GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 3:4-6
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4 He has worn out my skin and my flesh
and has shattered my bones.
5 He has besieged me
and surrounded me with poison and hardship.
6 He has made me dwell in darkness
like those who are dead a long time.
In these verses, the terrible cross of the Babylonian exiles is made clear. They were worn out physically; used up. Some of them had broken bones. I once broke both my legs in a car accident, but the doctors were so distracted by other, lesser things, that they never diagnosed the broken legs. I walked (or hobbled) on them for weeks before being told by an X-ray technician that the breaks were “healing nicely.” It was excruciating. For the Israelites, there was bitterness everywhere like poison, and there was excruciating hardship in every part of life. They were in spiritual darkness, and some of the exiles, especially certain leaders or nobles, may also have been kept in more literally dark dungeons or dank prisons.
We do not need to apply the shattered bones of verse 4 to Christ, for we know that not one of his bones were broken. John quotes Psalm 34:20 to affirm this: “These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’” (John 19:36). Yet the wearing out (especially of his strength), the harming of Jesus in general, being surrounded with hardship and poison (“they offered him wine mixed with gall”), and the dwelling in darkness all contribute to the picture of Jesus in his suffering.
But verse 6 also offers us the opportunity to consider the final stage of Christ’s state of humiliation. Recall the end of the shorthand list from the creed: “He was crucified, died, and was buried.” We count his burial as a part of his state of humiliation, and it certainly was not a part of his exaltation, but it remains something more like a pause, a moment of rest, between the two states, than a step in itself. In the Large Catechism, Luther says only very briefly that Jesus “suffered, died, and was buried that he might make satisfaction for me and pay what I owed, not with silver and gold but with his own precious blood. All this in order to become my Lord. For he did none of these things for himself, nor had he any need of them” (Large Catechism, II:31).
Jesus submitted to death, so that another man had to remove his body from the cross, wrap the body in a linen shroud, and place it into a nearby tomb (Matthew 27:59; John 19:42). What staggers the human mind is the realization that in his death, the following must all be true at the same time:
1, His divine soul, the Spirit of the Son of God, departed from his body just as our human souls depart from us when we die, as the Scriptures teach us (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
2, As James says, “the body without the spirit is dead” (James 2:26). The body of Jesus died on the cross.
3, The personal union of the divine and human natures were joined together forever at the incarnation of Jesus in the womb of his mother, Mary, as the Gospel teaches: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1;14).
4, His divine nature and his human nature were and are present in his flesh as well as spirit. As Paul instructs: “he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant… he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7,8). Likewise, the whole Christian church confesses: “Although he is God and man, he is not two Christs but one Christ: one, that is to say, not by changing the Godhead into flesh but by taking on the humanity into God, one, indeed, not by confusion of substance but by unity in one person” (Athanasian Creed, paragraphs 32-34).
5, Just as he was not two but one Christ in life, he also was not two but one Christ in death. Even though the soul of Christ was separated from his assumed flesh through death, even so his dead body, in the grave, remained a Temple of God in which all the fullness of the Deity resided bodily (Colossians 2:9). As the Apostle writes: “Jesus said, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days….’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body” (John 2:19,21).
6, The fact that his dead body was in the grave, “like those who are dead a long time” (Lam. 3:6), and yet remained that same Temple of the living God, is one of the mysteries that transcend our understanding. He had done what we cannot do; he added to this by retaining his divine nature in dead flesh as well as the released soul.
7, The divine flesh of Christ and the divine soul of Christ were reunited when he came to life once again in the tomb early on Sunday morning (Mark 16:9; John 20:1), and the place where he had lain was guarded, so to speak, by two angels, who were given the happy task of witnessing to his resurrection to the women who came there (John 20:12-13; Matthew 28:2-7; Luke 24:4-7).
He remained in the dust of death for a certain time (Psalm 22:15), not in order to satisfy unbelievers who doubt that he had done nothing but fainted or swooned, but to fulfill the many prophecies about being in the tomb for three days (Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19), and foreshadowed certainly by the adventure of the prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:17) and possibly by the detail of the “first holy week” in John’s Gospel, which ended with a celebration after three days (John 2:1).
How many of our crosses, our “third crosses,” might lead to the end of life in this world, leaving weary bodies and many griefs behind? But how wonderful to know that the end of this life is no end at all, and that when we rise we will be healed and whole again, restored and rejuvenated, healthy and eager to serve, united with our Lord forever, and reunited with family and friends to join in God’s praises for all eternity. Sisters and brothers, remind me to heft my cross and bear it alongside you, as we encourage one another and spur each other on to follow our Savior now, so that we will also follow him forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Lamentations 3:4-6 Christ in the grave