The Apostles Creed | Jesus Christ Crucified, Died, and Buried
I believe in Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried.
Within the fullness of time, no moment remains more important for the sake of mankind and its effects on the world as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Everything built towards this moment as the Old Testament pointed to a Messiah who would come and rescue His people and everything after it soaks in the effects of knowing that Messiah as Jesus Christ. For the Apostles’ Creed to proclaim that Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, establishes that this same Jesus Christ serves as the punishment for the sins of mankind. He fulfills the Old Testament covenant while paving the way for the New Covenant.
As Christians, we must not downplay the fact that our sin carries weighty consequences. Yet, we must also look to Jesus Christ who walked willingly to the cross. At any point, it would have been possible to upend the world to protect the Son or to simply allow the consequences of mankind’s rebellion to fall on mankind. Instead, we serve a loving God who could not let the consequences of sin go unpunished, but who could not stand by and let those consequences destroy His dearly beloved creation. Jesus Christ crucified, died, and buried represents an intense love that upholds creation and paves a path of forgiveness that could only exist as God bore the weight Himself.
The Cost and Consequence of Sin Paid By Jesus Christ
To fully understand the plan of God and the weight of the cross, we must go back to the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15. Abraham prepares the sacrifices, cutting up the pieces of the animal. Yet, as night came, Abraham fell into a deep sleep and the Lord instituted the Abrahamic Covenant by walking through the pieces Himself. The message of this, according to ancient near eastern traditions, put the consequences of failure to keep the covenant on God rather than on the people of God. Thus, for any breach of covenant, the consequences would fall upon God that He would become like the pieces of the animals they passed between. Jesus is the fulfillment of this moment. Mankind, wholly unable to achieve the righteousness required by the law, found themselves in breach of the covenant with God. Thus, the punishment would be the King would receive the punishment rather than the servant. The sin of the people must be punished for the righteous requirements of the law to be upheld. But we serve a God who, from the very beginning knew that only He could provide the means to remedy our sin.
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ shows us the weight of our sin. We should never downplay our sin and the effect it carried on our lives. Jesus Christ had to die for our sins as the full weight of the wrath of God poured out on His own Son rather than on us. “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:20-23, ESV) The cost of sin, of defiling the holiness of God is nothing short of separation from God and enduring the wrath. For each of us, the cost is more than we are able to pay. The assertion of the creed that Jesus was crucified, died, and buried, shows us that Jesus is the fulfillment of the consequences of our unrighteous for all who surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the crux of all history of supreme importance for the lives of every believer.
Free From The Entanglement
The cross of Jesus Christ, once a brutal symbol of Roman oppression became a beautiful symbol of the salvation that comes from Jesus Christ’s work. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV) The writer of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that sin easily entangles us because of its sensual allure. We craved sin to the point that it lead to our own destruction and we would have continued along this path until the consequences of that sin ended our lives. Sin lead to our death but by His substitutionary death on the cross, Jesus Christ leads us out of that same death.
Jesus took the punishment on our sin on the cross as a satisfying payment for our actions. He is the substitutionary atonement that rectifies the problem of our sin, taking the punishment of our sin on our behalf. Through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have been freed from the grasp of sin. We no longer need to continually dive head first into sin. The sin that once easily entangled us has had its power ripped from its claws and we find the forgiveness of sins through Jesus willingly taking our place on the cross and experiencing the wrath of God. We no longer have to continually dive head first into sin but can dive head first into the presence of God. We no longer are a mere amalgamation of our sins but die to sin just as Jesus Christ died on our behalf. We have been set free by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and no longer are compelled or entangled by sin. We have been set free.
