It is all too easy to leave the narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus at His burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and pick it up again on the resurrection morning, What information have we been given in the Scriptures of events in between?

1. The repentant thief besought Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” Jesus responded, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:42-43. Jesus entered Paradise not long after, then the forgiven thief entered also.
2. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah , during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the 1 Peter 3:18-20. While in the grave Jesus visited Hades, the place of the unsaved dead to preach to the ones who had peished in the flood. Did those who responded to His message get transferred to Paradise? Wow!
3. “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power….” Sometime after sunset on the Saturday (the start of the first day of the week) God raised Jesus from the dead and the great stone was rolled away from the mouth of the cave. In order for God to raise Jesus from the dead Jesus must be approved by God as His sinless Son. Thus death could not hold Him in ‘its power’.
4. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. John 20:6-7. What Peter beheld is a clue to what happened when God raised Jesus. Jesus rose upright. The wrappings that signified death just fell away and lay there. Jesus Himself unwrapped the cloth from His head* and ‘rolled it up in a place by itself’. Then it may be that God directed the two angels that guarded the tomb to roll away the stone. Although in His resurrection body Jesus could have walked through the great stone it must be that God who had raised Him set Jesus forever free – and us in Him.

*When Jesus raised Lazarus from death he came forth from the tomb wearing the head cloth and the linen wrappings and had to be released from them by others. Ultimately Lazarus died and like us will await the final resurrection and his imperishable body when Jesus returns to reign.

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