Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

 ⁴⁴  Pilate wondered if He was dead by this time, and summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether He was already dead.

 ⁴⁵And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph.

 ⁴⁶  Joseph bought a linen cloth, took Him down, wrapped Him in the linen cloth and laid Him in a tomb which had been hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

 ⁴⁷  Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on to see where He was laid.”  Mark 15:42-47.

In following Question and Answer 41, The Heidelberg Catechism instructs us why Jesus was buried.

“Question 41. Why was he also “buried”?

Answer. Thereby to prove that he was really dead.” 

The foregoing Scripture also makes it clear that Jesus was really dead by including verses 44 and 45 which show that Pilate confirmed that Jesus was really dead.

But, I think that there is an additional reason why Jesus was buried.  Jesus was buried to accomplish and show the depth at which are sins have also been buried.   Jesus was buried to accomplish and show the extent to which our body of sin has been  done away with, so that we are no longer slaves to sin.  Jesus was buried to accomplish and show how dead to sin that we are, so that we can be alive to God in Christ Jesus.     

Romans 6:4-11 states: 

^“4  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

 ⁵  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

 ⁶  knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

 ⁷  for he who has died is freed from sin.

 ⁸  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

 ⁹  knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again;  death no longer is master over Him.

 ¹⁰  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

 ¹¹  Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”