Matthew 12:40 “For 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.”
Jesus Christ came to the earth to die for our sins. And so as the Son of Man, He experienced the same death that we do. Just before Jesus breathed His last breath on the cross, He gave up His spirit to the will of the Father, for He said “Father into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). The will of the Father for our Lord Jesus Christ after He died, was that His Son should be taken down into the lower parts of the earth. In the above passage of scripture Jesus confirms this truth for us, when He tells us that He would be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The heart of the earth that Jesus was referring to in this passage is also known as Hades or Hell, which is located in the centre of the earth. Only those who are spiritually dead and separated from the life of God are taken into hell after they die. Sadly, because the sin of the world had been placed on Jesus, when our Lord Jesus died on the cross He was spiritually dead and separated from the life of God, and therefore incurred the same penalty that all sinners incur, i.e. being taken down into hell.
Psalms 88:6-7 “You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the depths. (7) Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and You have afflicted me with all Your waves.”
So why did God the Father deem it necessary to commit His Son to the lowest depths of Hell? Our Lord Jesus answers that question for us in the above quoted passage of scripture, for we can clearly see from this passage that it was the will of the Father that Jesus be taken down to the lowest pit of hell for the express purpose of suffering the wrath of God. The reason that Jesus had to suffer the wrath of God was because He had taken upon Himself the sin of the world, and He therefore had to pay the price for those sins, as if He Himself had committed each one of them. The suffering therefore, that Jesus experienced on the cross, was only a part of the total suffering that our Lord went through for the sins of the world, for the full extent of suffering that Jesus incurred was the wrath of God that was poured out on Him in the lowest pit of Hades for three days and three nights. And so we see that the wrath that Jesus suffered was the righteous judgement of God for the sins of the world.
Romans 4:24-25 “but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, (25) who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.”
Finally at the end of the three days and nights, in which Jesus incurred the wrath of God in the heart of the earth, every sin had been accounted for and God could raise His Son from the dead because the debt of mankind had been paid. The above passage of scripture confirms the truth to us that Jesus was raised from the dead because mankind was now justified in the eyes of God. In other words, justice for the sins of the world had been met.
Michael E.B. Maher
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