Saturday: Low in the grave he lay...

"On the sabbath they [the women] rested according to the commandment" (Luke 23:56).

The next day, the chief priests came to Pilate and urged him to have a guard placed on Jesus' tomb because they feared the disciples would steal the body and tell the people that he had risen from the dead. They sealed the tomb and put a guard on watch there (Matthew).

Christians have of course asked where Jesus was on Saturday. Did he go to a place of torment so that penal substitution might fully take place? I can think of nothing in the biblical text that suggests this. Nothing in the biblical text suggests that Jesus took our exact penalty, as if it were some sort of mathematical equivalency. He did not, for example, spend eternity in hell.

Did he preach to the dead of the time of the old covenant in order to give them the opportunity to repent? 1 Peter 4:6 sounds like this (especially when you take out the word "now" that the NIV translators added). But I don't think 1 Peter is suggesting this took place on holy Saturday. 1 Peter 3:18-19 locates Christ's proclamation (of victory?) to the fallen spirits of Noah's day at a point when Jesus was "made alive in the spirit," in other words, post-resurrection.

What does the biblical text tell us? "Today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). The biblical answer would thus seem to be that on Saturday, Jesus' body was in the tomb and his spirit was in Paradise.