“What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?” (Ephesians 4:9)
Dr. Luke tells us that Jesus died around 3:00 on a Friday afternoon, just a few hours before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.
Funerals were prohibited on the Sabbath, so Jesus’ supporters didn’t have the luxury of time with which to plan a service. They had to hustle just to bury him before sunset. In fact, the Bible notes that they didn’t even have time to secure a tomb in which to lay him, so they placed him in a borrowed one located in a nearby garden.
Can you imagine what that first Sabbath immediately following his death was like?
His disciples had done just as he told them they would do. At the first sign of trouble, they had scattered like sheep. Only a couple of them had summoned up enough courage to stand in front of the cross and say goodbye. The rest of them were nowhere to be found.
Jesus didn’t live up to their expectations either. He told them he was the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God.
They had seen him heal hundreds of people, some by just looking in their direction. But healing wasn’t his only gift. He could make water out of wine, and one time, they helped him feed over five thousand people from two fish and five loaves of bread. There just didn’t seem to be anything that he couldn’t do!
So why didn’t he save himself that day? He loved to call himself the Son of Man, but he repeatedly told them that he was also the Son of God. Why didn’t he come down from that cross and show them all that he really was the Son of God?
He just let them taunt him. The same ones who hailed him as their king when he rode so triumphantly into Jerusalem five days earlier, now said, “Save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:40) Even the chief priests and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. (Matthew 27:42)
He didn’t look very much like God up there on the cross. In fact, he sounded a little like he doubted himself, too. That couldn’t have been what he meant when he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) Could it?
What a confusing, gut-wrenching day it must have been for them, but as the psalmist said, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” (Psalms 30:5)
Jesus hadn’t deserted his disciples or us either for that matter. Oh sure, the Son of Man had died, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t every bit of the God that he had promised them.
I believe that the same living God that the disciples had seen in Jesus was working the day after his own crucifixion to make sure that every person who ever called himself a Christian would be able to claim victory over death, and all the hell that goes with it. The Bible says, “He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison.” (1 Peter 3:18-19)
Jesus’ disciples may have been a little confused by what happened on the cross that day, but the truth is he went to hell and back for us. That’s why the Apostle Paul said, “But now that you have been set free from sin…, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” (Romans 6:22)
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