Jesus’ crucifixion timeline, explained

This year Easter comes early on March 31, 2024. The holiday is usually associated with candy, bunnies, baskets, and baby chicks. And why that’s certainly a fun aspect of Easter, its origin has far more religious, and honestly kinda dark, roots.

The holiday celebrates rebirths and new beginnings, and for practicing Christians it’s a week-long celebration of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.

If you’re new to the holiday or don’t celebrate it can be confusing to keep track of the exact timeline of Jesus’s story and all those holidays that fall the week before Easter. To clear up any questions here is the timeline of Jesus’s crucifixion, which happened across three days.

Maundy Thursday

Jesus’s crucifixion story begins at the Last Supper, as recounted in the books of the Bible Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (or the gospels). At this meal, which Jesus knows to be his last he washes his follower’s feet and gives an ominous speech about his death telling them that one of them will betray him. He also refers to the bread as his body and the wine as his blood, encouraging his disciples to remember him every time they eat or drink it.

The same evening he and his disciples go to a nearby garden to pray, and Jesus goes off on his own to prepare for his death. Christians typically take communion on the Thursday before Easter and eat bread and drink wine to commemorate the Last Supper.

The Betrayal

Unfortunately for Jesus, one of his friends, Judas, called the guards on him in exchange for some money. Roman officials were after Jesus because he claimed to be the son of God and the King felt that called his own authority into question.

The guards apprehended Jesus from the garden and he is taken to essentially be scolded by religious leaders.

Jesus’s friend Peter goes on to deny knowing Jesus three times, something else that Jesus predicted at the Last Supper.

Good Friday

The next morning, very early in the morning, Jesus essentially stands trial for his crimes. They couldn’t persecute him without approval from officials but the two men with the power to do so, Pilate and Herod couldn’t seem to decide whether or not to persecute him and kept sending Jesus back and forth between them. Finally, Pilate (who originally thought Jesus was innocent) gave into the pressure of the crowds that hated Jesus and sentenced him to death.

That same morning, after much deliberating, Jesus was sent to Calvary where he dragged his cross up a mountain so that Roman guards could nail him to it. this would’ve been around 9 am that day.

While Jesus is up on the cross Roman guards abuse him, insult, and mock him. He prays. From the cross, he talks to the two men on either side of him and his mother and friend John come to mourn and visit him in his pain. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus would’ve died around 3 pm that day. This is what Christians remember on Good Friday.

After Jesus dies he is taken from the cross and laid in a tomb which is guarded. A soldier stabs him in the side to make sure that he is dead

Easter Sunday

Jesus is dead for three days. That is until Mary, his mother, comes across his tomb to find the stone blocking it rolled away and the tomb empty. Jesus eventually finds his friend and disciples who understandably had a hard time believing that he’s just come back from the dead.

He shows them the scars on his side and his hands where he was stabbed and nailed to the cross. Then they have a celebration and about 40 days later Jesus ascended back into the heavens.

The whole story takes place across four or five days, and Jesus spends most of it dead. It can be tough to understand especially if it’s not a story you grew up with. Ultimately, Christians celebrate Easter and the Easter season in honor of this story and try to remember each detail as they lead up to the celebration of Jesus dying to relieve them of shame.