What was the significance of Jesus being dead for three days?

Just as Jonah was cast into the boiling sea because of his own sin, and was miraculously preserved in a fish’s belly three days and nights, so Jesus would enter into the flood-tide of God’s judgment upon sin—not His own, but that of others—and, dying, would lie in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, and be raised by God Himself, the Saviour of His people. None but faith could read the sign, or interpret the riddle. To reason it looked like nonsense.

After all the many miraculous signs of grace the Lord had shown (various healing on the sabbath days, for instance), the Pharisees ask for a sign from Him, ostensibly as witness to influence them to believe Him; but they have no heart whatever to believe. He responds that an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign. Their evil was that of malignant enmity, as already seen; as adulterous they were guilty of introducing a corrupting mixture into their professed service for God. He would therefore add no sign to that long ago given them in Jonah the prophet, the significance of which had a direct application to Himself. They had already plotted His death. He would accept their rejection of Himself. He would die and be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (the grave), just as Jonah spent such a time in the belly of the great fish. Jonah's release alive was a great miracle, but significant of a greater, that is, Christ's resurrection from among the dead. This surely was a sign of tremendous import, but we know the Pharisees still refused to believe Him.

By their request, recorded in verse 38, the Pharisees revealed that they were morally blind and insensible as well as corrupt and evil. Ignoring, whether ignorantly or wilfully, all the signs that had been given, they asked for a sign. We noticed five signs in chapter 8 and five in chapter 9, besides those recorded in our chapter. Being evil and adulterous they could not perceive the plainest sign, so no sign should be given but the greatest of all — His own death and resurrection, which had been typified in the remarkable history of Jonah. The generation which was refusing the Lord had been in the presence of signs, more than all others before them. Jonah and his preaching had been a sign to the Ninevites, and at an earlier date Solomon and his wisdom had been a sign to the queen of the south, and striking results had been achieved. Yet Jesus was rejected.

(Vv. 3, 4). Immediately he sums up the glad tidings under three heads. First, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”. This brings before us the great propitiatory work of Christ for all the world, foretold in all the Scriptures, for the law sets it forth in figure, the Psalms present it experimentally, and the prophets announce it prophetically. Secondly, Christ was buried, the complete evidence of His death and the solemn fact that all His links with man after the flesh are severed. Thirdly, “He was raised the third day, according to the Scriptures”, the everlasting witness that the power of death is broken, the devil defeated, and God is glorified.

But God would give the amplest evidence. So it is added to Christ's death (ver. 4), "and that he was buried." Only here is made no mention of the scriptures. This is reserved for the immense fact of the resurrection: "and that he was raised the third day according to the scriptures," which is followed by the repeated appearances, of course without any such attestation. It is not merely an accessory fact or corroboration of Christ's death. His resurrection is the grand pivot of the chapter, the display of God's glory as regards man, the fullest answer to all unbelief, and the knell of Satan's power. This was the truth which the enemy sought to undermine among some at Corinth; but the result, under the grace of God, is the complete demonstration of its certainty, and of its all-importance.

But this is not all that the apostle points out. Christ was not raised only; He "was raised the third day according to the scriptures." The first book of the law gave its early preparation for it. For from the beginning, even in Eden, though not till after sin entered, God announced that the bruised Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Still more distinctly do we see the Father ready to give His beloved and only Son, and that Son under the sentence of death till "the third day" (Gen. 22:4), when a ram in the type was substituted, and Isaac was received as from the dead in a figure. (Heb. 11:17-19.) The Psalms give their intermediate but glowing witness, Psalm 8 showing us the Son of man who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but crowned with glory and honour, with all things put under His feet; Psalm 16, the dependent One, trusting in God through life and death, and beyond. What possibly more distinct? "My flesh also shall rest in hope; for Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life," etc., — words which, as a whole, apply as clearly to the dead and risen Messiah, as they cannot to David or any other. There is no mention of "the third day" here of course, which would be a foreign element, and destructive of the calm confidence of the psalm; but it is plain that for the soul not to rest in Sheol, and the body not to see corruption, there must be not only a raising from the dead, but this without delay. His flesh therefore should rest in hope, and not merely the spirit. But the prophets carry on and complete the testimony, for if Hosea 6 be only the principle applicable to Israel by-and-by, Jonah 1:17 is the striking type of the Son of man three days and three nights (so it was counted Jewishly) in the heart of the earth: what a sign to the faithless Jew!

But with regard to the third day in scripture, which would seem often significant of resurrection, we are not so plainly instructed; and yet to the spiritual mind little doubt can remain but that the third day would be the day of Christ's rising from the dead. Abraham seeing the place afar off for the sacrifice of Isaac on the third day (Gen. 22:4) makes it more than probable that Isaac was loosed from the altar on the third day. But this is not clear enough to be relied on as positive evidence on the point. Our Lord Himself referred to Jonah as a type, when He said, "As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. 12:40.) Here we have the clearest instruction that the Old Testament record of Jonah did typically set forth the resurrection of Christ, forasmuch as Jonah, after this, was vomited out by the fish on dry land. The third day is also stamped with the divine mark of resurrection by the prophet Hosea — "After two days he will revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight." (Hosea 6:2.) Again, we find in reference to the peace offering, that "the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnt with fire," that is, that it shall be entirely for God on the third day. (Lev. 7:17.)

The third day is notable in Scripture. Instances of it having been set aside for divine manifestation have already been placed before the reader. It may be termed the day of a new beginning. On the third day of creation the dry land appeared. (Gen. 1:9-13.) Israel crossed the waters of judgment and death of the Red Sea, and found salvation on its further shore, on the third day after leaving Egypt. The third is the resurrection day to this the "dry land" and the "further shore" of the Red Sea point. The third day is that on which the Lord, who had passed through the deep waters and the darkness of death, arose to die no more, and thus forever the third day is sanctified to His glory in His beginning anew His ways in resurrection. Christ referred frequently to the third day when foretelling His death and resurrection, and recalled Old Testament types of His resurrection when so doing. The number "three" is often identified with the Holy Trinity.

The third day Christ rose from the dead. This is the great test. His resurrection is the great proof of God's supreme satisfaction with all that Christ is and has done, especially with His atoning death upon the cross under the wrath of a Holy God because of man's sin. His resurrection is the complete vindication of the three wonderful words He uttered after the three hours of darkness, "IT IS FINISHED!" (John 19:30).

Our Lord prophesied His own resurrection, that for three days and nights He would be in the heart of the earth, and rise the third day. Was this not far more wonderful than the sudden reappearance of Jonah, believed to be dead, but miraculously preserved in order to give God’s message? But our Lord was crucified. He actually died. He was buried. The men who were plotting His death must have known that His resurrection, if it took place, would be the most signal proof by God of His complete satisfaction with all that our Lord died to accomplish. No wonder, when He did die, and the third day of His burial came, the morning of His resurrection, the news of that great event filled the hearts of the scribes and high priests with a terrible fear. If they crucified our Lord, and God raised Him from the dead, there was a clear and solemn issue between guilty man and a Holy God. The resurrection of our Lord was an ocular demonstration that God will judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31). You and I, whether we like it or not, will have to give account as to how we stand in relation to that resurrection. Thank God, for believers on the Lord Jesus Christ His resurrection is the great proof of their acceptance before God.

Our hearts are moved to gladness as we think of the Father's part in the outgoing of the gospel, but they will be solemnized, deeply solemnized, as we consider the cost. Hear the Lord's own words after He had opened the understandings of His disciples that they might understand the Scriptures: "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." My brethren, but for this the Father's love would never have been known; but for this sinners could never have been saved from death and darkness for life and glory; apart from this we should have had no gospel to preach, there could have been no way of repentance opened for men and no remission of sins for those who repented. "IT BEHOVED CHRIST TO SUFFER." Thus it was written. It was no after-thought of His. His cross was not an accident, something unforeseen, it was written that thus it must be. It was written in the volume of the book of God's counsels before the world was founded, but written also in the Holy Scriptures that men of faith in former times might read and hope, and the Scriptures cannot be broken. Some have tried to break them, some have tried to tear from the Scriptures the foretelling and the fact of the sufferings of Christ. They have only done it to their own destruction, for if Christ did not suffer, the Just One, for us the unjust, there is no way to God; and those who deny those sufferings and the reason of them, have no Saviour. It is intensely sad that a great number who profess to preach the Word are doing this very thing. It is bad enough that they should do it in this land, where the Bible itself is a sure witness against them, but how indescribably sad it is that many of this ilk should be going to the mission field carrying a gospel without the cross, a message in which there is no room for Christ who suffered for sinners and no redeeming blood! Thank God we believe the Scriptures, and nothing greater was written in them than this, "It behoved Christ to suffer." It was a necessity. Those hours of darkness on the cross, when He cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" were a necessity. He was delivered there for our offences. Divine, eternal justice demanded this if we were to be saved, and