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(Nicene Creed): For Our Sake He was Crucified…He Suffered Death and was Buried

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He who hung the earth in place is hanged. He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place. He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree. (Melito of Sardis, 2nd Century Bishop of Smyrna)

In his magisterial work Dominion, Tom Holland traces the enduring influence of Christianity on the West. He prefaces the book with a striking reflection on the subversive power of the cross of Christ—an emblem of shame that became (and remains) the defining symbol of Christian hope. How could it be, Holland ponders, that this instrument of terror and humiliation would come to be the very embodiment of Christ’s triumph?

There is a similar tension captured in the words of the Nicene Creed. The Son is declared to be God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, consubstantial with the Father, and the One through whom all things were made. Remarkably, in the same breath, we confess the Son of God was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death, and was buried. Nowhere is the paradox of the Incarnation more vivid or confounding.

But the paradox is the point. These lines impress upon us that Christ’s identification with his people was unflinchingly complete. Nothing of our human experience was withheld from him. Even the most helpless episodes of human life, birth and death, were embraced and experienced by the Son.

Of course his death wasn’t just to identify with us. It also accomplished something on our behalf—something we very much needed. Here, in the words of the creed, we glimpse the awful depths to which divine love descended to redeem what had been lost and restore what had been broken. In the words of John, “Having loved his own… he loved them to the end” (Jn. 13:1, ESV).

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For Our Sake

Phillip Cary notes, “The promise of the gospel, on Luther’s reckoning, is inherently and unconditionally for me. Faith does not make it so but merely recognizes that it is so.” Of course, this is not original to Luther. We can track this language back to the night of Christ’s betrayal, “This is my body which is given for you…This cup is the New Covenant in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk. 22:19-20, ESV).

Cary’s point (borrowing from Luther) is that if we fail to hear Christ’s promise that the gospel is for us—we might say for our sake—we’ve missed the glorious way that the gospel confronts us one and all. He died for the whole world—yes. Redemption is cosmic in scope. But an equally profound truth is that he died for you. His body was given for you. His blood was poured out for you.

In Christ’s passion, there is an eternal purpose playing out on the stage of history. Judas handing Christ over to the religious authorities, and Pilate handing Christ over to be crucified only occurred because God, in the fullness of time, handed his Son over for us (Rom. 8:32). This chain of events, seemingly chaotic and disastrous, is actually the historical dominoes of God’s eternal plan falling into place. We need not wander into a discussion on competingtheories of divine sovereignty to make the point that there is nothing incidental about Christ’s arrest and crucifixion. Christ didn’t stumble onto the cross. The Incarnation was always moving toward the hour when the Son of God would lay his life down for sinners. This may not have been the culmination of his ministry. We all know the crucifixion was only a prelude to something even more astonishing. But it certainly is the decisive redemptive act without which salvation would not be possible. If we were pressed to capture the message of the cross in just a few words, we could do much worse than “God is for us.”

He Was Crucified

The horror of the cross is lost on us—its awfulness long domesticated by centuries of Christian imagery. It no longer shocks or unsettles as it once did. But for those who lived under the yoke of Rome, it was a nightmarish reminder of the empire’s power. Crucifixion was not merely a means of execution. Death only came after a languishing period of torture and humiliation. Furthermore, crucifixion functioned as a public demonstration that the will of Rome was inevitable. In the face of such savagery, many considered resistance futile. Even among the Roman citizenry, it was a fate too unsettling to contemplate. Cicero only ever referred to crucifixion by polite euphemism. In a word, crucifixion was decisive. It crushed rebels and rebellions, revolutions and revolutionaries alike.

Given this, one of the most astonishing facts about Christ’s earliest followers is that—far from suppressing the ugly truth of his crucifixion—this was one of the central features of their proclamation: that the Jesus they worshipped had suffered the most degrading form of Roman execution. As Fleming Rutledge has observed, Paul’s declaration that he is not ashamed of the gospel only makes sense if there is, indeed, something inherently shameful about the gospel he preached. Of course that shameful element was the crucifixion. And yet, in spite of the stigma, Paul chose to highlight the cross so emphatically that he could resolve to know nothing among the Corinthians but Christ and him crucified.

This fixation on Christ’s cross was not some macabre obsession with death. Early Christians were not grisly death cultists. It was, rather, owing to Paul’s earth-shaking conviction that the cross was the very means by which Christ had defeated the dark powers holding creation and humanity hostage. The moment of Christ’s deepest suffering was also the hour of his ultimate victory—and by consequence—our liberation.

Under Pontius Pilate

There are three humans mentioned in the Nicene Creed: Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate. One of these stands out. Besides Jesus and Mary, both essential players, the reference to Pilate feels somewhat misplaced. But the writers of the creed knew better. To confess Christ as crucified under the governorship of a first century Roman prefect grounds him unambiguously in history—precisely not in the realm of myth or legend.

As C.S. Lewis has argued, the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life (the fourfold gospel witness) bear none of the hallmarks of myth or fantasy with which Lewis himself was so familiar. They report Christ’s crucifixion as a public, historically verifiable event confirmed by many witnesses. This is why Peter, before Agrippa and Festus, could boldly state that “The king knows about these things (the death and resurrection of Jesus)… for this has not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26, ESV). Even among the most skeptical scholars of the ancient world, there is broad consensus that Jesus was crucified under Pilate’s watch. There is also, perhaps, the eschatological point that in and through the life of Jesus, God’s eternal plan had burst forth into history at a specific moment in time. Nothing was the same after Christ’s coming. Even now, we are the residents of a transformed age. Similarly, all history that preceded Christ must now be interpreted in light of Christ’s work. Time itself has been renewed by the suffering death of Jesus.

He Suffered Death

The writers of the creed were not content to simply state that Jesus died. It was crucial to affirm that his death was accompanied by suffering. The gospels linger over Christ’s agony. Through his betrayal, abandonment, mocking, and scourging, to the final hours when he is fixed to the cross, we are witness to the rejection and brutalization of the Son of God. The earth trembles at the injustice. The sky shrouds its maker in darkness. The words of Isaiah, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3, ESV), receive their terrible fulfillment. Isaiah’s suffering servant is revealed as our suffering Savior.

Christians have found a strange comfort in Christ’s passion. The image of a bloodied and battered Redeemer beckons us to reveal our own wounds and find healing in the one who understands the weight of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15). Only a Savior who had truly braved the crucible of Pilate’s punishment could rightly be heralded our sympathetic high priest. In light of this, the Biblical encouragement is to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, for it’s there that mercy and grace are found (Heb. 4:16).

What are we to make, then, of Christ’s death? There is no diminishing the reality. His death was just as dreadful, final, and real as any other. The Son of God, in his human nature, passed from life into the shadowy realm of the dead. The price which sin and transgression had demanded was finally paid. Peter says that we were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without spot or blemish (1 Pet. 1:18–19). No lesser offering than Christ’s full humanity would have availed us—and nothing less was given.

And Was Buried

Jesus’ burial confirms the worst—tombs are not places for the sick or the recovering. They are reserved for the dead. Swoon theories and other far-fetched accounts of Jesus surviving the crucifixion, while proposed for centuries, have rightly failed to garner any notable support. Christ’s death was frightfully real. Ancient people didn’t have the benefits of advanced medical science, but even so, they had no trouble distinguishing the living from the dead. Moreover, the Romans were particularly efficient at dispatching those chosen for execution. Crucifixion, by definition, did not admit the possibility of survival.

So Jesus was buried. Here his descent is complete—his identification with human experience brought to a quiet completion. Laid in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, the words of Christ, which had stirred such unprecedented hope, must have echoed bitterly in his disciples’ ears. What now of the coming kingdom? What of Israel’s future? What of the world’s redemption? The dreams which Christ had inspired were sealed in the tomb.

Silence would prevail for three days. Only the muffled footsteps of the guards. The distant clamor of the city. The occasional chatter of birds. Finally, the creaking of stone. The desperate cries of women. The panting of wide-eyed disciples. And the angelic voices announcing: He is not here.

——

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