After our Lord died we read that, " Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counselor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto -Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus." (Mark 15:4343Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. (Mark 15:43)).
Pilate had publicly declared at the trial of our Lord. that he found no fault in Him, and yet, bowing before the fanaticism of the Jews on the one hand, and moved by fear that he might not stand well with Caesar, if he allowed One, who claimed to be the King of the Jews, to live, to his eternal shame he gave sentence that it should be as His enemies required. (Luke 23:2424And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. (Luke 23:24)).
Was there ever such a barefaced travesty of justice? What judge would dare to permit the clamor of the accusers to settle the verdict, especially when the sentence was a death sentence? Pilate passing the death sentence, yet declaring that he found no fault in our Lord, made the Gentiles guilty. The Jews clamoring for His death made the Jews guilty.
Once our Lord had glorified God in His sacrificial atoning death on the cross of Calvary, no unbelieving hand was allowed to touch Him. In this we see the over-ruling hand of God in that Pilate gave leave to Joseph of Arimathea to remove the body of our Lord, and give it burial, fulfilling a seven-century old prophecy that our Lord would lie with the rich in His death. (Isa. 53:99And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:9)).
Joseph with Nicodemus, this latter hitherto a secret believer, performed this last act of grateful, loving homage to our Lord. A hundred pounds weight of myrrh and aloes was brought to the grave. The holy body of our Lord was swathed in linen clothes with the spices, and was reverently laid in Joseph's new tomb, wherein no body had yet' been laid. The" women, too, who accompanied our Lord from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and where the body was laid.
Previously the Jews, in view of the morrow being " the day after the Sabbath/' and that Sabbath being a high day, had gone to Pilate to ask that the bodies of those, who had been crucified, should not remain on their crosses, beseeching him that their legs should be broken, thus expediting their death, and their removal from the crosses. To this end the legs of the two thieves were broken, but when they came to our Lord they found Him dead already. This was the fulfillment of a prophesy, " A bone of Him shall not be broken." (John 19:3636For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. (John 19:36)).
But, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a Roman soldier took his spear, and pierced the side of the dead Christ, and forthwith there came out blood and water.