John 19:41

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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."

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.