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Stress is laid on the fact that our Lord's blessed body saw no corruption. It lay not long enough in the grave for that change to have taken place in it which we know to be the lot of all human bodies when they have been any while dead. He had not been dead more than thirty-six hours. There seems a special propriety in its being ordered that the only body which was never stained by sin should also be the only one exempt, though not from the pains, yet from the loathsomeness of death. It was a way of giving the whole world, angels and men, clearly to understand that, although God had laid on Him the punishment due to sinful men, yet He never ceased for a moment to be the only beloved of His Father.

1. This text proves the truth of our Saviour's human soul and body; proves that He took on Himself, really and truly, the substance of our nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, and lived and died in all respects a man, sin only and sinful infirmity excepted; so also, in the unseen state, He continued to be a man among men. Here is a token and earnest that our merciful God sympathises with our natural care and anxiety as to what shall become both of our friends and ourselves during that awful interval which is to come between death and resurrection. Souls departed and bodies in the grave are within the merciful care of Him who is both God and man.

2. Observe the difference between the language of the Old Testament, even the most evangelical portions of it, where they speak of the state of the dead, and the language of the blessed Gospel itself relating to the same subject.

3. How happy and comfortable soever the Paradise of the dead may be, it is not a place of final perfection, but a place of waiting for something better; a region not of full enjoyment, but of assured peace and hope. So much is hinted, in that God is thanked and glorified for not leaving our Saviour's soul in that place. Here is something very apt to raise in us high and noble thoughts of that which, in one way or another, we are shamefully used to undervalue — the mortal body of man.

4. What does the prophet teach concerning our Saviour's body? Our Saviour's Person was holy because of His most high Godhead. And the same name, "Holy One," is ascribed to His sacred body as it lay in the grave, three days and three nights, separate from His soul. It was still holy, still united in a mysterious but real manner to the Eternal Word.

5. Seeing that, even in the grave, the Godhead of the Lord Christ still abode with His blessed body, seeing that body was still God's Holy One, it could not be suffered to see corruption. And to whomsoever He has given power to become adopted sons of God He gives something glorious and immortal, a seed of a heavenly life which can never decay. Living or dying, nothing shall separate them from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, nothing but their own wilful unworthiness.

(Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times. ")

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KJV: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

WEB: For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption.