What a contrast: Golgotha and a garden! One was “the place of a skull,” where the Lord Jesus was pierced and hung on a cross by His enemies, the other a garden where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus bravely, carefully, and reverently laid His body in a suitable grave (Mt. 27:57–60; Jn. 19:38–40).

Golgotha is an epitaph for man’s vaunted but vain wisdom, which led him to crucify our Lord. The apostle Paul writes of God’s “hidden wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:7–8).

The garden here is unnamed in Scripture. Its significance lies only in the fact that a new tomb was there “in which no one had yet been laid.” It was fit for the body of the holy sufferer, as David writes in Psalm 16:10, “You will not leave My soul to Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”

Our Lord’s body lay in that tomb three days, from the close of Friday (Lk. 23:54), to very early on the first day of the new week, when He rose out from among the dead (Jn. 20:1). Yes, He really had died for our sins, but death could not hold Him (1 Cor. 15:3–4).

However attractive or well-kept that garden was previously, it was transformed that morning into a scene of glory. He took His life up again (Jn. 10:17), He was “made alive by the Spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18; Rom. 8:11) and “was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4). Yes, the whole Godhead was involved.

How attractive our Lord is as the deer of the dawn (cf. Ps. 22), “the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25), “the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18). May this give us an uplift in the days before He calls us to Himself.