"He was buried"

At the centre of the Nicene Creed is our confession that the Son of God came down from heaven, was incarnate, became man, was crucified, suffered, and was buried.

The crucified and dead body of the Son of God was buried. The words God spoke to the first Adam are now directed to him: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

As the author of Hebrews puts it, “by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). His burial confirms his vicarious death for sinners. The wages of sin is death, having borne our sin, he suffered our death (Rom 6:23). His burial confirms that God has set aside the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands (death), nailing it to the cross. For us men and for our salvation, he was buried.

His burial is also a great comfort to us in our death. Our Lord tasted death. He is our pioneer, who has gone ahead of us into death, and through death, he is bringing many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10). This is why David could pray in Psalm 23:4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me.” He is with us when we die and he brings us to himself in death. And so, we can say with Paul that death cannot separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:38-39).

And when you die, he lays his right hand on you and says, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” (Revelation 1:17-18) He was buried, but death could not hold him, he loosed the pangs of death (Acts 2:24). God raised him from the dead on the third day and now he has the keys of Death and Hades (Acts 2:24).

Because the grave could not hold him, the grave cannot hold us. Just as he was raised on the third day, so we will be raised on the last day. I will consider his resurrection in my next note (“On the third day he rose again”) and our resurrection in a later note (“we look for the resurrection of the dead”).