The Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead — The Apostles' Creed, Articles of Faith 5 and 6
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Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment of a series on the Apostles’ Creed. Rev. Campbell Markham is a Presbyterian minister in Perth, Australia.
“The third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” (The Apostles’ Creed, Articles 5 and 6)
If ever you visit the goldfields town of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, you must take a tour of one of the old underground mines.
Everything is kept perfectly safe, sanitized, bright, and pleasant for the tourists, but look through your mind’s eye and you will see the terrible toil and dangers that every old miner faced.
Like the Kalgoorlie gold miners who journeyed deep into the earth, Jesus Christ descended, down, down from the light and life of heaven.
Every morning he pulls on leather boots and navy overalls, grimed and sweaty still from the day before. From his helmet shines a small electric light wired to a battery on his hip. He squeezes into a small steel cage. The door slams shut. With a whir he falls into the earth. Down, down he drops, rock rushing past his wire cage. Long minutes later, now in the heat of the earth’s black bowels, he emerges to begin his long trudge down gloomy galleries. Slender wooden beams hold back the vast weight above his head.
Then his day’s work begins: drilling, hacking, blasting into the rock. Seeking and searching for gold-veined ore at great cost and peril. His face is black; sweat “like great drops of blood” gleam from his forearms and brow.
Long hours later (time stands still under the earth) he reverses his perilous journey. Back, back along the cloistered galleries he tramps, and with him is his hard-won ore. Up, up in the cage until, abruptly, he breaks out, blackened eyes squinting, into the late-afternoon blaze of the desert sun.
They take the ore. It is crushed, washed, treated, purified, and reformed into a luminous massy lump of gold. A pure and gleaming treasure, the miner’s trophy.
In the same way Jesus Christ descended, down, down from the light and life of heaven, to be born into that dirty stable. He lived and taught in the darkness of a world that “did not recognize him,” that “did not receive him” (John 1:10-11). He bent lower and was falsely condemned and scourged. He bent lower again and was crucified. They mocked him in his agony. Lowest of all, he was separated from his Father:
“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; emphasis added)
After, they wrenched the crimson nails from his hands and feet and lowered his body—black, blue, and red—from the cross. They laid him in the lightless tomb:
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
And like the miners who burst back into the sun after long hours of labor, the Son burst forth in resurrection life after completing his atoning work.
The tomb could not hold Life Himself, of course. His Father rolled the stone away and, like the miner who burst back into the sun, the Son burst forth in resurrection life. “On the third day he rose again.”
And he kept on rising! “He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”
Luke describes this marvelous event. Forty days after his resurrection, as his disciples looked on:
He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11)
And there he presents his treasure to His Father: dirty ore, crushed and black, now cleaned and purified—by his blood—a treasure rescued from death and oblivion.
And so,
…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Eph. 5:25b-27)
Whoever says, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was crucified and buried, who rose to life and ascended to heaven, to present us saved to his Father,” will be saved from the grave and hell, to enjoy life forever and ever with him.
