recognised that through Christ's death upon the cross man obtains all that makes life precious. Instead of being regarded with scorn, a cross is the coveted emblem now of valour and exalted achievement. The instrument wherewith capital punishment was inflicted on abandoned criminals has come to be an ornament of monarchs. Such a change is to be explained only by the fact that it is the sign of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and that to multitudes who glory in the Cross, He who suffered the painful death on Calvary is the "power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation."
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]
SECTION 4.—AND BURIED
Isaiah thus prophesied regarding the burial of the Messiah: "He was cut off out of the land of the living ... and he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death."[110]In ordinary circumstances, the body of a crucified person would not have received burial. It was the Roman custom to leave the bodies of slaves and criminals, who alone were subjected to this punishment, suspended on the cross, a prey to beasts and birds, and when these and the elements had done their work upon the flesh, the remains were ignominiously cast out. The Jews, who inflicted capital punishment not by crucifixion but by stoning, did not thus deal with the bodies of malefactors; but, as the law directed, gave them burial on the night of execution.[111]The presence of dead bodies in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem during the Passover festival was regarded as a defilement, and steps were taken to have those of Jesus and the malefactors removed. The Jews could not themselves dispose of the bodies, because they would have sustained pollution by contact with them, and also because they had made over to the Romans the execution of the death-sentence. "The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away."[112]This request was granted, but, through the interposition of Joseph, a rich man of Arimathaea—to whom, as a member of the supreme council, the resolution for the removal of the bodies would be known—that of Jesus escaped the ignominious treatment to which the others were subjected. He came and went in boldly unto Pilate and craved the body of Jesus, securing for it an honourable burial such as the Jews had not contemplated. Pilate "gave" the body to Joseph, and he bought fine linen, and took Him down and wrapped Him in the linen and laid Him in a sepulchre, which was hewn out of a rock.[113]
It was a new sepulchre, "where never man had yet lain."[114]In Joseph's holy task there was associated with him Nicodemus, who brought costly spices wherewith to embalm the body, "as the manner of the Jews is to bury." The disciples of Jesus do not appear to have shared in this work, which was watched from a distance by certain women from Galilee, who followed and saw where He was laid. They, too, made ready spices and ointment with which to honour the body of the Lord; but when they came to the tomb on the morning of the first day of the week, they found it empty, for Jesus had risen. It is not without meaning that the tomb in which the body of Jesus was laid was a new one. It was thus impossible to affirm that any other than He had opened a way out of its dark recess, the conqueror of death.
Such was the wonderful combination of circumstances that led to the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy, "He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." The Jews desired that He should be buried with the wicked. When they besought Pilate to remove the bodies, they wished that Jesus and the malefactors should be laid together. If the Jewish rulers had not parted with their right to dispose of the bodies, the three who had been crucified together would have been consigned to the burying-ground set apart for the interment of Jewish criminals; but it was the Divine decree that Jesus should make His grave with the rich, and therefore the event was so overruled that the bodies of Jesus and the malefactors were at the disposal not of the Jews, but of the Roman governor, who delivered the body of Jesus to the rich Joseph. While, therefore, Jesus was executed in such a way that, but for the intervention of the Jews and Pilate and Joseph, He would have been buried with criminals, "he made his grave with the rich in his death." Thus He who had humbled Himself in dying was honoured in His burial. Joseph and Nicodemus were timid men. The one was a secret disciple and the other, through fear of the Jews, came to Jesus by night. Though members of the Sanhedrim, they had lacked courage to defend Jesus when He was under trial; but now, grown bold, they identified themselves with Him.
The sepulchre was carefully watched. The Jews, thinking that they might hear something about the resurrection of Him whom they called "that deceiver," went to Pilate and made known their fear that the disciples would steal His body and say that He had risen from the dead.[115]The Roman governor made light of their apprehension, and said to them, perhaps sarcastically, "Ye have a watch: make it as sure as ye can." "So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch,"[116]—proceedings which eventually furnished strong confirmation of the reality of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.
He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead
SECTION 1.—HE DESCENDED INTO HELL
It is somewhat startling to find in the Creed this statement regarding our Lord, "He descended into hell." The clause, which was one of the latest admitted into the Creed, was derived from another creed known as that of Aquileia, compiled in the fourth century. It does not appear in the Nicene Creed, but it has a place in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, where we read, "As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also it is to be believed that He went down into Hell." The Westminster Divines, who gave the Creed a place at the close of their Shorter Catechism, appended a note explanatory of the clause to this effect, "That is, continued in the state of the dead, and under the power of death, until the third day."
The word "hell" is used in various senses in the Old Testament. Sometimes it means the grave, sometimes the abode of departed spirits irrespective of character, sometimes the place in which the wicked are punished.
In the English New Testament, also, the word "hell" has not in every place the same meaning. It represents two different nouns in the original Greek—Gehenna and Hades.Gehennawas the name of a deep, narrow valley, bordered by precipitous rocks, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which had been desecrated by human sacrifices in the time of idolatrous kings, and afterwards became the depository of city refuse and of the offal of the temple sacrifices. The other noun, rendered by the same English wordHell, isHades, which means "covered," "unseen" or "hidden."Hadesis the abode of disembodied spirits until the resurrection. The Jews believed it to consist of two parts, one blissful, which they termedParadise—the abode of the faithful; the otherGehenna, in which the wicked are retained for judgment. Lazarus and Dives were both in Hades, but separated from each other by an impassable gulf, the one in an abode of comfort, the other in a place of torment.[117]
As long as the spirit tabernacles in the body there are tokens of its presence in the visible life which is sustained through its union with the body. But when it departs from its dwelling-place in the flesh, death and corruption begin their work on the body. Death is complete only when the spirit has departed, and it is probable that this statement in the Creed was meant to express in the fullest terms that Christ's death was real. As man He had taken to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and when His body was crucified and dead, His spirit passed, as other human spirits pass at death, into Hades. It is not without a meaning that we read, "When Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he gave up the ghost."[118]Ghost is simply spirit, and in His case, as in that of every man, there was a true departure of the soul from the body at death. It was with His spirit that His last thought in life was occupied. He knew that though it was to depart from the battered, bruised tabernacle of His body, it was not to pass out of His Father's sight or His Father's care. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,"[119]were His last words on the cross.
The descent into hell is not referred to in the Westminster Confession, but in the Larger Catechism this statement is found: "Christ's humiliation after His death consisted in His being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death, till the third day, which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, 'He descended into hell'"[120]What the Westminster Divines meant was, that while Christ's body was laid in the grave His spirit passed from the visible to the invisible world, that, as He shared the common lot of men in the death and burial of His body, so He shared their common lot in passing as a spirit into the abode of spirits. The statement of this clause follows naturally what is said of the body of Jesus in that which precedes it. As His body was crucified, dead, and buried, so His spirit passed into the abode of spirits. "In all things it behoved him to be made like unto His brethren."[121]
Those who maintain that the spirit of Christ descended into hell in a sense peculiar to Himself, ground their opinion upon certain passages of Scripture. Psalm xvi. 10—"Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption"—is quoted in support of this opinion, but does not really justify it. It expresses the confidence of the speaker, that God will not deliver His soul to the power of Sheol (the Hebrew word equivalent to the Greek Hades), or suffer His body to see corruption, and in this sense the passage is quoted by Peter, as a proof from prophecy of the resurrection of Christ. Ephesians iv. 9 is also regarded as giving sanction to this view—"Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?" By the "lower parts of the earth" some understand parts lower than the earth, but such a view rests on a strained interpretation of the passage. Paul's argument is that ascent to heaven must have been made by one who, before ascending, was below. Christ had come down from heaven to earth, and was below therefore, he argues, Christ is the subject of the prophecy he has quoted. He it was that hid ascended up on high, not the Father, who is everywhere.[122]
In Isaiah xliv. 23 we have corroboration of this view: "Sing, O ye heavens ... shout, ye lower parts of the earth." Here "lower parts" means simply the earth beneath; that is, beneath the heavens.
The most difficult and important passage bearing on the clause is 1 Peter iii. 18, 19. "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison." In the Revised Version the rendering is not "by" but "in," "which" referring to the word "spirit,"—not the third Person of the Godhead, but the human spirit of Jesus—in which spirit, separated from the body yet instinct with immortal life, He went and "preached to the spirits in prison," or rather to the spirits in custody. The passage marks an antithesis between "flesh" and "spirit." In Christ's "flesh." He was put to death. His enemies killed His body, but His soul was as beyond their power. His body was dead, but in the abode of souls His "spirit" was alive and active.
So far there is here simply the statement that our Lord's disembodied spirit passed to Hades, but the Apostle adds that He "preached to the spirits in prison," and it is inferred by some that He preached repentance, but this is an assumption for which there is no Scripture warrant. We are not told what was the subject of Christ's preaching. He had finished His work on earth, had atoned for sin, had overcome death and conquered Satan. Even angels did not fully know the work of grace and salvation which Christ accomplished for man, and it is not likely that the spirits of departed antediluvians and patriarchs understood its greatness. The least in the Kingdom of Heaven knows more than the greatest of patriarchs or prophets knew. While in the flesh they had seen His day afar off, and, as disembodied spirits, they knew that Messiah by suffering and dying was to work out their redemption, but before the work was finished neither men nor angels understood the mystery of it, and what is more likely than that the completion of His redeeming work was first made known to them in the spirit by the Redeemer Himself? If we accept this view, the preaching to the spirits in prison was the intimation to those already blessed, who had while on earth repented and believed, that Messiah by dying had brought in everlasting salvation for His people.
There is still a difficulty in Peter's words. Christ is said to have preached to those who were disobedient in the days of Noah. Peter says that in the writings of Paul there are some things hard to be understood, but what he himself writes regarding Christ's work in Hades is also difficult, and the passage has found a great variety of interpretations. It would seem to imply that Christ in the spirit carried a special message to the antediluvians who had been disobedient and had perished in the Flood. What that message was we are not told, and human conjecture may not supply what the Spirit of God has seen fit to conceal. While the passage is a difficult one, the inference is not warranted which some have drawn from it, that those who are disobedient to Christ and reject His Gospel may, though they die impenitent, nevertheless obtain salvation after death. The plain teaching of Scripture is that it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.[123]And whatever the statement of Peter may mean, it does not sanction belief in purgatory or in universal restoration. Romanists teach that the department of Hades to which the spirit of our Lord descended was that in which dwelt the souls of believers who died before the time of Christ, and that the object of His descent was the deliverance and introduction into heaven of the pious dead who had been imprisoned in theLimbus Patrum, as they term that portion of Hades which these occupied. This they say was the triumph of Christ to which Paul refers in Ephesians iv. 8, when, quoting the 68th Psalm, he tells us that He ascended up on high, leading captivity captive.
According to the Romanists, Hades consists of three divisions—heaven, hell, and purgatory. Heaven is the most blessed abode reserved for three classes of persons:—1st, Those Old Testament saints whose spirits were detained in custody until Christ arose, when they were led out by Him in triumph; 2nd, Those who in this life attain to perfection in holiness; and 3rd, Those believers in Christ, who, having died in a state of imperfection, have made satisfaction for their sins and receive cleansing through endurance of the fires of purgatory. Hell is the abode of endless torment, where heretics and all who die in mortal sin suffer eternally. Purgatory is supposed to complete the atonement of Christ. His work delivers from original sin and eternal punishment, but satisfaction for actual transgression is not complete until after the endurance of temporal punishments and the pains of purgatory. The Church of Rome claims the right to prescribe the nature and extent of such punishments, and having devised a complicated system of indulgences, penances, and masses, professes to hold the Keys of Heaven and to possess authority to regulate penalties and obtain pardon for the living and the dead. Such claims are unfounded and false. God alone can forgive sin, and He recognises only two classes—the righteous and the wicked—here and hereafter; and only two everlasting dwelling-places—heaven and hell. The Romanist doctrine has no authority in Scripture, but is of heathen origin, being derived from the Egyptians through the Greeks and Romans, and having been current throughout the Roman Empire. Its effect has been the aggrandisement and enrichment of the papal priesthood and the subjection of the people. It contradicts the Word of God, which declares that there is no condemnation to the believer in Christ Jesus; that he hath eternal life; that for him to depart is to be with Christ, to enjoy unalloyed, unending blessedness. Protestants, therefore, hold that "the souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory."[124]
Between those who hold the doctrine of purgatory and believers in universal restoration, there is not a little in common. Universalists reject the Atonement, and say that God always punishes men for their sins. The wicked must expect to suffer in the next world, but the mercy of God will follow them, the punishment endured will in time effect deliverance, and the result will finally be the restoration of all to purity and happiness. They thus maintain with regard to all, what Romanists hold respecting those who pass to purgatory, and both are to be answered in the same way. We cannot make satisfaction, and we need not, for Jesus has borne "our sins in his own body on the tree."[125]By this "one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified"; so that "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries."[126]
This clause has place in the Creed as a protest against the heresy of Apollinaris, a Bishop of Laodicea, who taught that Christ did not assume a human soul when He became incarnate. He thus denied the perfect manhood of Christ, and in support of His doctrine appealed to the fact that the Scripture says,[127]"The Word (in Greek, Logos) was made flesh," "God was manifest in the flesh," while it is never said that He was made spirit. He sought to establish a connection between the Divine Logos and human flesh of such a kind that all the attributes of God passed into the human nature and all the human attributes into the Divine, while both together merged in one nature in Christ, who, being neither man nor God, but a mixture of God and man, held a middle place. His heresy found many supporters, though it was promptly met by Gregory Nazianzen, who showed that the term "flesh" is used in Scripture to denote the whole human nature, and that when Christ became incarnate He took upon Him the complete nature of humanity, untainted by sin. Only thus could He be qualified to become man's Saviour, for only a perfect man can be a full and complete Redeemer. Man's spirit, his most noble element, stands in need of redemption as well as his body, for all its faculties are corrupted by sin.
In affirming that Jesus descended into hell, this clause of the Creed declares that He possessed the complete nature of humanity; that His true body died, and that His reasonable soul departed to Hades.
SECTION 2.—THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD[128]
On the morning of the first day of the week, thenceforth hallowed as the Lord's Day—the Christian Sabbath—the soul of Jesus left Hades, and once more and for ever entered the body, and formed with it the perfected humanity of the "Word made flesh." The resurrection of Jesus is a well-attested fact of history. The close-sealed, sentinelled sepulchre, the broken seal, the stone rolled away, the trembling guard, the empty tomb, and the many appearances of Jesus to the women, the disciples, the brethren, and last of all to Saul of Tarsus, prove that He had risen.[129]
The Resurrection was a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Peter thus interprets Psalm xvi. 10, "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption," affirming that David in that Psalm speaks of the Resurrection of Christ.[130]Jesus Himself often foretold, both figuratively and directly, His own resurrection, as when He spoke of the coming destruction of the Temple, and connected it with the death and resurrection of His body;[131]or when He told the disciples that in a little while they should not see Him, and again in a little while they should see Him.[132]The place which this doctrine holds in the Christian faith is shown by the numerous references to it in the Epistles.
The Apostles had not grasped the statements of Christ in such a way as to lead them to look with confidence for His return, or to gather hope of His resurrection. On the contrary, they did not expect His resurrection, and, when they heard of it, they could not believe it to be real.[133]Yet, convinced by the evidence of their own senses, they came to hold it fast as the fact that crowned all their hopes in life and death. Although the preaching of "Jesus and the Resurrection" exposed them to persecution and martyrdom, they nevertheless continued to proclaim a risen Lord. "If Christ is not risen," says Paul, "then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain,"[134]and he goes on to admit that if the Resurrection had not taken place, he was altogether mistaken in the view of God's character set forth in his preaching and epistles. Peter makes a similar statement: "We are begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."[135]It is His victory over death that confirms the truth of His claims. He is proved to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.[136]So important a fact was it regarded in connection with their work, that when they met to select a successor to Judas in the apostolic college, it was held to be essential that no one should be appointed who was not able to testify that he had seen the risen Lord.[137]Paul regarded this doctrine as so necessary, that he made it the basis of faith and salvation: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."[138]
The life of Paul is an unanswerable argument for the truth of the Resurrection. Not only did he preach this as the central doctrine of Christianity; he maintained it at the cost of all that, before his conversion, he had held dear. He was not a man to give his faith to such a doctrine without overwhelming evidence of its truth. As Saul of Tarsus he had been in the fullest confidence of the Jewish rulers, and knew all that they could urge against the reality of the Resurrection, but their arguments had no weight with one who had seen the risen Lord on the way to Damascus.
The importance of the Resurrection of Christ as an argument for the Divine origin of Christianity is recognised alike by those who receive and by those who reject it. Negative criticism has assailed the doctrine and has devised ingenious theories to explain on natural grounds the testimony on which it is received. The diversity of such explanations goes far to refute them, and their utter failure to account for the marvellous effects which the appearances of the risen Jesus produced on the witnesses, or for the place which the doctrine held in their teaching, has tended rather to establish than to discredit the reality of the Resurrection.
Various sceptical theories, to which much importance was attached for a time, are now almost forgotten. The Mythical theory fails to account for the immediate effect produced by belief in the Resurrection. Myths require time for their growth and development, but the disciples of Jesus set the Resurrection in the forefront from the very first. On the day of Pentecost Peter sounded the keynote of Apostolic preaching when he declared, "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses." And so from this time forward, "with great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." The historical fact not only rests upon the most irresistible evidence; it is the very corner-stone of the whole fabric of Gospel teaching.
Another view of the testimony for the Resurrection has found advocates who claim that it explains, without having recourse to supernaturalism, the belief of the disciples and others in the doctrine. With some minor differences of detail, they agree in attributing the persistency of those who said that they had seen Jesus alive, to the impression produced on them by His wonderful personality. This, they hold, was so strong that the effect continued after His death, and the disciples saw visions of Him so vivid that they believed them to be real appearances. He had filled so much of their lives while He was with them, that they were unable to realise His departure, and retained His image in their hearts continually. Exalted and excited feeling projected His figure so that they saw Him apparently restored to life.
A theory such as this will not stand, in the face of the evidence for the Resurrection. It was no subjective impression, but the Saviour Himself, that brought conviction to the minds of the numerous witnesses. It was no apparition, it was a body that they saw and handled and tested and proved to be of flesh and blood. They heard their Master speak, and saw Him eat; and at frequent intervals for forty days He showed Himself to them. Sometimes He was seen by one, sometimes by many; and before His ascension He charged them to carry on the work He had committed to them: to feed His sheep, to feed His lambs, to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. "Him," said Peter, "God raised up on the third day, and showed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead."[139]
What they saw was the true body of their Lord, the same that had been crucified, dead, and buried, but a marvellous change had passed over it. It was now possessed of spiritual qualities, suddenly appearing, suddenly vanishing; now felt to be made of flesh and bones, and now passing through closed doors, or walking upon water. It was no longer subject to natural law as it had been before the Resurrection; and when the disciples beheld the Lord, they had not only proof of His continued existence, of His being God as well as man, and of God's seal having been set upon His atoning work,—they had also an intimation of what life hereafter will be for His followers, who shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is.
How full and widespread was the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus in the hearts of those who were its witnesses, is apparent not only from the fact that the great theme of their preaching was "Jesus and the resurrection," but is also evident from the importance they attached to the Lord's Day and the Lord's Supper. These institutions have a direct connection with the Resurrection, the former having been substituted for the Jewish Sabbath expressly on the ground that on that day the Lord rose; the latter, while it commemorates His death, sets forth also His resurrection life.