Introduction
Last week we spent our time on the line of the Creed which says about the Lord Jesus Christ that he was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. God’s only begotten Son came down from heaven and became one of us by taking to himself a body and soul like ours. Without ceasing to be what he always was — that is to say, without ceasing to be God — he became a man so that he is now God and man in one person. And he came down from heaven and was made man for us and for our salvation.
Today we come to the next lines in the Creed which say about him: ‘and [he] was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried….’ The Creed moves directly from the Lord’s incarnation to his suffering and death on the cross. And therefore it doesn’t say anything about his public ministry when he taught the people and performed miraculous signs and wonders. If that concerns us, then we need to remember that the Creed is only a summary of what we believe. And since it’s only a summary, then it has to be selective.
And in this, it following the example of the Apostle Paul, who wrote in 1 Corinthians 15: ‘For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance.’ What was of first importance according to Paul? ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve’ and so on. According to the Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the death of Christ for our sins, his burial and his resurrection are of first importance for us.
That’s not to say that his public ministry is unimportant. We shouldn’t disregard it. We must study the life of our Lord as recorded for us in the gospels. We must pay attention to what he said and the miracles he performed while he was on the earth. We can’t disregard those things. But of first importance is the death of Christ for our sins, his burial and his resurrection. And so, the Creed moves directly from the incarnation to his death and burial and in the next line it refers to his resurrection.
Biblical witness
You won’t go very far in the New Testament without finding some reference to Christ’s death on the cross for sinners. But even before we get to the New Testament, we have passages like Isaiah 53 when his death on the cross is foretold. There it says about the Lord Jesus: ‘Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he has wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.’ And there are many others places in the Old Testament where it says that he will suffer and die for his people.
And then, when we turn to the gospels, we see that the Lord Jesus predicted what would happen to him. For instance, in Mark’s gospel, right after Peter confessed that the Lord Jesus is the Christ, Mark tells us that the Lord then began to teach them that he must suffer many things and be rejected by the Jewish leaders and that he must be killed only to rise again after three days. That was in Mark 8. And in Mark 10, he predicted how he will be betrayed into the hands of the Jewish leaders who will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him; and three days later he will rise. That’s what we read in Mark and in the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke. And then in John 3, which we were studying on Sunday evening, the Lord referred to the bronze snake which Moses lifted up in the desert. And then he went on to say that he too will be lifted up. In this way he predicted how he will be lifted up on the cross.
So, the Lord foretold his death. And all four gospels record for us his trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate and how he was taken away and crucified and buried. And in the book of Acts, the apostles preached about Christ’s death and burial — and his resurrection — wherever they went.
Paul’s letters are full of references to the Lord’s death for our salvation. Right at the beginning of Romans, for instance, he refers to the Lord’s resurrection from the dead. And in Romans 5 he says that the Lord was delivered over to death for our sins and he was raised to life for our justification. And he also said that at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. In 1 Corinthians 1 he writes about the message of the cross which seems foolish to those who are perishing. But to those who are being saved, it’s the power of God. I’ve already referred to what he said in 1 Corinthians 15 about the message of his death and burial and resurrection being of first importance. And in 2 Corinthians 1, he writes about the sufferings of Christ which overflow into our lives. And in 2 Corinthians 5 he says that Christ died for all that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ who died for us and was raised. That’s only a brief sample of what Paul said about the death of Christ.
And we find the same message of the cross in most of the other New Testament letters. For instance, in Hebrews, the Lord is presented as our Great High Priest who offered himself to God on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for sins. Peter says the Lord died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. And John describes his death as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And in Revelation, the Lord Jesus is the one who was dead, but who is now alive for ever and ever. And he is the Lamb who was slain.
And I could go on, because the whole Bible is full of references to the death of the Lord Jesus.
Crucified
The Creed says that the Lord Jesus was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.
By referring to Pontius Pilate, the Creed is making clear that the crucifixion was an historical event. The message of the cross is not a story which someone made up, but it’s an event which took place at a certain time and in a certain place involving certain people. Pilate is not just a person who appears in the Bible, but he’s someone we know about from historical records from that time. And so, the reference to Pilate anchors the Lord’s death in history.
And just as God fulfilled his purpose for us and for our salvation through Mary, so he fulfilled his purpose for us and for our salvation through this man, Pontius Pilate. Even though Pilate was an unbeliever, God was able to use him to accomplish his great plan for our salvation. And that should be a reminder to us that God is able to use all kinds of people — believers and unbelievers alike, the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous — to carry out his plans. This is because God is the great king who rules over all of his creatures and all of their actions.
By saying that the Lord was crucified ‘for us’, the Creed is connecting Christ’s cross with our salvation. So, after the Lord was brought before Pilate to be questioned, Pilate concluded that the Lord had done nothing to deserve the death penalty. He was convinced that the Lord was an innocent man. And therefore, he did not deserve to die on the cross. That tells us that he was not crucified for his own sins, because he had none. On the contrary, he was crucified for our sins. As the Lord Jesus said about himself, he is the Son of Man who did not come to be served, but to serve us by giving up his life as the ransom for many. When he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, he was giving up his life to pay for our sins and shortcomings. He was taking the blame for what we have done wrong to make peace for us with God. He bore in himself the punishment we deserve to satisfy the justice of God which was against us. Since the wages of sin is death, he died in our place so that we may live with God for ever. And in the Old Testament, we read that whoever is hung on a tree is cursed. And so, the Lord Jesus was hung on a kind of tree to suffer the curse of God which we deserve for our sins, so that we might receive the blessing of God which he deserves for his perfect life of obedience to his Heavenly Father.
Suffered and was buried
And the Creed also says that the Lord suffered and was buried.
His burial in the tomb means he really died. So, he did not merely faint on the cross or pass out and then later recover. No, the people who were there at the time and took his body from the cross and buried it were convinced that he was dead. And since he was dead, they buried him.
And this completes the descent of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven, where he rules over all as God, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man; and who was then crucified under Pontius Pilate. And after he died, he was buried in the ground. For us and for our salvation, he went from the glory of heaven to the darkness of the tomb. He who is the Most High God, who is above all, was placed under the ground.
The Creed says that he suffered. He suffered throughout his life here on earth. And so, he was born in humble circumstances. And after his birth Mary and Joseph had to take him and flee for safety. He suffered all the same limitations and weaknesses which are common to all of us. And so, he knew what it was like to suffer hungry and thirst and weariness. He suffered rejection from those he came to save and he suffered betrayal and insults and the mocking of the crowd. He suffered physical torture when he was beaten and whipped by the Roman soldiers. And he suffered unbearable physical pains on the cross. And then he also suffered the wrath and curse of God in our place and for our sake. He took the cup of God’s wrath and he drank all of it for us. He bore the punishment that we deserve when he suffered and died.
As God, he is impassible. That means he cannot suffer. God is not affected by anyone or anything outside of himself. And so, as God, he cannot suffer. But as a man, and in our place, he suffered and died.
As God, he is always active and never passive. He doesn’t wait passively for something to happen, because he always takes the lead, working out his plans and purposes and accomplishing his holy will through us. As God, he is always active. But as a man, the Lord Jesus was passive, because he was arrested by men and taken away and tried and charged and beaten and whipped and crucified. These are things that happened to him. These are things which he suffered. These are things which were done to him.
And yet, paradoxically, these things which happened to him and which he suffered are things which he had planned in eternity and which he carried out in time. As Peter said to the people in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost: ‘This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge….’ In other words, it was God’s will that God in Christ should be handed over to Pilate to suffer and to die. As one modern writer has said (Cary): ‘in the power of divine love he has chosen to make a life of human suffering his very own life.’ So, as God, he chose for these things to happen to him as a man. He willed that he would suffer like this. And he willed that he would suffer like this, not because he took pleasure in suffering, but because there was no other way to save us from eternal suffering than for him to suffer and die on the cross and to pay for our sins with his life.
And so, thanks be to God both now and forevermore for his willingness to come down from heaven in the person of his Son to be crucified as one of us under Pontius Pilate and to suffer and to be buried for us and for our salvation so that we can be raised from the dead to live for ever and for ever with him in the glory to come.
Sermons and Stuff 