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Suffering at the Centre?
The 1964 surrealist painting The Son of Man by René Magritte features a man dressed in a suit and bowler hat standing before the sea. But the painting’s most striking feature is the green apple hovering in front of his face. It seems strangely out of place—and because of that, it may be the most important feature of all.
In much the same way, the central statement of the Apostles’ Creed can seem strangely out of place. What is the phrase “he suffered under Pontius Pilate” doing among all the trinitarian theology of the Creed? What’s all this crucifixion and death language doing alongside the lordship, miraculous conception, and virgin birth of God’s only Son? What is crucifixion doing in the same creed as creation?
But like that apple, the cross is what God, the cosmic Artist, wanted to be at the very centre of the Christian faith. So it’s at the very centre of the Creed.
One surprising aspect of the Apostles’ Creed is that it does not mention anything about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It includes nothing about what happened between his birth and his suffering. There is no mention of his miraculous healings, his walking on water, his turning water into wine, his teachings, or really anything at all. It’s as if a biography on Abraham Lincoln skipped from his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky to the night of his assassination at Ford’s Theatre, mentioning nothing about his life or presidency.
Instead, the Creed says that God’s only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was born of the Virgin Mary, and he suffered under Pontius Pilate. And while it might seem like a massive oversight, the Creed is making a claim about the goal and purpose of Christ’s life and ministry, reflecting the truth of Christ’s own words: “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).
According to Jesus, his suffering was necessary if we who deserve to suffer would be saved. Everything Jesus did was moving towards the cross. His miracles revealed who he was. His teaching announced why he came. His suffering accomplished what only he could do. This statement does not skip over his life; it summarizes it. Because according to Paul, suffering to save sinners was the purpose of Christ’s life (see 1 Tim. 1:15).
As the supreme scapegoat, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, Christ was born to give other people life at the cost of his own. He was inevitably heading from the womb to the tomb. The Creed captures this reality by going from his birth straight to his suffering.
The Crucified King
The phrase “he suffered under Pontius Pilate” gathers together Christ’s betrayal, arrest, trial, denial, scourging, mockery, and crucifixion. The Judge was put on trial. The Deliverer was bound. The King of kings was mocked by those he came to save. The One who spoke the universe into existence remained silent as his creatures hurled insults at their Maker. He was suffering under those he was sovereignly sustaining.
To consider the suffering of Jesus at the hands of Pilate is utterly humbling. If the eternal Son willingly humbled himself beneath the likes of Pontius Pilate, then Christian greatness can never be measured by self-exaltation. Every follower of Christ stands beneath the shadow of a crucified King. And as theologian Carl F. H. Henry is reported to have remarked, “How can someone be proud in the shadow of the cross?”
It has always struck me as remarkable that Christians wear ornate cross necklaces. In the first century, wearing a cross would have been as shocking as wearing a miniature electric chair today. Crucifixion was Rome’s most shameful form of execution. Yet Scripture spends even more time explaining its spiritual significance than its physical horrors. Jesus himself, in his cry of dereliction, refers to his own death as being forsaken by God (see Mark 15:34).
The Bible teaches that a substitution occurred on the cross. It truly was, as Paul puts it, that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). He was treated like a sinner so that we might be justified and saved from wrath:
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Rom. 5:8-9)
Buried With Christ
The 41st question of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Why was [Christ] buried?” Answer: “His burial testifies that he had really died.” Paul includes the detail of Christ’s burial in his definition of the gospel itself (see 1 Cor. 15:4). He preached that “when they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb” (Acts 13:29). This helps make sense of the rest of this line in the Creed. Not only does it claim that Christ suffered, but that he was dead and buried.
The truth of Christ’s burial is that he shared in every aspect of our death—gross details and all. He wasn’t given the royal treatment.
This means that the One who breathed life into Adam and formed him from the ground took his final breath and was buried in it. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Romans 6:4-5 talks about what happens when a believer shares in union with Christ by faith. And, surprisingly, it talks about Christ’s burial. It says,
We were buried therefore with [Christ Jesus] by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:4-5)
Paul says believers have been buried with Christ through faith. His death became our death, and so does his resurrection. Union with Christ means that everything accomplished for us becomes ours in him. So, if you are a believer, Christ would have to die again—something absolutely impossible—in order for you not to rise again.
Christian, you don’t have to fear death. We can take risks. We don’t have to be handcuffed by what we might lose in this life for following Jesus because Christ went all the way down into death that we might be raised all the way up into resurrection life.
