Summary
Fingerprints at the Burial of Christ
Every human being carries a set of fingerprints unlike any other—unique, unrepeatable, and now retrievable even from linen and stone. The burial account at the close of Mark 15 invites us to picture the scene as a kind of crime scene, dusted for prints. Three sets emerge: the fingerprints of frightened disciples, the fingerprints of our own sin, and, beneath them all, the fingerprints of God.
The first set belongs to Joseph of Arimathea. A respected member of the Sanhedrin—the same court that condemned Jesus—Joseph had not consented to their plan Luke 23:51 and was secretly a disciple (Matthew 27:57; John 19:38). With evening falling and the Sabbath beginning at six, he had perhaps two hours to act. He went boldly to Pilate, asked for the body, bought a linen cloth, took the Lord down, wrapped Him, laid Him in a rock-hewn tomb, and rolled the stone. His prints are all over the linen and the stone—but so are the prints of his earlier silence. John tells us he was a disciple "secretly, for fear of the Jews." The hand that now tenderly carries the body had once covered his own mouth.
The second set belongs to Nicodemus, who came with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes. He, too, was a member of the Sanhedrin. He had once come to Jesus by night and heard the words, "You must be born again," and "For God so loved the world…" He believed. Yet where had he been when his court condemned the Messiah? His fingerprints, like Joseph's, are mingled with the fingerprints of fear and failure.
These two men hold up a mirror. With David we confess, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity," and "my sin is ever before me." The fingerprints of our sin cover everything we touch; we cannot wipe them away. The evidence is overwhelming, the verdict guilty, and what we deserve is to be shut away from God forever. No clean cloth of our own making will ever erase the marks our hands have left.
But there is a third set of fingerprints in this story, and they are everywhere. Pilate marvels that Jesus is already dead—so the soldiers do not break His legs, fulfilling Psalm 34:20, "He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken." A wealthy councilman lays Him in a new tomb cut from rock, fulfilling Isaiah 53:9, "they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death." The cross was no accident. As Ephesians 1 declares, God chose us in Christ "before the foundation of the world," and in Him we have "redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses." The detail of the burial bears the divine signature of a plan reaching back to Genesis.
These are the fingerprints of God: the spotless, sinless Lamb taking our sin upon Himself, bearing the wrath we earned, and wiping away every unique fingerprint of guilt that we could never wipe away ourselves—removing our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. The linen and the stone testify not only to a real death and a real burial, but to a real grasp—God's grip on His people, holding fast through Friday's darkness toward the dawn of Easter. See "Fingerprints" 4-15-22.
Video citations
- "Fingerprints" 4-15-22 — Would you open your Bible's please to this portion of Scripture on this holy night? Mark the 15th chapter. Page 47, if you're using a few edition of Holy Scripture, Mark the 15th chapter.…