Between the Cross and the Resurrection, Where Was Jesus?

[HKHaugan]

In the 60’s Robert Scott wrote “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.” It was like a bit of his emotional autobiography when he was a child. It answered the parental query about a child’s experiences when he goes out to play and comes home after two or three hours. In that time he rubbed a stick on a picket fence just to hear what it would sound like, laid in the grass and wondered why it grew up and down and not sideways and a number of other inconsequential discoveries that are meaningful only to a child.

As we grow the little things become bigger as we learn to fish, row boats, hike and yearn for the lakes and mountains and their cool refreshing springs under canopies of trees and the fragrance of fir and balsam drifting through fresh air. Those times are precious to all of us and reminiscences of very personal moments of seeing, feeling and sensing the blend of a mind, heart and spirit environment. They are moments of beauty and being a part of something big and exciting. You discover this interior world of what you mature into seeing as the invisible reality behind sight and sound, our spiritual reality.

It is also reality that has foreboding moments of unexpected falls, skinned knees, head bumps, menacing dogs, darkness at night, haunting dreams, bullies at school, arguments with friends, parents’ discipline, older people with smileless faces and angry words. We feel fear when we see certain people, groups and facial expressions. Anxiety grips us when visions of danger cross the conscious from the unconscious, the visible sights and the invisible assumptions that follow. These too are part of that invisible reality that builds in us a duality of good and evil, descriptions that begin to be our most important insights because we find ourselves constructing behavior that encourages the one and avoids the other. And it all happens within.

Growing older still, we have those erratic teen years where everything is thrown out of proportion, feelings are raw and behavior is roughly hewn in the valley of hard knocks. By this time we come to the realization that our entire life is a matter of reacting to what is invisible, to what is taking place within, as the outside world presents its pressures from one moment to the next. Our adult years grow into discerning the social good and social evils, distinguishing the visible and invisible markets of concepts that make us most comfortable and placing ourselves as close to the satisfying ones as possible.

Life is a process of personal decisions and at one point or another when the junctions of good and bad confront us we find that we are alone even in the midst of crowds and we either follow the guidance of what makes us feel good or we look to friends or systems of thought that become our comfort zones. Somewhere along this tortuous path of inner evaluation come the moments of frustration, leaps of right and wrong choices made in fear, anxiety, joy, hopes, resignation, sadness and finally facing that inner imperfection that hounds everyone. Confronted with a daily awareness that judgment between perfection and imperfection is a part of life it is also a component that determines not only the visible but the invisible as well.

When we see that the world is a place full of imperfection we long for the perfection that comes only from outside us and obtainable only by faith in someone or something. We’ve had faith in other things before but this begs the question of where we are after death. Life on this earth has its meaning not in what we can see but in what we can’t see. The seen when considered has no lasting quality but is only symbolic of something unseen. Death in this world seems to linger in doorway of our decisions as the result of broken relationships and bad decisions. Life and its happiness come from being fruitful in spiritually relational qualities. So the final judgment is going to be how much life we have lived spiritually and relationally as opposed to how much death we have died spiritually and relationally. And what of physical death that sums up our living deaths? Judgment is no longer just a concept but a final statement made on the capital we have accrued in the invisible. What we sow, we reap. What we sow invisibly, we reap invisibly.

If we have chosen the person of Jesus as the source of our invisible treasure then what we have stored up in spiritual riches overcomes what we have stored up in visible riches. It is the shift we made from the horizontal to the vertical as we grew from choosing things to choosing God and His relational qualities, from fear to faith, from consumer ends to relational ends, from self-indulgence to love. If have sown to please self we die alone and aloneness our destiny. If we have sown to Jesus we enter a kingdom of forever relationships in Him.

Where did the Lord Jesus go between His death on the Cross and His Resurrection? That question always seems to hang out there. I believe the Scripture answers that question. But first, does hell exist, is there spiritual darkness, is there a ruler of darkness who actually works in the invisible dimension tempting us as the way He fights God? Matthew 5:22, 29, 30, is where Jesus gives us a strong warning about it. In Luke 12:5 it is God who has the power to throw us there and in Luke 16:23 Jesus gives us the parable of torment that hell provides. James describes it as the destiny of a sinfully used tongue. In 2 Peter 2 the entire chapter is a discourse on relational evil’s ultimate judgment.

Jesus exposes the devil and his tempting nature in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 which is one of His first revelations as the Messiah. It is Genesis 3 that gives us a detailed description of his strategies. It is Isaiah 14 that gives us a picture of his nature. It is Pauls’ directives in Ephesians 6 that informs us how to stand against him and his legions. There is no question as to his power of deception and temptation. Jesus’ entire life was living for each of us a demonstration of a perfect humanity that was event after event of doing life His Father’s way as opposed to the devil’s way. The Cross was the final act of Jesus’ faith that sealed the devils’ fate and gave us the gateway to eternal spiritually relational life with Him and all who are Jesus’ disciples.

“For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit (1 Peter 4:6).” Death took Him into its darkness, the devil’s den of anti-God, anti-relational and evil aloneness. But being the light He exposed it for what it was, walked through it and rose from it in His Resurrection from both visible and invisible death. We have a daily reminder in the physical universe, the rising of the sun. We have light overcoming darkness and the vision of His creative nature providing an environment in which we are privileged and blessed to be alive. We have families, friends and opportunities to be fruitful and multiply. We taste the wonder of His presence and His Word. Revitalized by worship and prayer and gifts of the Spirit and groups and friends and brothers and sisters we walk moment by moment in the eternal destiny of His life.

The massive cosmic overcoming of the devil and his kingdom of spirits and demon, his constant attacks on the Body of Christ, are overcome by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ, as described in Revelation, the whole of which is the picture of our future in Christ. Applied personally, that final scriptural book is the end of the story for all evil and its devil along with the realization of what Creation was intended to be---God’s Kingdom realized in the rule of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So where was Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection? By His shed blood, He was arresting, convicting and imprisoning the devil and his kingdom with His promise that on the faith given Peter, the gates of hell cannot hold back the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God on earth, from prevailing eternally (Matt.16:18).

What we have done is to look at human life in a kind of parable of a child growing into adulthood and maturity, realizing and distinguishing that behind all material things is a spiritual reality. It is this lifetime of human experience that matures as the visible is consumed by the invisible, the choice of good over evil and finally the acceptance that the person of Jesus is the final and ultimate personal dimension that makes sense out of the visible universe and invisible eternity. It is the work of Jesus fulfilled on the Cross and proven in His Resurrection that crowns all existence.

As one preacher so beautifully put it when preaching about this world and all its problems, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin! Yea, it’s Friday but Sunday’s comin!’ Hallelujah, it’s Friday but Sunday’s comin!” Amen, and again I say, Amen!