When Jesus was crucified, Part I

In Matthew 16:21, the apostle tells his reader of the time when Jesus began to teach his followers of his pending death. As it was the primary reason he took on flesh, it should come as no surprise that he would explain to his followers what would take place--whether they got it or not. In the very next chapter, Matthew provides a quotation from the Lord, "The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day" (17:22b-23).


Did you catch that?  The third day.

No doubt you have heard scholars discuss what it was that Jesus meant by the third day, that any portion of a day that an event crosses would be considered part of that day. Therefore, the argument goes, since Jesus was crucified on Friday, the day before the Sabbath, the gospel writers are telling us that on the morning of the first day of the week, Jesus rose from the dead.


That's what the Church has asserted this 2000 years. But for many years, other verses about the coming resurrection made me squirm.  Consider these:

• Mark's telling of the events uses "after three days" as opposed to "on the third day" (see Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34)
• Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

Much of the rest of the New Testament points to Jesus being raised on the third day (Acts 10:40, 1 Corinthians 15:4). Reconciliation? Perhaps at the conclusion of the third day.


But then there's this thing that Jesus said when he was asked for a sign by the scribes and Pharisees.

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:39-40)

If not for this one utterance, I would have been content to abide the Friday-to-Sunday-equals-three-days argument, but Jesus had to go and specify three days and three nights and he anchored it to an historical three-day/three-night event, the tribulation of Jonah in the filth of the fish. "As Jonah was three days in the fish, so too will the Son of Man be three days in the earth." Had he said it that way, we might be able to use the it-touches-three-days theory.  But Jesus went and got astronomically specific.


What's the big deal? Well, the truthfulness of Scripture, for one. The ability of God the Son to communicate plainly, for two. Combine those into whether I can believe the Bible as it is written or whether I have to bend it or contort it into something other than the plain reading and you have three.


It's like when God had to go and muddy up what a day was in Genesis by adding, "And there was evening and there was morning the xth day."  If he had just said "On the second day, God created thus and so," we might have been able to abide a day being a thousand years. Or billions. But God went and added that there was the evening and the morning, pretty much nailing it to one axis rotation. In case folks weren't clear on it in Genesis 1, when God gave Israel the commandment to keep the Sabbath, he equated the six days of labor for man with his six days in the creation (Exodus 20:8-11).


I do not intend to muddy Resurrection week. For those of you who merely think of the Bible as a book of fables, you are dismissed. You needn't stick around for the rest of class. But for those who hold to the inspired and inerrant word of God (plenary verbal, etc.) in the original manuscripts, this is something with which we should come to terms.


So tomorrow, we will do just that.

[NOTE:  None of this should nor is it intended to alter anyone's convictions in the inspired and inerrant word of God nor in the doctrine of the literal (and atoning) death, burial, and resurrection of God the Son, Jesus Christ.]