This is part of a series of meditations on what Scripture teaches about each day of Holy Week, which goes from Palm Sunday until Easter, in which Christians everywhere mark the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead.

Previous posts:

• Prelude
• Palm Sunday
• Holy Monday
• Holy Tuesday Part 1
• Holy Tuesday Part 2
• Holy Wednesday
• Maundy Thursday
• Good Friday

“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

-Genesis 2:2-3, ESV

“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.  For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.  Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’  The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.  When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”

-Jonah 2:2-7, ESV

Just as God rested on the first Sabbath after finishing His work of Creation, the body of Jesus rested in the ground on this Sabbath after Jesus finished His work of redemption.  Still not grasping the significance of what had just transpired, the disciples externally rested according to the fourth commandment, but internally they were quite anxious for fear of suffering a similar fate.  It was not a restful Sabbath for the Jewish leaders either. While you would think they would have every reason to rest without worry having eliminated their problem—or so they thought—rest eluded them.  For all the times they rebuked Jesus for not resting on the Sabbath according to their traditions, it is a bit ironic and more than a bit hypocritical that on this Sabbath they were busy conspiring.  There was one more loose end to tie up with this Jesus.  While the disciples had missed His various declarations of rising from the dead after three days, the Jewish leaders had not.  They assumed the disciples also understood this and would therefore steal the body and claim that He rose from the dead.  To prevent that from happening, they placed soldiers at the tomb and sealed it with Pilate’s seal.  Considering the disciples’ lackluster combat performance at the Garden of Gethsemane a couple days prior, these precautions should have been more than adequate.  And they would have been, had Jesus been merely human.  But being fully divine, Jesus couldn’t stay in the grave for long.

Jesus Was Dead

Nevertheless, on that Sabbath the body of Jesus laid dead in the tomb, in the belly of Sheol (the place of the dead) as if in the depths of the sea (which also represented death to the non-seafaring Jews) just as Jonah observed from the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:2-5).  Death had swallowed Jesus and would not let go, just as the fish had swallowed Jonah (Jonah 2:6a).  Jesus was really, truly dead. 

I wonder if His body experienced decay.  While we think of decay as simply a natural process, it is mostly the work of living organisms.  Every organism that causes decay—and every inorganic substance too for that matter—was created by God and is thus subordinate to God.  Therefore, those organisms would have had to attack their Maker.  They had been allowed under God’s sovereign hand to attack Him as they would any other person during His life so that He could experience life in this fallen world in the same way that we do.  However, His perfect life and atoning death were done at this point, so it is quite possible that these organisms therefore did not attack the dead body of Jesus, therefore meaning His body did not experience any physical decay.  I like to envision them standing by reverently in worship of their Creator.  However, since Jesus was to be the firstfruits of the dead, it is also possible that God did allow His body to decay somewhat normally as a pattern for how our bodies decay but will one day be restored by God.  Either way, any decay would have had to have been minimal, since God would not only not abandon Jesus to Sheol but would also not allow Him to see corruption (Psalm 16:10).  Explaining this at Antioch of Pisidia, Paul says “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption” (Acts 13:36-37).  It can be debated whether or not this means that the body of Jesus did not undergo any decay, but one thing cannot be debated: Jesus could not stay dead.  

Jesus Couldn’t Stay Dead

God is sovereign over death just as He was sovereign over the fish and would therefore cause the tomb to expel Jesus as He caused the fish to expel Jonah—after three days.  God would raise Jesus up from death literally just as He had brought Jonah up from death figuratively (Jonah 2:6b).  Jesus pointed out this connection, likening Jonah’s three-day stay in the fish to His upcoming three-day stay in the tomb (Matthew 12:39-40, 16:4, Luke 11:29).  Thus Jesus became the greater Jonah (Matthew 12:41, Luke 11:30-32).  Death still reigned as the sun set on that Sabbath, but no one could have known just how tenuous the grip of death has become.  So that night the body of Jesus waited for what would be the dawn not only of a new day but of an entirely new Creation.  Oblivious to this, His disciples waited too, not knowing that a new era was about to dawn.   So on this Saturday, after remembering all that Jesus accomplished through His life and death, we wait to celebrate all that was accomplished with His resurrection.  As we wait for tomorrow, we also wait along with the entire Creation for the final destruction of death and the freedom from decay and corruption that will come with the resurrection of our bodies (Romans 8:19-25).