LIghT ThE WAy


Most modern scholars think that Jesus died because his lungs had filled with fluid and he could no longer breathe. Also, it is very likely that his heart failed due to the enormous physical strain he was under.


The Jewish leaders asked Pilate to make sure that Jesus was dead. The normal practice was for Roman guards to break a prisoner’s legs with a hammer so that he could no longer hold himself up to breathe. However when the guards came to Jesus they realised that he was already dead. In order to make sure that he had died, a Roman guard thrust a spear into his side (John 19:34). This pierced his lungs. Death was guaranteed.


The Burial of Jesus


Joseph of Arimathea was one of the few members of the Sanhedrin who had supported Jesus. Now he came forward to claim Jesus’s body for burial. However Joseph had to get the permission of the Roman procurator. It was not usually allowed for a crucified rebel to be given a proper burial (Luke 24:50–52 and John 19:38).


According to Jewish law, the body of an executed criminal could not be left unburied over the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 21:22–23). The Sabbath began at sunset (around six o’clock) on Friday evening. So the body had to be quickly taken down and buried.


The body of Jesus was quickly cleaned and wrapped in a linen shroud. It was ‘put in a tomb, which had been hewn in stone in which no one had yet been buried’ (Luke 23:53). The tomb was sealed by rolling a large, heavy millstone, set in a channel, across its entrance. This little tomb was in a garden close to the city gates and ‘near at hand’ (John 19:42) to where Jesus had been crucified.


As the Sabbath was about to begin, there was no time to embalm Jesus’s corpse properly. So the women disciples decided that they would return on Sunday morning, once the Sabbath was over, to do this.


The Sacrifice of Jesus Christians call Jesus’s death a sacrifice.


The Synoptic Gospels say that when Jesus died ‘the curtain hanging in the Temple was torn in two’ (Luke 23:46). This refers to the great curtain that hung over the entrance to the Holy of Holies (i.e. the sanctuary of the Temple).


REMEMBER! A sacrifice is something (e.g. your life) given out of love to achieve something important.


This event may have happened just as it is written or it may have been a way of saying that, through Jesus’s death, something great had occurred. Think about this:


Before Jesus’s death on the cross…


The Great Curtain separated people from the Holy of Holies. The Jews believed that this part of the Temple was the holiest place on Earth. It was the meeting place between God and the Jewish people.


Only the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies and talk to God, and even then only once a year, at Yom Kippur.


After Jesus’s death on the cross…


All the barriers that separate human beings from God were removed.


The way to God was opened for everyone.


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