“They . . . made the tomb secure . . .”

Matthew 27:62-66

Next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The central claim of the early church was, of course, that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead. The central claim want’ that he was a great teacher, a powerful healer, an inspiring leader, or that he was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. All of those were true, but they wouldn’t add up to the early Christian faith and life. The crucial fact, they believed, was that Jesus had been bodily raised to life after being well and truly dead and buried. This is what they announced to the startled world, the world of Jews and Gentiles (194).

From the very beginning there has been room for doubt, and many have taken that option. But Matthew is concerned that the doubt be located in the right place. There was no confusion about the details of the burial. If you are going to doubt whether Jesus was raised from the dead it must be because you doubt whether the living God could or would do such a thing for Israel’s Messiah, the one on whose shoulders rested the weight of the world’s salvation (196).

Aaron Orendorff

Psalm 2 begins with a question: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?”

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (vv. 2-6).

As early as Acts 4, the first Christians saw in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus the fulfillment of Psalm 2.

“They,” Matthew writes, “made the tomb secure . . .”

All the powers of the world were arraigned against the tomb: religious power—“Herod . . . and the people of Israel”—political power—“Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles”—natural power—“a great stone [was rolled] to the entrance of the tomb”—and even supernatural power—“the wages of sin is death.”

Yet for all this security, for all this power, the stone was rolled away, tomb was emptied and death itself defeated.

“If God is for us, who can be against us.”