Jesus was dead. Jesus is not dead.

from an exposition of Mark 15:40-16:8

Mark is intent to get us to see that the death of Jesus was confirmed multiple times. Three women witness that Jesus was dead. Joseph of Arimathea reports to Pontius Pilate that Jesus was dead. Pilate is surprised Jesus was dead; he asks if Jesus was dead; it is confirmed that Jesus was dead. Mark is belaboring the point to refute any wacky conspiracy theory that Jesus didn’t really die; that maybe He just passed out and so came back to consciousness again. No, it’s confirmed by the expert on killing people — the centurion of the execution squad — that Jesus was killed. So, Pilate granted the “corpse” (15:45)— notice that the word is specifically “corpse,” not just generically body, that can be alive or dead, but “corpse,” which by definition is dead. Pilate wants to confirm it. He asked the centurion if Jesus was really dead already. Yes, He was. Jesus was dead. Pilate granted the “corpse” to Joseph on Friday.

But by Sunday morning, Jesus is not dead.

The three women who had seen Jesus die and seen Him be buried come with spices. They come to anoint the body, to complete the burial that had been hastily done before sunset on Friday (16:1). They aren’t coming to try to revive Him with smelling salts. They aren’t coming to do therapy, hoping He’ll recover. He is, as far as they know, beyond help. They can show their respects by giving the corpse a proper burial, but that’s all that the limits of nature will allow. And two thousand years of scientific and medical progress haven’t changed that one bit. There’s nothing, still, we can do for the dead.

As the two Marys and Salome were walking to the tomb together, they were wondering who was going to help open it up. “They were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” But when they got close enough, they could see, the stone had already been rolled away. Weird. Who would come so early and roll that big stone out of the way?

Notice, they did not expect that maybe Jesus was raised. That hasn’t even entered their minds. In case some skeptics think they were just in denial — the first stage of grief is denial — and things got confusing, maybe they went to the wrong tomb, and jumped to the conclusion they were already hoping for — that Jesus was raised. No. They had no thought of that. They were in mourning but not in denial. They came to treat a corpse. They expected the tomb to be closed. For all they knew and expected, Jesus was now limited by death, and there was no coming back from that, not in this age.

They enter the tomb. It’s probably small, stone all around like a cave, with carved out shelves for the bodies to be put in. Before Jesus, no body had yet been buried there, so there should only be His corpse. But there wasn’t any corpse. Instead, sitting on the right side was someone who looked like a young man, wearing a white robe.

They were alarmed. They weren’t expecting this. They have stepped past the limits of their experience. The angel says, “Don’t be alarmed.” The limits have been broken; a new age has begun. But you don’t need to be frightened that it will be bad for you, believers. “You seek Jesus of Nazareth.” Very specific. They weren’t seeking some other body; a substitute who managed to take Jesus’ place. They weren’t seeking some spiritual, symbolic “Christ of faith,” a metaphor for hope never dying, the sunrising tomorrow. No. They were seeking Jesus of Nazareth, the man from that town in Galilee.

Jesus “was crucified.” Again, in case we miss the point; so that we fully understand that Jesus passed over that boundary separating life from death; He went where nature tells us you can’t come back from. But, “He has risen” (Mark 15:6). He has burst through the limits of death. “He is not here” in this tomb. “See the place where they laid Him.” It’s empty. He’s not in any tomb, in any other grave. His corpse hasn’t just been moved. His corpse is no longer a corpse. It is a living, resurrected body. That’s the new fact upon which our new life, our new actions are based: Jesus has risen. He is not dead.

For the whole exposition of Mark 15:40-16:8, listen:

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church is Danville’s & Caswell County’s Reformed church.