1 Corinthians 15:4

It is asked why the burial of Jesus occupies a place among these few essential facts. It is certainly not with a view to the spiritual application which is made of it, Romans 6:4; for this belonged to a more advanced stage of teaching. Neither is it to establish the reality of the death, for interment does not exclude the possibility of a lethargy. But the fact of interment ever recalls “that empty tomb on which, as has been said, the Church is founded,” and which remains inexplicable by all who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. It is indeed what excludes both the supposition of hallucination on the part of the apostles and that of a purely spiritual reappearance of Jesus after His death. The dead body laid in the sepulchre disappeared. What became of it? No explanation other than the fact itself of the resurrection has ever been able to account for this mystery.

Passing from the facts of the death and burial to the resurrection, Paul discontinues the aorists (died, was buried) for the perfect (ἐγήγερται). For the risen Christ continues in life.

Does the regimen: according to the Scriptures, which is repeated here, apply only to the fact in general or specially to the detail: the third day? In the former case, we must think of Isaiah 53 and Psalms 16; in the latter, we must add to these passages the history of Jonah and Hosea 6:2.

This date of the third day was not accidental; for, as Hofmann observes, it is precisely then that dissolution ordinarily begins to appear.