Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God's good time for each, so that we may obtain by this a better resurrection.
Like seeds cast into the earth, we are not destroyed when our bodies are dissolved. Rather, as those who are sown, we will rise again, because death has been abolished by the grace of the Savior. Therefore the blessed Paul, who became a guarantor of the Resurrection for all, says: "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. When this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your sting?’"
Someone may ask: If it was necessary for Him to hand over the body to death on behalf of all, why did He not lay it aside privately, as a human being, rather than going so far as crucifixion? It would seem more honorable for Him to lay aside the body with dignity than to endure such a death with disgrace.
But look at this argument closely, and see how merely human it is, whereas what the Savior did was truly divine and worthy of His divinity for several reasons. The first is this. The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself.
If He had laid aside the body somewhere in private, on a bed in the ordinary manner of human beings, it would have been thought that He suffered this because of a weakness in His nature and possessed nothing beyond other human beings. But since He was Life and the Word of God, and since the death had to be on behalf of all, the body was strengthened in Him because He is Life and Power.
Yet because death had to take place, He did not take the occasion for completing the sacrifice from Himself, but received it from others. For it was not fitting that the Lord, Who healed the diseases of others, should Himself fall sick. Nor was it fitting that the body through which He strengthened the weaknesses of others should itself become weak.
Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?" Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.