Good Friday Meditation: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus Bury Jesus

In our daily meditations, we focus on the events surrounding Christ's death. The Gospel writer Luke tells us how Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus' body in his new tomb.

⁵⁰Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, ⁵¹who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea and he was waiting for the kingdom of God. ⁵²Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. ⁵³Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. ⁵⁴It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin. ⁵⁵The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. ⁵⁶Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment (Luke 23:50-56).

Joseph of Arimathea was a secret disciple of Christ. John the Apostle wrote that he kept his beliefs to himself because he feared the Jews: “Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders” (John 19:38). Luke states that Joseph was a member of the council, or the Sanhedrin, which was the seventy elders serving as Israel's supreme court. It’s possible that Joseph was not called to the Sanhedrin meeting that morning to convict Christ and only learned about it afterward when the high priest issued the verdict. Luke tells us that Joseph “had not consented to their decision and action” (Luke 23:51). The Apostle John also mentions that Nicodemus accompanied Joseph in Jesus’s burial.

³⁸Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. ³⁹He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. ⁴⁰Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. ⁴¹At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. ⁴²Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there (John 19:38-42).

After Christ's death, Joseph went to Pilate, the Roman governor, to ask for Jesus' body so he could give Him an honorable burial. Meanwhile, another member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, the leading teacher in Israel, who had previously come to Jesus with questions about being born again (John 3:1-18), went to buy seventy–five pounds of spices to prepare the body according to customary burial practices (John 19:39). The two disciples then carefully lowered Jesus' body from the cross and carried Him a short distance to a tomb owned by Joseph in a nearby garden.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus openly express their faith after Jesus's death. Their love for Christ motivated them to stand up for their beliefs. Usually, if these two men had not acted, a burial party would have placed Jesus's body in a tomb with the thieves. The body needed to be buried before the Sabbath, which began just three hours after Jesus died at 3 pm. Several women accompanied them, identified the tomb's location, and intended to come back with additional spices and perfumes after the Sabbath ended and the first day of the week began. In his book, The Reality of the Resurrection, Merrill Tenney explains the customary burial procedure.

"The body was usually washed and straightened and then bandaged tightly from the armpits to the ankles in strips of linen about a foot wide. Aromatic spices, often of a gummy consistency, were placed between the wrappings or folds. They served partially as cement to glue the cloth wrappings into a solid covering. When the body was thus encased, a square piece of cloth was wrapped around the head and tied under the chin to keep the lower jaw from sagging."^[1]

The hills of Judea and Jerusalem are mostly barren limestone so that they couldn't bury Christ in the ground. Matthew’s Gospel explains that Jesus' body was placed in a new tomb carved out of rock, owned by a wealthy man named Joseph (Matthew 27:57). Rich men's tombs were large enough for a person to stand inside. Matthew also mentions that a large stone was rolled in front of the entrance. Stones, often weighing a ton or more, were shaped like coins, with a slot cut for the stone to roll in front of the tomb. We are all expecting a miracle of epic proportions. Let's talk about that tomorrow. Keith Thomas.

Click on the following link for all our daily 3-minute Bible meditations:

https://www.groupbiblestudy.com/devotionals

The YouTube video of this talk with closed captions (subtitles) in 65 languages is found at the following link: https://youtu.be/OSV2bnALI6w

The written notes are at the following link, The Burial and Resurrection of Christ

^[1] Merril C. Tenney, The Reality of the Resurrection (New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers, 1963, Page 117.