25 — THE DEATH OF JESUS
By William H. Priester
Where was Jesus during the three days His body, or soul, lay in the tomb? Was His entire being there in the tomb, as totally unconscious as one of us, or did He exist with His Father in some form? The Greek of Matt. 27:50 reads, "Jesus resigned His breath"; and our Bible, "yielded up His spirit." W. H. P. To refer to the last part of the question first, the spirit, or the breath, simply stood for the life, the vitalizing power of God which He gives to all His children. It is not an entity of itself. There is nothing in the Scripture that indicates this. It may be translated "breath," and in such case is identical with the "breath of life," Gen. 2:7. But it is not a being of itself, or an entity of itself, capable of existing consciously apart from the body to which it belongs. When Jesus yielded up His breath, or His life, He died as the Christian must die. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Col. 3:3. The fundamental fact concerning the death of our Lord is this: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." 1 Cor. 15:3. The same record tells us that He who died was buried, and that He who was buried was raised on the third day. Verse 4. The same chapter tells us that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised (verse 13), and therefore does not live; and this is the logical conclusion of verse 14: "And if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain." The same thing is repeated for emphasis in verse 17: "And if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." Now, the simplest logic would teach us that if our Lord did not die—if He were just as much alive as though He had been raised from the dead—faith would not be vain. The triumphant conclusion of the apostle is, "But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them that are asleep." And the first-fruits is the man Christ Jesus, who is triumphant over death and the grave; and the fruits that are with Him are of the same character. Therefore Christ died as do those for whom He died. This also is taught in the words of the glorified Christ Himself. He does not say, "I am He whose body slept in the grave, but whose real being did not die"; but to John, before whom lay a life of persecution, He said: "Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades." Rev. 1:17, 18. From these and many other passages, we must conclude that He "poured out His soul unto death" (Isa. 53:12), was unconscious in the grave until He was called again by His Father; and therein is the great sacrifice which Heaven itself made for man.