But there was in the place where he had been crucified a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
John alone mentions the garden by the cross. Why does that setting matter, and why does Scripture stress that no one had used the tomb?
John notices where things happen. One commentator asks what welcome man's garden gave Him.
Among the writers of the New Testament John is the only one who speaks of a garden. He is always great on environment. In his Gospel the setting brings out either the full beauty or the stark bareness of the deeds he records. So he speaks of a garden, and with it he shows us a traitor, a cross, and a tomb. The purpose of John's Gospel is to present the great fact that God has come down to men... He came, so well suited to the deep need of men, and entered man's garden. And can it be possible that there the traitor met Him, and men condemned Him to a cross and a tomb? Yes, so it was; men had nothing better than that for Him.
The Bible opens in a garden too. One writer sets that first garden beside this one.
Let us contrast the two gardens — that of Genesis 3 with that of John 19. In the one God placed the first Adam, innocent, with access to the tree of life. But he chose the tree of responsibility, in the error of his way, and fell. In the other lay He who had a right to the tree of life, but who had answered the responsibility in the dust of death. For the one, the garden eastward in Eden became the gateway to a lost world, which ends in the lake of fire. For the other, the second garden becomes the gateway for His people — not to Paradise regained, but to the Paradise of God.
A place of growth is a strange address for a grave.
It is fitting that it should be in a garden. Death entered in a garden, and God drove our first parents out of it. When the consequences of sin had been put away, the garden appears again... What fruits for all eternity, we may say, have grown in this garden where the tomb was! There was sown the Grain of wheat which has produced such a harvest... The garden around the tomb of our Lord speaks of life and points forward to His resurrection.
Scripture takes trouble over a detail that looks minor. One writer traces it back to an event in Israel's history. A dead man touched the bones of the prophet Elisha in his tomb, and came back to life.
Why is God so careful to say that? Look at the Old Testament, and you will see how carefully God guards everything connected with the person of His blessed Son... If the Spirit of God had not been careful to record this, Satan and the Jews would soon have spread this story: Jesus had risen from the dead, but that was nothing new. It had happened before in Old Testament times. They had put Him into a tomb where the bones of some prophet lay, and so He revived again. God foresaw that lie, and has taken great care to tell us it was a new tomb.
Another writer reads the same detail differently. It guards the body itself from any contact with decay.
The Psalmist had foretold that the Lord would not let His "Holy One" see corruption. We all know what that meant. The holy and sacred body of Jesus went through death, but decay never touched it in the least. But it also meant that His body should not even come into contact with it from outside. When God fulfils His word, He does so thoroughly and completely.
The burial arrangements were not left to the men who had arranged the crucifixion.
The malice of men would have pursued the Lord beyond death. As Isaiah 53:9 should read, "they appointed His grave with the wicked." They had prepared a rough hole near the cross. They meant to throw His body there with those of the thieves who had also died. But God stepped in, and "He was with the rich in His death."
Every other grave has a claim on what it receives. This one did not.
There had never been a tomb like it before, if we judge it by what was laid in it and by what came out of it. Up to that hour the grave had stood first in the list of things that are never satisfied. It had never cried, "It is enough"... There had always been a natural link between the tomb and what it held. God had said, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return." But in this new tomb there was no such link. The death of Jesus was voluntary... He was the Holy One of God and could see no corruption; death had no claim on Him, and so the tomb could not hold Him.
- Garden lost. Eden had a tree of life, but the first Adam fell there, and death entered the garden.
- Garden entered. John alone names the setting, and shows what man's garden held for Him: a traitor, a cross, a tomb.
- Garden guarded. God stopped His enemies at the grave. They had a rough hole ready beside the thieves; He was buried with the rich instead.
- Garden untouched. "Where no one had yet been laid" shields Him from both decay and the lie that some earlier prophet's bones revived Him.
- Garden regained. A grain of wheat was sown there, and the way out of that garden leads not back to Eden but on to the Paradise of God.
There therefore, on account of the preparation of the Jews, because the tomb was near, they laid Jesus.
John 19 ends with a rushed burial: sunset was near, the Sabbath was about to begin, and the only grave ready stood right beside the cross. Was that only convenience, or was God at work in the haste?
The verse gives a practical reason for the choice of grave: time had run out. But look at who buried Him — two men who had never dared to admit they followed Jesus.
The Saviour was rejected and despised. Yet in His death He was to be with the rich and the honourable. Two men had not dared to confess Him while He lived. Now they are awakened by the greatness of their nation's sin and by His death itself, and they care for His dead body. So God fulfilled His words of truth. Joseph and Nicodemus place the Lord's body in a new tomb in a garden near the cross. It was the Jews' preparation day, so they could do no more at that moment.
A condemned man could expect a criminal's grave. Jesus received something else, and the closing Sabbath cut the burial short.
His grave was to be with the rich: "And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death." He would probably have been buried in the public ground kept for criminals, where the two thieves were likely thrown. But now that man had fully satisfied his hatred, God takes care of the One who had glorified Him even to death... Notice that the Sabbath day was at hand, so the burial could only be temporary. They would finish it after the Sabbath. The women who loved the Lord also made preparations to embalm Him at a later moment.
Both men had kept their faith quiet. What silenced everyone else moved them to act.
God uses a dangerous time to call out His own hidden ones. Joseph of Arimathea can be a secret disciple no longer. He was a rich man and an honourable councillor. But wealth and position only make confessing Christ harder. Fear of the Jews had prevailed until now. The death of Jesus, which made others afraid, made Joseph bold... The cross of Christ is a stumbling block to unbelief, yet it tests his faith and brings it into the open. The two men grow brave by grace, and they supply the service the twelve disciples failed to give.
One writer turns their example into a question.
Does this not speak to secret believers, to timid disciples who keep in the shadows? They should come out into full daylight and confess their Saviour and Lord.
John records that this tomb had never held anyone. One writer finds a first in human history there.
It was a new tomb in more than one sense. It was new because never before had the grave received a sinless occupant. There had always been a natural link between the grave and the dead, for God had said, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return." But there was no such link between the body of Jesus and the grave. For the first time in human history the grave received a body that could not decay, because it was sinless. Yet His burial was as real as His death. Here is the gospel: "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried." And we cannot stop there: "he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures."
John tells us the tomb stood in a garden. That setting reaches back to where death first entered the world.
It is fitting that it should be in a garden. Death entered in a garden, and our first parents were driven out of it. When the consequences of sin had been put away, the garden appears again... What fruit for all eternity has grown in this garden where the tomb was! There the grain of wheat was sown that has produced such a harvest... There they laid Him. This was a preparation indeed — a preparation for the eternal Sabbath of God, in complete contrast to the legal "preparation of the Jews."
John does not say they laid a corpse there. He names the Person.
"They laid Jesus." This again contradicts views of human destiny that treat the body as something abandoned for ever at death. The Lord's body is spoken of as Himself.
- Near — they chose that tomb because the Sabbath was closing in and it stood close by. The haste was real, and God used it.
- Named — that same nearness drew out two hidden disciples, Joseph and Nicodemus. Their fear turned to courage when everyone else fell away.
- New — the grave had never held a body, and now it received One whose body could not decay.
- Garden — death began in a garden, and God answered it in a garden. This burial pointed to God's eternal rest, not just a Jewish holy day.
- Gospel — the burial is part of the message, not a footnote: He died, He was buried, He rose again.