Question:
Where was Jesus during the three days that His body or soul lay in the tomb? Was His entire being there in the tomb, completely unconscious like one of us, or did He exist with His Father in some form? The Greek of Matthew 27:50 reads, “Jesus resigned His breath,” while our Bible translates it as “yielded up His spirit.”
Answer:
To address the last part of the question first, the term “spirit” or “breath” represents the life-giving power of God that He imparts to all His children. It is not an entity by itself; there is no indication in Scripture that it exists independently. It can be translated as “breath,” which is the same as “the breath of life” mentioned in Genesis 2:7. However, it is not a being that can exist consciously apart from the body to which it belongs.
When Jesus yielded up His breath, or His life, He did so in the same way that Christians must die. As stated in Colossians 3:3, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” The fundamental fact regarding our Lord’s death is that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). The same account tells us that He who died was buried, and that He who was buried was raised on the third day (verse 4). This chapter also states that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised (verse 13), and therefore does not live; which leads to the logical conclusion of verse 14: “And if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.” This idea is emphasized again in verse 17: “And if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
Simple logic would suggest that if our Lord did not die—if He was as alive as He would be after being raised from the dead—then our faith would not rest on the resurrection. The triumphant conclusion of the apostle is, “But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep.” The “first fruits” refers to the Man Christ Jesus, who is triumphant over death and the grave, and the fruits that accompany Him share the same destiny. Thus, Christ died as all those for whom He died.
This concept is also supported by the words of the glorified Christ Himself. He does not say, “I am He whose body slept in the grave, but whose real being did not die.” Instead, He tells John, who faced a life of persecution, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:17-18).
From these and other passages, we must conclude that He “poured out His soul unto death” (Isaiah 53:12) and remained unconscious in the grave until called back to life by His Father. This highlights the great sacrifice made by Heaven itself for mankind.
