(Jesus Video)

Today we look at the next section of the Apostles Creed, our weekly statement of our Christian faith:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day, he rose again

Now I am not going to limit or decry any other part of the Creed – it is all vital – but may be this is just a tiny bit primus inter pares (first among equals). In just a few short lines, we declare our belief in the heart of Jesus’ ministry here on earth. This is the death and resurrection bit of the Jesus story, this is the centre of his very life, death and new life, this is the heart of the Gospel stories – no other part of Jesus’ life takes up more chapters than his death and resurrection.

The Gospel writers majored on it, the Apostles majored on it (see Acts 2:14-36), and the NT writers wrote endless letters on it, explaining and applying what Jesus’ death and resurrection meant to the believers in the 1st century AD and now in the 21st century. This is the key to the Creed, this is the focus of God’s story, this is the heart of salvation.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate
You might find it offensive that the second human mentioned in the Creed – the other is Mary of course – is Pontius Pilate. He was the arrogant Governor of Judea, he was the weak-willed judge of the Messiah, he was the upholder of injustice, and he has a Biblical rating somewhere near King Herod of the Christmas story.

It’s good news that he is mentioned. It’s extraordinary that in his appearance in the Creed, the early church ensures that we place the crucifixion of Jesus in history. This is not some ‘once upon a time’ story, this is historical fact, attested to by the church’s statement of faith, attested to by the Bible and attested to by other absolutely not-Christian Roman writers, such as Josephus, writing about AD 80:-
[Jesus] was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross … (Antiquities XVIII)

Pilate was Governor of Judea from AD 26 to 36 – that neatly places Jesus’ ministry in history, just as the writer of Luke’s Gospel did (Luke 3:1-3). We declare week by week that Jesus ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’, that Jesus’ suffering was an historical event.

This is good news because we declare that our God is the God of history. He is not outside of history but he has entered history; he has entered time and space and we can pinpoint that very time and space with great accuracy. God is both the God of history and is in history, and that is a fact that we can shout from the rooftops. God has entered our historical world – he is not remote.

Mentioning Pontius Pilate is also good news because it neatly brings into the death and resurrection of Jesus the fact that the world has rejected its Saviour. Pontius Pilate represents our world, which doesn’t want a Saviour, doesn’t want to be reminded of its sin, and would rather stick to its own ways, thank you very much. Pilate was the apex of the machinery of humanity which sought to destroy Jesus, sought to make the Son of God suffer and so be rejected.

The amazing thing is that in the very suffering of the Son of God, ‘by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge’ (Acts 2:23), the redemption of humanity is worked out as an act of God, out of his grace and love for his creation he works out our salvation because we cannot. There it was proclaimed in the OT – Isaiah 52:13-53:12:-
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
And it’s picked up in the NT – 1 Peter 2:21-25:-
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

Jesus’ suffering under Pontius Pilate is an historical fact – God lives in history – and an important comfort – Jesus’ suffering brought salvation to us.

Crucified, died and was buried
Let us have a look at Jesus’ crucifixion. What was it really like?
File: My videos: Crucifixion 00:15-05:55

Here was the ultimate in human punishment, utterly inhumane, reserved only for the lowest criminals or for the greatest punishment. In Roman times, to even think of it would send a shudder down your spine. Just as if we glorified in the hangman’s noose today.

So for the church’s main statement of faith to glorify the cross – that dreadful act of torture and death – would be really quite bizarre, almost foolish to so-called sophisticated Romans (cp. 1 Cor 1:23). But it was an historical fact, it is true that Jesus was crucified; he died by one of the worst forms of punishment devised by humankind.

He was not just crucified but we state that he died (Acts 2:23c). The Gospel records confirm in the clearest language that he died, that he breathed his last and that he was wholly and totally dead on that cross. John’s Gospel records:-
… one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. (John 19:34)

That flow of blood and water is the separation of clot and serum, unknown to 1st century writers as a clear sign of death, but known to us today. Anyway, he must have been dead because no Roman soldier would take down a live body from a cross, because if the criminal survived, they died. It was that simple, and a Roman soldier valued his life enough to make sure that the criminal was well and truly dead – hence the spear in the side to make sure.

Now the fact that Jesus died and that we proclaim this has less to do with the event of his death – that historical fact of crucifixion – and much more to do with the significance of that event.

I have recently finished reading Caesar’s Legions. I can see like Sarah you can’t quite believe that someone would read such a book, but there you are. In 49BC the famous Julius Caesar crossed a small river with a single legion of soldiers. The name of that river was the Rubicon, and it marked the boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul (modern day France roughly). As an event it is pretty uninteresting: it wasn’t a wide river, it had been crossed countless times before.

But this seemingly unimportant event had great significance. The Rubicon marked a national frontier. By crossing it, Caesar declared war against his rival Pompey and the Roman Senate – with momentous results for the Roman Empire. The event was the crossing of a river; the meaning of that event was a declaration of war.

The death of Jesus was an event, but the death of Jesus was also very significant. Loads of people were crucified, but only Jesus’ crucifixion is truly significant. It’s not the mechanics of the event that matter but the meaning of the event. The Apostle Paul explains why Jesus’ death is so significant:-
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3).

The death of Jesus is important because it signifies the death of the power of sin over our lives, it signifies the death of the penalty of sin over our lives, it signifies the death of the partition between our lives and God. That is the significance and that is why we state with joy and hope that Jesus died.

He descended to the dead
Here we state the profound and complete physical death of Jesus. He did not rise from death as if death was some abstract idea; he rose from the dead, from his own very actual physical death, he rose from the dead, God raised him from the dead. He was with dead people, so to speak. Peter the chief Apostle spells this out in his first sermon (Acts 2:24).

Surely the previous phrase in the Creed was good enough. We have said that Jesus was “crucified, died and was buried”. But the writers of this Creed wanted there to be no mistake about this. Jesus physically died and physically went, wherever it is, to where dead people go.

Jesus’ death is not some lovely abstract idea. Jesus was not so holy and not so divine that he could not taste death. He was fully human as well as fully divine, so he fully tasted a full physical death. Our statement of faith declares unambiguously that he died. Jesus shared not just our humanity in living, but also our humanity in dying.

Nothing of our lives as we know them was kept from Jesus. God made sure we did not have that excuse and our Creed declares that no-one else has that excuse either. I feel like saying, “Alleluia” and I haven’t even got to the resurrection yet. God, your purposes are wonderful.

On the third day he rose again
We cannot not declare that – it’s the very cornerstone of our faith; the full, complete and physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He died and he was wrapped in cloths, and he was buried in a cold tomb, and on the third day he rose again.

This was no botched crucifixion – he was dead. This was no theft from the tomb – his disciples were scattered. This was no establishment cover-up – they knew he was dead. And no-one, no-one expected him to be alive again, not the authorities, not the disciples, not Peter or John, not even Mary Magdalene as she met the ‘gardener’ on that first Easter morning.

On the third day he rose again! Alleluia.

Why is this important?

It tells us about God
God is a living and active redeeming God. In the OT, the Israelites, when asked who their God was, would reply that he was the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt. That refrain continued throughout the OT, muted at times, but remembered yearly at Passover, the Jewish festival that recalled that rescue from slavery in Egypt.

God remains a living and active redeeming God and now both in the NT and today, when we are asked who our God is, we can say that he is the one who has rescued us from slavery to sin. So the Creed draws out this amazing truth that our God is the same redeeming God of the OT and of the NT and of today in the 21st century, in Bedford and wherever you go day by day and week by week and year by year.

It tells us about Jesus
Jesus is the Son of God:-
[Jesus] … was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4)

Jesus is the unique Son of God and thus his life – his words and his actions – and his death on the cross and his rising from the dead are unique expressions of God’s love. No other faith has that privilege. No other faith can so comprehensively and completely and with such well attested evidence declare the active love of God as is shown in Jesus Christ:
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)

Jesus, the Son of God, shows that God is fully involved in our world because of his love for his world and his earnest desire for reconciliation with that world.

It tells us about our world
God loves this world and he loves the people of this world, and he loves them so much that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, died and was buried, he descended to the dead.

If God goes to those lengths to demonstrate his love, then we know that as his followers we should have the same concern for his world, and that will affect our view of the environment, our view of injustice and our view of family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues.

And to that world and to ourselves, we have the message of hope: On the third day he rose again.