Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2712
“Whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.” Acts 2:24.
PETER is here speaking of the risen Christ, whom God had raised up, “having loosed the pains of death.” So it is clear that whatever those pains were, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ felt them—He felt them much more than His followers do, for, in His death-agony, He was left without the sustaining help of God and the light of His Father’s Countenance was hidden from Him. His death was a bitter one, indeed! He took the deepest draughts of wormwood and gall, for He had to “taste death for every man,” whatever that mysterious expression may mean. We must never imagine that there was about Christ’s death anything which took away from its bitterness. There was much that increased it, but nothing that diminished it. He was bound, as with strong cords, by the pains of death. All His powers were, for a time, fettered. He was held captive and He did really die. After death, He was buried. But there was this remarkable fact about His dead body—it saw no corruption. In the case of ordinary corpses, corruption begins very speedily. In a climate like that of Jerusalem, it is very quick in doing its work of dissolving the mortal fabric. But, although our Lord did truly die, no taint of corruption came upon His precious body.
The reason for that was, first, because it was not necessary. Corruption is not a part of the sentence which Christ had to bear. The penalty of sin is death—and that He bore to the utmost. But there was no necessity that He should also endure the usual consequences of death and, therefore, although He died, His flesh was not permitted to see corruption.
Again, as it was not necessary, so it would not have been seemly that our Lord Jesus Christ’s body should ever be tainted by decay as all other bodies are. It was not right that One who was so pure and holy as He was, One who stood in what theologians call, “hypostatical union with the Godhead”—(it is not easy to explain exactly what is meant by that term, but it refers to our Lord’s intimate and complete union with the Godhead)—it would not have been comely that such a body as His should see corruption and, therefore, it was preserved from the defilement which death usually brings in its train.
And, further, it was not even natural that the body of Christ should see corruption, for albeit that it was like our bodies in many respects, yet we must never forget that there was a vast difference even in His birth. Through the Immaculate Conception of our Lord, no taint of sin was in His Nature—by a mysterious overshadowing which we must not attempt to understand—“that holy Thing” which was born of the virgin was truly “the Son of God”—“holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” And as there was no original taint about that sacred body, so there was never, afterwards, a single action, or even thought, by which its chaste and perfect purity could have been defiled. If our first parents had never sinned, it would not have been necessary for these bodies of ours to die and to become corrupt. And in taking our place, and suffering in our stead, there did come upon Christ the necessity that He should die, but there was no natural necessity that His dead body should become corrupt. And it did not pass into a state of decay, for it was not the will of God that His soul should be left in Hades, or that His holy body should see corruption. While it is quite true that Christ is made in all things like unto His brethren, yet there is always some point of distinction to indicate that, although He is our Brother, He is “the first-born among many brethren,” “the chief among ten thousand.” And if others are love1y,
“He is altogether love1y.” So, although He really died and His body was laid in the tomb as the dead usually are, yet, inasmuch as it was preserved from corruption, it is marked out as being above and different from all the rest.
I. I am now going to speak upon the fact mentioned in the text, that IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE THAT THE BONDS OF DEATH SHOULD HOLD OUR LORD. God raised Him up, “having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”
Why was it impossible that the bonds of death should hold Christ? There are several reasons. The first is that Christ had in Himself the inherent power to die, and to live again. I will not enlarge upon this Truth of God, but simply give you our Lord’s own Words concerning it. “Therefore does My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of My Father.” Now, in the realms of the dead, before that time, there had never been seen any person who had the inherent power to take up his life again. Neither had there ever been one there who had possessed the inherent power to lay down his life when he pleased, for no mere man has ever been the absolute master of his own life—so that our Lord Jesus was the first who ever entered the portals of the tomb bearing within Himself the power to rise again whenever He pleased.