Board index ‹ Resurrection of Christ

[Mad Ron]

Why not one day? Or 15min? Or a month? Or a century? Why did Jesus have to stay dead for three days?

[jimwalton]

Martin Pickup writes,

"I believe the 3-day time frame is more directly related to the Jewish understanding that the decomposition of a corpse begins after the 3rd day of death. The 3rd-day motif focused attention on the fact that the risen Christ did not undergo the decay that besets the bodies of deceased human beings, symbolizing their sinfulness (Mal. 2.3). By raising him from the dead before his body could begin to decompose, God demonstrated the personal righteousness of Christ and the fact that he died not for his own sins, but for the sins of others.

"In Jewish thought, death is a divine punishment for sin, and the decomposition of a human corpse highlights human sinfulness by destroying, in a most gruesome manner, the body of flesh that was used to commit sin (Ps. 49.7-9; Job. 21.19-26; 24.19-20). Jesus’s resurrection on the third day signified to Jewish minds that his body did not decay, and thus it implied his personal sinlessness. This not only vindicated Jesus, it supported the gospel claim that his death was an atonement for the sins of others.

"Though the Jewish minds would understand these implications of this as long as he rose sometime before the 4th day, the formula affirms and demands that he rose specifically on that day—explicable only if some event(s) occurred indicating that this was the actual day he arose. The significance would be that it was long enough to denounce accusations that he wasn’t truly dead, but short enough to denounce accusations (in the Jewish mind) that he was a sinner.

"It follows, then, that the 3rd day formula can refer to nothing other than a historical, physical, bodily resurrection of his corpse. Nor can the physical resurrection of Jesus have been a minor opinion held only by a segment of the church. On the contrary, it indicates it was always an emphatic part of the church’s message.

"It is also evident that the formula is implying that the burial place of Jesus was empty on the 3rd day, and that it was known to be empty. Mourners routinely visited tombs on the 3rd day (and never after that). The 3rd day motif affirms his burial, and since the 3rd day motif assigns his resurrection to the day when mourners would visit a deceased person’s tomb, this implies that the burial place was literal and spatial, and could be visited, and was visited, and the absence of his body observed."