Why He Did Not Die a Private Death

Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who are faithful in Christ no longer die the death as before, as the warning of the law threatened; for that condemnation has come to an end. Instead, since corruption has ceased and been put away by the grace of the resurrection, from now on we are only dissolved, as our bodies’ mortal nature requires, at the time God has fixed for each, so that we may gain a better resurrection. For like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish when we are dissolved. Sown in the earth, we will rise again, since death has been brought to nothing by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, who was made a guarantor of the resurrection for all, says: “What is corruptible must put on incorruption, and what is mortal must put on immortality. And when what is corruptible has put on incorruption, and what is mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” [a]

Why then, someone might say, if he had to give up his body to death in place of all, did he not lay it aside privately, as a man does, instead of going so far as to be crucified? It would have been more fitting for him to lay his body aside with honor than to endure a shameful death like this. Now see, I reply, whether such an objection is not merely human, while what the Savior did is truly divine and, for many reasons, worthy of him as God. First, because the death that comes to people comes in keeping with the weakness of their nature. Unable to remain as they are, they are dissolved with time. That is also why diseases come upon them, and they fall sick and die. But the Lord is not weak. He is the Power of God, the Word of God, and Life itself. If, then, he had laid aside his body somewhere in private, on a bed, as people do, it would have been thought that he too did this because of the weakness of his nature, and because there was nothing more in him than in other men. But he was, first, the Life and the Word of God; and, second, the death on behalf of all had to be accomplished. So, on the one hand, because he was life and power, the body was made strong in him; and on the other, since death had to come about, he did not take for himself the occasion of completing his sacrifice, but received it at the hands of others. For it was not fitting either that the Lord, who healed the diseases of others, should fall sick; nor was it right for that body to lose its strength in which he gives strength to the weaknesses of others too.

Why then did he not prevent death, as he prevented sickness? Because it was for this that he had the body, and it was not fitting to prevent it, or the resurrection too would have been hindered. And yet it was just as unfitting for sickness to come before his death, or it would have been thought a weakness in the one who was in the body. Did he not hunger, then? Yes, he hungered, as was proper to his body. But he did not die of hunger, because of the Lord who wore the body. So, even though he died to ransom all, he did not see decay. For his body rose again perfectly whole, since the body belonged to no one else but to Life itself.