The death, burial and descending of Christ into hell
Ps 60:1,3
48:1-4
181:1,2
147:1-5
Scripture: Romans 6. Canons of Dort, 1st Head: 1,2
1. The necessity of His death and burial
 Why was Christ’s suffering on the cross not enough, and why did He have to die and descend into hell:
o God is just:
 Through sin we lost our right to life.
 Jesus is the Substitute for His people; now God’s justice requires the death of Jesus.
 When the Lord begins to work in a sinner he learns to know the justice of God
 A changed life is not enough; only the death of the Mediator
o God is truthful:
 God does not lie, neither in His promises nor in His threatenings
 The truth of God implied that the Father had to execute the punishment of death.
 Death is the payment for sin
 Christ had to die for the satisfaction of our sins
 Christ was also buried:
o To prove He was really dead; He was not buried alive
o Burial reminds us of our deep fall in Paradise
o The grave of Christ was the realisation of the sentence of God upon the sinner
 A humiliation.
 Yet blessed, because He: (1) buried the sins of His people; (2) sanctified it; (3) conquered death.
2. The fruit of His death and sacrifice
 Why do we then also have to die?
o Our death is not a satisfaction for sin, but the death of sin.
o There is no other way of being delivered from the body of sin than by laying down this body.
o Death is the gate into eternal life without sin for God’s people; for the unconverted it is the gate into eternal death
and damnation.
 What further benefit from Christ’s sacrifice and death?
o He buried our old nature
o He wants His people to die gradually so that they learn to live unto Him.
o The “old man” is the old nature of Adam.
 Wants to maintain itself
 Is lively in God’s people
o The “new man” is the new principle which wants to be delivered of all that is against God’s holy will.
 Image of God is restored.
3. The comfort of His descending into hell
 Descending in hell is last, and deepest, step in Christ’s humiliation.
o Happened in all His sufferings, but especially both in Gethsemane and on Golgotha
o He was forsaken of God.
 It is great comfort for God’s people to know that:
o God will not be angry with them, even in their greatest temptations;
o Christ has delivered them from the anguish and torments of hell, by His inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors and
hellish agonies.
o God’s Church comes out of that great tribulation into the heavenly Canaan to be merry without end.