As long as the spirit tabernacles in the body there are tokens of its
presence in the visible life which is sustained through its union with
the body. But when it departs from its dwelling-place in the flesh,
death and corruption begin their work on the body. Death is complete
only when the spirit has departed, and it is probable that this
statement in the Creed was meant to express in the fullest terms that
Christ's death was real. As man He had taken to Himself a true body and
a reasonable soul, and when His body was crucified and dead, His spirit
passed, as other human spirits pass at death, into Hades. It is not
without a meaning that we read, "When Jesus had cried with a loud voice,
he gave up the ghost."[118] Ghost is simply spirit, and in His case, as
in that of every man, there was a true departure of the soul from the
body at death. It was with His spirit that His last thought in life was
occupied. He knew that though it was to depart from the battered,
bruised tabernacle of His body, it was not to pass out of His Father's
sight or His Father's care. "Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit,"[119] were His last words on the cross.
The descent into hell is not referred to in the Westminster Confession,
but in the Larger Catechism this statement is found: "Christ's
humiliation after His death consisted in His being buried, and
continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death, till
the third day, which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, 'He
descended into hell'"[120] What the Westminster Divines meant was, that
while Christ's body was laid in the grave His spirit passed from the
visible to the invisible world, that, as He shared the common lot of men
in the death and burial of His body, so He shared their common lot in
passing as a spirit into the abode of spirits. The statement of this
clause follows naturally what is said of the body of Jesus in that which
precedes it. As His body was crucified, dead, and buried, so His spirit
passed into the abode of spirits. "In all things it behoved him to be
made like unto His brethren."[121]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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