Creed 20 He was buried

He confessed the good confession before Pontius Pilot What is the good confession? That He is king and His kingdom is not of this world, but to be established in every corner of the world He came to witness for the Truth in face of hypocrisy and cowardice

The cross as a sacrifice and prayer The prayer of the heart both in Gethsemane and on the cross, Christ does not utter many words, but His holy heart is pulsating with prayers. In every throb of pain, in every tear of the skin, the tendons, muscles, and nerves, they are all lifted up on the alter of the heart together with the insults and the humiliation “He who offered Himself, as an acceptable sacrifice upon the Cross for the salvation of our race. His good Father smelled Him in the evening on Golgotha.”

The cross of Christ as the sacrifice of sin The sin offering was described as the most holy (Lev 6:25, 29). “Sweet aroma to the Lord” (Lev 1:9, 13, 17), “Most holy of the offerings to the Lord” (Lev 2:2, 3, 9, 10). “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate” (Hew 13:11).

Why the Cross? Why did He choose to die on the cross? 1.It is the most painful 2.It is unique and long 3.Sign of shame and defaming by lifting a condemned up for all to see 4.Considered a curse in the Mosaic law (Gal 3:13) In the cross He continued to do things on our behalf, like fasting, baptism, obedience to the old law, etc. On the cross He suffers and dies on our behalf.

He suffered… It was important to mention suffering in the Creed lest anyone think that the divinity in union with the humanity prevented Him from suffering. “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin…” (Isaiah 53:3- 10). Because of this great pain on the cross He cried “My God My God why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34) and because of the sweat and blood that came out of Him, He said, “I thirst” (John 19:38).

Why have You forsaken Me? These words do not mean that He was separated from the Father. God forbid! They mean in fact that the Father left Him to suffer and did not remove the pain away, “He was pleased to bruise Him.” The Lord Christ never used His divinity to give rest to His human body The passion of the Cross was expressed in many ways in the Old Testament. Psalm 22:14, 15: “My heart is like wax; it has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws.”

And was buried The body was laid in the tomb after being bound in stripes of linen with the spices. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemas took permission from Pilot and they buried the body in a new tomb hewn in the rock. A large stone was rolled against the door of the tomb. The priests and Pharisees set guards and sealed the stone – is a proof of His resurrection. How could His disciples steal Him in the presence of the guards, the stone, and the seal?

Jesus Christ was buried “By the grace of God” our Lord tasted death “for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). In the plan of salvation God ordained that His Son should not only “die for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3) but should also “taste death.” What does it mean to taste death? What does it mean that Christ tasted death, the “final enemy,” as St. Paul calls it? When people die, they do not cease to exist, but they begin a new journey. None of us can really know what it is like, because none of us have died, so it is difficult to understand what He went through as a human, let alone as the One who lives. It means that He experienced the condition of death: the separation of His soul from His body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time He was raised from the dead.

Jesus Christ was buried “God (the Son) did not impede (obstruct, delay) death from separating His soul from His body according to the necessary order of nature but has reunited them to one another in the resurrection, so that He Himself might be, in His person, the meeting point for death and life, by arresting in Himself the decomposition of nature produced by death and so becoming the source of reunion for the separated parts.” St. Gregory of Nyssa

Jesus Christ was buried Christ’s death was a real death in that it put an end to His earthly human existence. But because of the union His body retained with the person of the Son, His was not a mortal corpse like others, for “You will not let Your Holy One see corruption” (Acts 2:26-27; Psalm 16:9-10). Meaning, His body could not rot. Both prophecies apply to Christ: “He was cut off out of the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8) and “My flesh will dwell in hope. For You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let Your Holy One see corruption.”

Jesus Christ was buried What does this mean for us? “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4; Col 2:12; Eph 5:26). The church insists on baptism by immersion as a full sign of dying to sin and the world and living a new life to God in Christ.

“He descended into Hades through the Cross” (St. Basil liturgy) Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “Hell” – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God (Phil 2:10; Acts 2:24; Rev 1:18; Eph 4:9; Psalms 6:6, 88:11-13). Such is the case for all the dead whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer. This does not mean that their lot is identical, which Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom” (Psalm 89:49; 1 Sam 28:19; Ezek 32:17-32; Luke 16:22-26).

“He descended into Hades through the Cross” (St. Basil liturgy) The affirmation that Jesus was “raised from the dead” presupposes (takes as fact) that the Crucified One sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to His resurrection. Our Lord, like all men before Him, experienced death and in His soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But He descended there as Savior proclaiming the good news to the spirits imprisoned there (1 Peter 3:18-19). Even death itself, Hades, the absence of all life and anything good, could not prevent Him from His mission to save.

“He descended into Hades through the Cross” (St. Basil liturgy) In was precisely through and by His death that He was able to do these things: Jesus “the Author of Life,” by dying, destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and (delivered) all those who through fear of death were subject to life long bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15; Acts 3:15). Henceforth the risen Christ holds “the keys of death and Hades,” so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Rev 1:18; Phil 2:10). We have nothing to fear.

“He descended into Hades through the Cross” (St. Basil liturgy) Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began… He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, He has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him. He who is both their God and the Son of Eve… “I am your God, who for your sake have become your Son… I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.” Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday

“He descended into Hades through the Cross” (St. Basil liturgy) The church celebration of this great Saturday Sabbath starts immediately after the 12 th hour on Great Friday by changing the tunes and the banners of the church. We start loudly singing in a procession the joyful “Kerielayson.” Christ suffering in the flesh is ended. The cup He received from the Father is drunk, our salvation is accomplished, and “it is finished.” When the service on Great Saturday starts the alter is opened, the burial wrapping is on the alter. The church keeps this night in vigil next to the tomb of Christ where His body lays but in the Spirit the church goes with Him to Hades to encounter the righteous souls who awaited His salvation. In the readings of the night the church reads the songs of salvation. After finishing the songs, the church opens the book of Revelation since the Lamb was slain and the scroll which was at the right hand of God, which no one could open now the slain Lamb can open it for us.