John 20:19

The infallible proof of Christ's resurrection was his showing himself alive, Act 1:3. In these verses, we have an account of his first appearance to the college of the disciples, on the day on which he rose. He had sent them the tidings of his resurrection by trusty and credible messengers; but to show his love to them, and confirm their faith in him, he came himself, and gave them all the assurances they could desire of the truth of it, that they might not have it by hearsay only, and at second hand, but might themselves be eye-witnesses of his being alive, because they must attest it to the world, and build the church upon that testimony. Now observe here,

I. When and where this appearance was, Joh 20:19. It was the same day that he rose, being the first day of the week, the day after the Jewish sabbath, at a private meeting of the disciples, ten of them, and some more of their friends with them, Luk 24:33.

There are three secondary ordinances (as I may call them) instituted by our Lord Jesus, to continue in his church, for the support of it, and for the due administration of the principal ordinances - the word, sacraments, and prayer; these are, the Lord's day, solemn assemblies, and standing ministry. The mind of Christ concerning each of these is plainly intimated to us in these verses; of the first two, here, in the circumstances of this appearance, the other Joh 20:21. Christ's kingdom was to be set up among men, immediately upon his resurrection; and accordingly we find the very day he arose, though but a day of small things, yet graced with those solemnities which should help to keep up a face of religion throughout all the ages of the church.

1. Here is a Christian sabbath observed by the disciples, and owned by our Lord Jesus. The visit Christ made to his disciples was on the first day of the week. And the first day of the week is (I think) the only day of the week, or month, or year, that is ever mentioned by number in all the New Testament; and this is several times spoken of as a day religiously observed. Though it was said here expressly (Joh 20:1) that Christ arose on the first day of the week, and it might have been sufficient to say here (Joh 20:19), he appeared the same day at evening; yet, to put an honour upon the day, it is repeated, being the first day of the week; not that the apostles designed to put honour upon the day (they were yet in doubt concerning the occasion of it), but God designed to put honour upon it, by ordering it that they should be altogether, to receive Christ's first visit on that day. Thus, in effect, he blessed and sanctified that day, because in it the Redeemer rested.

2. Here is a Christian assembly solemnized by the disciples, and also owned by the Lord Jesus. Probably the disciples met here for some religious exercise, to pray together; or, perhaps, they met to compare notes, and consider whether they had sufficient evidence of their Master's resurrection, and to consult what was now to be done, whether they should keep together or scatter; they met to know one another's minds, strengthen one another's hands, and concert proper measures to be taken in the present critical juncture. This meeting was private, because they durst not appear publicly, especially in a body. They met in a house, but they kept the door shut, that they might not be seen together, and that no one might come among them but such as they knew; for they feared the Jews, who would prosecute the disciples as criminals, that they might seem to believe the lie they would deceive the world with, that his disciples came by night, and stole him away. Note, (1.) The disciples of Christ, even in difficult times, must not forsake the assembling of themselves together, Heb 10:25. Those sheep of the flock were scattered in the storm; but sheep are sociable, and will come together again. It is no new thing for the assemblies of Christ's disciples to be driven into corners, and forced into the wilderness, Rev 12:14; Pro 28:12. (2.) God's people have been often obliged to enter into their chambers, and shut their doors, as here, for fear of the Jews. Persecution is allotted them, and retirement from persecution is allowed them; and then where shall we look for them but in dens and caves of the earth. It is a real grief, but no real reproach, to Christ's disciples, thus to abscond.

II. What was said and done in this visit Christ made to his disciples, and his interview between them. When they were assembled, Jesus came among them, in his own likeness, yet drawing a veil over the brightness of his body, now begun to be glorified, else it would have dazzled their eyes, as in his transfiguration. Christ came among them, to give them a specimen of the performance of his promise, that, where two or three are gathered together in his name, he will be in the midst of them. He came, though the doors were shut. This does not at all weaken the evidence of his having a real human body after his resurrection; though the doors were shut, he knew how to open them without any noise, and come in so that they might not hear him, as formerly he had walked on the water, and yet had a true body. It is a comfort to Christ's disciples, when their solemn assemblies are reduced to privacy, that no doors can shut out Christ's presence from them. We have five things in this appearance of Christ: -

(1.) His kind and familiar salutation of his disciples: He said, Peace be unto you. This was not a word of course, though commonly used so at the meeting of friends, but a solemn, uncommon benediction, conferring upon them all the blessed fruits and effects of his death and resurrection. The phrase was common, but the sense was now peculiar. Peace be unto you is as much as, All good be to you, all peace always by all means. Christ had left them his peace for their legacy, Joh 14:27. By the death of the testator the testament was become of force, and he was now risen from the dead, to prove the will, and to be himself the executor of it. Accordingly, he here makes prompt payment of the legacy: Peace be unto you. His speaking peace makes peace, creates the fruit of the lips, peace; peace with God, peace in your own consciences, peace with one another; all this peace be with you; not peace with the world, but peace in Christ. His sudden appearing in the midst of them when they were full of doubts concerning him, full of fears concerning themselves, could not but put them into some disorder and consternation, the noise of which waves he stills with this word, Peace be unto you.

(2.) His clear and undeniable manifestation of himself to them, Joh 20:20. And here observe,

[1.] The method he took to convince them of the truth of his resurrection, They now saw him alive whom multitudes had seen dead two or three days before. Now the only doubt was whether this that they saw alive was the same individual body that had been seen dead; and none could desire a further proof that it was so than the scars or marks of the wounds in the body. Now, First, The marks of the wounds, and very deep marks (though without any pain or soreness), remained in the body of the Lord Jesus even after his resurrection, that they might be demonstrations of the truth of it. Conquerors glory in the marks of their wounds. Christ's wounds were to speak on earth that it was he himself, and therefore he arose with them; they were to speak in heaven, in the intercession he must ever live to make, and therefore he ascended with them, and appeared in the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain, and bleeding afresh, Rev 5:6. Nay, it should seem, he will come again with his scars, that they may look on him whom they pierced. Secondly, These marks he showed to his disciples, for their conviction. They had not only the satisfaction of seeing him look with the same countenance, and hearing him speak with the same voice they had been so long accustomed to, Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora, ferebat - Such were his gestures, such his eyes and hands! but they had the further evidence of these peculiar marks: he opened his hands to them, that they might see the marks of the wounds on them; he opened his breast, as the nurse hers to the child, to show them the wound there. Note, The exalted Redeemer will ever show himself open-handed and open-hearted to all his faithful friends and followers. When Christ manifests his love to believers by the comforts of his Spirit, assures them that because he lives they shall live also, then he shows them his hands and his side.

[2.] The impression it made upon them, and the good it did them. First, They were convinced that they saw the Lord: so was their faith confirmed. At first, they thought they saw an apparition only, a phantasm; but now they knew it was the Lord himself. Thus many true believers, who, while they were weak, feared their comforts were but imaginary, afterwards find them, through grace, real and substantial. They ask not, Is it the Lord? but are assured, it is he. Secondly, Then they were glad; that which strengthened their faith raised their joy; believing they rejoice. The evangelist seems to write it with somewhat of transport and triumph. Then! then! were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord, If it revived the spirit of Jacob to hear that Joseph was yet alive, how would it revive the heart of these disciples to hear that Jesus is again alive? It is life from the dead to them. Now that word of Christ was fulfilled (Joh 16:22), I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice. This wiped away all tears from their eyes. Note, A sight of Christ will gladden the heart of a disciple at any time; the more we see of Christ, the more we shall rejoice in him; and our joy will never be perfect till we come where we shall see him as he is.

(3.) The honourable and ample commission he gave them to be his agents in the planting of his church, Joh 20:21. Here is,

[1.] The preface to their commission, which was the solemn repetition of the salutation before: Peace be unto you. This was intended, either, First, To raise their attention to the commission he was about to give them. The former salutation was to still the tumult of their fear, that they might calmly attend to the proofs of his resurrection; this was to reduce the transport of their joy, that they might sedately hear what he had further to say to them; or, Secondly, To encourage them to accept of the commission he was giving them. Though it would involve them in a great deal of trouble, yet he designed their honour and comfort in it, and, in the issue, it would be peace to them. Gideon received his commission with this word, Peace be unto thee, Jdg 6:22, Jdg 6:23. Christ is our Peace; if he is with us, peace is to us. Christ was now sending the disciples to publish peace to the world (Isa 52:7), and he here not only confers it upon them for their own satisfaction, but commits it to them as a trust to be by them transmitted to all the sons of peace, Luk 10:5, Luk 10:6.

[2.] The commission itself, which sounds very great: As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

First, It is easy to understand how Christ sent them; he appointed them to go on with his work upon earth, and to lay out themselves for the spreading of his gospel, and the setting up of his kingdom, among men. He sent them authorized with a divine warrant, armed with a divine power, - sent them as ambassadors to treat of peace, and as heralds to proclaim it, - sent them as servants to bid to the marriage. Hence they were called apostles - men sent.

Secondly, But how Christ sent them as the Father sent him is not so easily understood; certainly their commissions and powers were infinitely inferior to his; but, 1. Their work was of the same kind with his, and they were to go on where he left off. They were not sent to be priests and kings, like him, but only prophets. As he was sent to bear witness to the truth, so were they; not to be mediators of the reconciliation, but only preachers and publishers of it. Was he sent, not to be ministered to, but to minister? not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him? not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fill them up? So were they. As the Father sent him to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, so he sent them into all the world. 2. He had a power to send them equal to that which the Father had to send him. Here the force of the comparison seems to lie. By the same authority that the Father sent me do I send you. This proves the Godhead of Christ; the commissions he gave were of equal authority with those which the Father gave, and as valid and effectual to all intents and purposes, equal with those he gave to the Old Testament prophets in visions. The commissions of Peter and John, by the plain word of Christ, are as good as those of Isaiah and Ezekiel, by the Lord sitting on his throne; nay, equal with that which was given to the Mediator himself for his work. Had he an incontestable authority, and an irresistible ability, for his work? so had they for theirs. Or thus, As the Father hath sent me is, as it were, the recital of his power; by virtue of the authority given him as a Mediator, he gave authority to them, as his ministers, to act for him, and in his name, with the children of men; so that those who received them, or rejected them, received or rejected him, and him that sent him, Joh 13:20.

(4.) The qualifying of them for the discharge of the trust reposed in them by their commission (Joh 20:22): He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Observe,

[1.] The sign he used to assure them of, and affect them with, the gift he was now about to bestow upon them: He breathed on them; not only to show them, by this breath of life, that he himself was really alive, but to signify to them the spiritual life and power which they should receive from him for all the services that lay before them. Probably he breathed upon them all together, not upon each severally and, though Thomas was not with them, yet the Spirit of the Lord knew where to find him, as he did Eldad and Medad, Num 11:26. Christ here seems to refer to the creation of man at first, by the breathing of the breath of life into him (Gen 2:7), and to intimate that he himself was the author of that work, and that the spiritual life and strength of ministers and Christians are derived from him, and depend upon him, as much as the natural life of Adam and his seed. As the breath of the Almighty gave life to man and began the old world, so the breath of the mighty Saviour gave life to his ministers, and began a new world, Job 33:4. Now this intimates to us, First, That the Spirit is the breath of Christ, proceeding from the Son. The Spirit, in the Old Testament, is compared to breath (Eze 37:9), Come, O breath; but the New Testament tells us it is Christ's breath. The breath of God is put for the power of his wrath (Isa 11:4; Isa 30:33); but the breath of Christ signifies the power of his grace; the breathing of threatenings is changed into the breathings of love by the mediation of Christ. Our words are uttered by our breath, so the word of Christ is spirit and life. The word comes from the Spirit, and the Spirit comes along with the word. Secondly, That the Spirit is the gift of Christ. The apostles communicated the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, those hands being first lifted up in prayer, for they could only beg this blessing, and carry it as messengers; but Christ conferred the Holy Ghost by breathing, for he is the author of the gift, and from him it comes originally. Moses could not give his Spirit, God did it (Num 11:17); but Christ did it himself.

[2.] The solemn grant he made, signified by this sign, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, in part now, as an earnest of what you shall further receive not many days hence." They now received more of the Holy Ghost than they had yet received. Thus spiritual blessings are given gradually; to him that has shall be given. Now that Jesus began to be glorified more of the Spirit began to be given: see Joh 7:39. Let us see what is contained in this grant. First, Christ hereby gives them assurance of the Spirit's aid in their future work, in the execution of the commission now given them: "I send you, and you shall have the Spirit to go along with you." Now the Spirit of the Lord rested upon them to qualify them for all the services that lay before them. Whom Christ employs he will clothe with his Spirit, and furnish with all needful powers. Secondly, He hereby gives them experience of the Spirit's influences in their present case. He had shown them his hands and his side, to convince them of the truth of his resurrection; but the plainest evidences will not of themselves work faith, witness the infidelity of the soldiers, who were the only eye-witnesses of the resurrection. "Therefore receive ye the Holy Ghost, to work faith in you, and to open your understandings." They were now in danger of the Jews: "Therefore receive ye the Holy Ghost, to work courage in you." What Christ said to them he says to all true believers, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, Eph 1:13. What Christ gives we must receive, must submit ourselves and our whole souls to the quickening, sanctifying, influences of the blessed Spirit - receive his motions, and comply with them - receive his powers and make use of them: and those who thus obey this word as a precept shall have the benefit of it as a promise; they shall receive the Holy Ghost as the guide of their way and the earnest of their inheritance.

(5.) One particular branch of the power given them by their commission particularized (Joh 20:23): "Whosesoever sins you remit, in the due execution of the powers you are entrusted with, they are remitted to them, and they may take the comfort of it; and whosesoever sins you retain, that is, pronounce unpardoned and the guilt of them bound on, they are retained, and the sinner may be sure of it, to his sorrow." Now this follows upon their receiving the Holy Ghost; for, if they had not had an extraordinary spirit of discerning, they had not been fit to be entrusted with such an authority; for, in the strictest sense, this is a special commission to the apostles themselves and the first preachers of the gospel, who could distinguish who were in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, and who were not. By virtue of this power, Peter struck Ananias and Sapphira dead, and Paul struck Elymas blind. Yet it must be understood as a general charter to the church and her ministers, not securing an infallibility of judgment to any man or company of men in the world, but encouraging the faithful stewards of the mysteries of God to stand to the gospel they were sent to preach, for that God himself will stand to it. The apostles, in preaching remission, must begin at Jerusalem, though she had lately brought upon herself the guilt of Christ's blood: "Yet you may declare their sins remitted upon gospel terms." And Peter did so, Act 2:38; Act 3:19. Christ, being risen for our justification, sends his gospel heralds to proclaim the jubilee begun, the act of indemnity now passed; and by this rule men shall be judged, Joh 12:48; Rom 2:16; Jam 2:12. God will never alter this rule of judgment, nor vary from it; those whom the gospel acquits shall be acquitted, and those whom the gospel condemns shall be condemned, which puts immense honour upon the ministry, and should put immense courage into ministers. Two ways the apostles and ministers of Christ remit and retain sin, and both as having authority: - [1.] By sound doctrine. They are commissioned to tell the world that salvation is to be had upon gospel terms, and no other, and they shall find God will say Amen to it; so shall their doom be. [2.] By a strict discipline, applying the general rule of the gospel to particular persons. "Whom you admit into communion with you, according to the rules of the gospel, God will admit into communion with himself; and whom you cast out of communion as impenitent, and obstinate in scandalous and infectious sins, shall be bound over to the righteous judgment of God."

III. The incredulity of Thomas, when the report of this was made to him, which introduced Christ's second appearance.

1. Here is Thomas's absence from this meeting, Joh 20:24. He is said to be one of the twelve, one of the college of the apostles, who, though now eleven, had been twelve, and were to be so again. They were but eleven, and one of them was missing: Christ's disciples will never be all together till the general assembly at the great day. Perhaps it was Thomas's unhappiness that he was absent - either he was not well, or had not notice; or perhaps it was his sin and folly - either he was diverted by business or company, which he preferred before this opportunity, or he durst not come for fear of the Jews; and he called that his prudence and caution which was his cowardice. However, by his absence he missed the satisfaction of seeing his Master risen, and of sharing with the disciples in their joy upon that occasion. Note, Those know not what they lose who carelessly absent themselves from the stated solemn assemblies of Christians.

2. The account which the other disciples gave him of the visit their Master had made them, Joh 20:25. The next time they saw him they said unto him, with joy enough, We have seen the Lord; and no doubt they related to him all that had passed, particularly the satisfaction he had given them by showing them his hands and his side. It seems, though Thomas was then from them, he was not long from them; absentees for a time must not be condemned as apostates for ever: Thomas is not Judas. Observe with what exultation and triumph they speak it: "We have seen the Lord, the most comfortable sight we ever saw." This they said to Thomas, (1.) To upbraid him with his absence: "We have seen the Lord, but thou hast not." Or rather, (2.) To inform him: "We have seen the Lord, and we wish thou hadst been here, to see him too, for thou wouldest have seen enough to satisfy thee." Note, The disciples of Christ should endeavour to build up one another in their most holy faith, both by repeating what they have heard to those that were absent, that they may hear it at second hand, and also by communicating what they have experienced. Those that by faith have seen the Lord, and tasted that he is gracious, should tell others what God has done for their souls; only let boasting be excluded.

3. The objections Thomas raised against the evidence, to justify himself in his unwillingness to admit it. "Tell me not that you have seen the Lord alive; you are too credulous; somebody has made fools of you. For my part, except I shall not only see in his hands the print of the nails, but put my finger into it, and thrust my hand into the wound in his side, I am resolved I will not believe." Some, by comparing this with what he said (Joh 11:16; Joh 14:5), conjecture him to have been a man of a rough, morose temper, apt to speak peevishly; for all good people are not alike happy in their temper. However, there was certainly much amiss in his conduct at this time. (1.) He had either not heeded, or not duly regarded, what Christ had so often said, and that too according to the Old Testament, that he would rise again the third day; so that he ought to have said, He is risen, though he had not seen him, nor spoken with any that had. (2.) He did not pay a just deference to the testimony of his fellow-disciples, who were men of wisdom and integrity, and ought to have been credited. He knew them to be honest men; they all ten of them concurred in the testimony with great assurance; and yet he could not persuade himself to say that their record was true. Christ had chosen them to be his witnesses of this very thing to all nations; and yet Thomas, one of their own fraternity, would not allow them to be competent witnesses, nor trust them further than he could see them. It was not, however, their veracity that he questioned, but their prudence; he feared they were too credulous. (3.) He tempted Christ, and limited the Holy One of Israel, when he would be convinced by his own method, or not at all. He could not be sure that the print of the nails, which the apostles told him they had seen, would admit the putting of his finger into it, or the wound in his side the thrusting in of his hand; nor was it fit to deal so roughly with a living body; yet Thomas ties up his faith to this evidence. Either he will be humoured, and have his fancy gratified, or he will not believe; see Mat 16:1; Mat 27:42. (4.) The open avowal of this in the presence of the disciples was an offence and discouragement to them. It was not only a sin, but a scandal. As one coward makes many, so does one believer, one sceptic, making his brethren's heart to faint like his heart, Deu 20:8. Had he only thought this evil, and then laid his hand upon his mouth, to suppress it, his error had remained with himself; but his proclaiming his infidelity, and that so peremptorily, might be of ill consequence to the rest, who were as yet but weak and wavering.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

JESUS APPEARS TO THE ASSEMBLED DISCIPLES. (Joh 20:19-23)

the same day at evening, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus--plainly not by the ordinary way of entrance.

and saith unto them Peace be unto you--not the mere wish that even His own exalted peace might be theirs (Joh 14:27), but conveying it into their hearts, even as He "opened their understandings to understand the scriptures" (Luk 24:45).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(19) For this appearance to the disciples (Joh_20:19-25) comp. Mar_16:14 and Luk_24:36-43. Between the last verse and this we must suppose to occur the bribing of the guard (Mat_28:11-15), and the conversation on the way to Emmaus (Luk_24:13-35; see also Mar_16:12-13, and comp. Chronological Harmony of the Gospels, p. 37)

When the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled . . .—This fact is noted here and in Joh_20:26, and the obvious intention is to point out that the appearance was preternatural. The body of the risen Lord was indeed the body of His human life, but it was not subject to the ordinary conditions of human life. The power that had upheld it as He walked upon the Sea of Galilee (Joh_6:16-21) made it during those forty days independent of laws of gravitation and of material resistance. (Comp. Notes on Luk_24:15-16; Luk_24:31; Luk_24:39.) The supposition that the doors were shut, and were miraculously opened (comp. Act_12:10), is opposed to the general impression of the context, and the incident is one which would probably have been mentioned.

The “fear of the Jews” naturally followed the Crucifixion. The Shepherd was struck, and the flock was scattered. They would remember, too, His own words, which foretold persecution for them (Joh_15:18 et seq.), and there may have been definite charges against some of them. Peter, e.g., had drawn upon himself the hostility of the high priest’s household, and John was known to be among the disciples. (Comp. Joh_18:8; Joh_18:25 et seq.)

Peace be unto you.—The salutation is given also in Luk_24:36. (Comp., in this Gospel, Note on Joh_14:27.) The well-known words of greeting would come to them now, as her own name came to Mary (Joh_20:16), bringing, as the familiar tones fell upon the ear, the assurance of the Master’s presence in their midst. But the words would also have the fuller meaning of a message from the spirit-world to them. It is a voice from the darkness beyond the grave into which the living have tried in vain to see, and that voice is one of peace. It is the message of the conqueror of death to man who has conquered in and through Him, declaring that the victory is won. It is the message of atonement, declaring the peace which flows from pardoned sin and reconciliation with God to the disciples themselves, and through them-as the apostles of peace, to all mankind.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_20:19-23

Then the same day at evening

The first Lords Day evening

I.

THE ANXIOUS COMPANY. The twelve, with the exception of Judas and Thomas, were gathered and kept together by a community of interest in Christ. They betook themselves to retirement from lack of sympathy from without, and from fear of the Jews. There was excitement among them by reports of the Resurrection.

II. THE DIVINE VISITOR. His appearance was

1. Miraculous.

2. Unexpected.

3. Welcome. His greeting touched the chords of memory.

4. Indubitable. He showed them His hands!

III. THE SUDDEN JOY (Joh_20:20).

1. Their suspense was at an end

2. Their fears dispelled.

3. Their dim hopes realized.

4. Their belief in His predictions established.

5. Their pleasure in His society renewed.

6. Their confidence in His Divine mission revived.

IV. THE SACRED COMMISSION. Christ

1. More fully repeated His former language.

2. Instructed them to devote their life to the declaration of Gods mind, and the publication of a gospel of pardon for guilty men.

3. Added dignity to their duty in comparing it to His own mission.

4. Imparted the necessary qualifications.

Conclusion: It is Christs presence that hallows every Lords Day evening.

1. Giving Spiritual power to the preacher.

2. Imparting grace and blessing to the faithful hearer.

(Prof. J. R. Thomson.)

Jesus meeting His disciples after the Resurrection:

Note here

1. The reality of Christs sufferings, death, and resurrection.

2. The proof and attestation of His love.

3. The assurance that He is not ashamed of His humiliation and sufferings on our behalf.

4. The pledge of our resurrection.

5. The affecting circumstances of the history.

I. THE EVENT ITSELF was memorable. Never was such known in the history of man. Jesus came back in fulfilment of His own prophecy, as an evidence of the acceptance of His atonement, as the conqueror of sin and death.

II. THE TIME was memorable. The first day of the week, and the sun must not go down on that day before the Sun of Righteousness shines on the spirits of His dejected people. Thus our Lord puts peculiar honour on the day, and authorized the observance of it by His own example which has all the force of law. But the evening is specified. Why not the morning? Because they did not seek Him. The approach of Christ is often at our evening time--when the sun of hope and happiness is low and our comforters are few; when we least expect the aids of His providence, and are ready to say, Is His mercy clean gone for ever? So in the time of His disciples despair He appeared.

III. THE PLACE was memorable. Probably the scene of the Last Supper; to them like Bethel to Jacob, or the fig-tree to Nathanael. We are all affected by localities in which great blessings or deliverances have been experienced.

IV. THEIR PRIVILEGES were memorable.

1. Personal revelation of Christ.

2. Peace.

3. Spiritual power. (T. H. Day.)

The appearance to the second company

I. THE MEMBERS of the second company. It has been almost invariably assumed from 1Co_15:5 that they were apostles only. But the twelve is only a collective term. Just as the Roman magistrates, called the decemviri, were so called even though there might be vacancies in the body, so this term was applied to the apostles, though Judas was not counted, and Thomas was an absentee. And there is evidence to prove that the apostles did not alone consitute the assembly. Luke speaks of the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them; and it is also inevitable from the circumstances. If the brave women had come, expecting a calm retreat and a cordial welcome, would it be said to them from within, There is danger in the air; we have shut the door for fear of the Jews; besides, no one can join this company but apostles? If James and Joses, Simon and Judas, the brothers of our Lord, had knocked at the door, would it have been said to them, No admission for any but apostles? If Mark or Luke had whispered the password at the gate, would the answer have been, This is a meeting of apostles only? Depend upon it, this company was not a row of ecclesiastical dignitaries, each with a nimbus round his head, and the embroidered symbols of his office on his shoulders; it was only a family, met at the time of a great sorrow, and in the common family room. There was no division between clerical and lay; no upper and lower apartments--one for apostles, one for ordinary disciples.

II. THE FAST-CLOSED DOORS. Most likely this was at the house of John, the beloved disciple--that to which he had conveyed Mary. And we may assume that it was built in a style common to dwellings occupied by persons in fair circumstances. There would be a court open to the sky; and in the four sides of this court there would be rooms opening on to it. In this court the company would be assembled; and as its door was fastened by a great wooden key or iron bar, what did they fear? The bursting in of constables to arrest them on the lying charge of stealing a body out of its grave? They knew that such a charge had been lodged against them only that very day Did they fear the mob? It was the way of the Jews thus to storm the house of one who was unpopular (Act_17:5); and they could now set no limit to the possibilities of their wicked madness. Perhaps they had no distinct plan of defence, and no particular thought of saving their lives; but mainly out of half-instinctive impulse, they barred the court gates.

III. THE GREETING OF THE MASTER. His greeting to the first company had been, Rejoice! To the second, Peace! As Chrysostom says, To the women He proclaims joy; because they were plunged in grief. With a suitable interchange, therefore, He gives peace to the men, on account of their strife. The first was a small detachment of the general society, and consisted of women only. The second was the general society itself, including all the men. The women had been true, and were only conscious of grief; the men had not been true, and, besides their grief, were conscious of deep agitation and burning shame. This message was meant for our one, whole family, not for apostles alone. When we are in trouble, none of us hesitate to take the comfort that breathes in the fourteenth and following chapters of this Gospel. While you read Christs language after His resurrection, and compare it with those discourses, you say what He says now is but the continuation of what He said then. He said, My peace I leave with you; and now, having made peace by the blood of the Cross, He comes in His own person to pay the legacy! When we see any one wearing the badge of the Cross, yet seeming not to know the secret of the peace that cost Christ the cross to obtain, how can this be accounted for, unless these Christians think that the peace is only figurative; or that they must be better Christians before they can presume to take it? We might say to such, You are indeed no better Christians than the men who once cowered behind the shut gates of a certain courtyard in old Jerusalem. Let each crying, God be merciful to me a sinner, go and take this peace from the hand of the dear Christ.

IV. THE RESURRECTION BODY OF OUR LORD.

1. It was not an ordinary body, liable to ordinary laws; still, it was a body, perhaps, like that in which the Saviour had walked with Adam in Paradise, wrestled with Jacob, or reclined under the oak at Mamre. No stone wall could shut it in: no iron bar could keep it out; no law of gravitation could detain it; but it was a body.

2. It was flesh--All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, &c … for one star differeth from another star in glory. This glory was the glory of the celestial; visible to mortals only by the light of miracle, and by an act of Divine prerogative. As Moses, with face of celestial flame, put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might converse with him, so did the King of Moses veil His glories so that the disciples might speak to Him and live. To show them that it was a true body, He even condescended to take food (Luk_24:43).

3. The very body that had been crucified. He showed them His hands and His feet. Thus did He establish that fact of His resurrection on which the entire supernaturalism of our religion is decided, and on which all the work of the Atonement depends; while doing this He most emphatically and pathetically called their attention to the Atonement itself.

V. THE COMMISSION GIVEN TO THE DISCIPLES (verses 21-23).

1. The symbol. Both in Hebrew and Greek the word for breath is the word for spirit. The act of breathing here was an outward and visible sign of the Holy Spirit, now to be given for the first time; not indeed as a Divine energy in the human heart, but as an energy working through the finished facts of the Gospel, and as the gift of Christ crucified: not to be given for the first time either, in the sense of being given then and there; but to be given for the first time in the dispensation which Christ was about formally to inaugurate. For the Son of God to promise a boon is potentially the same thing as for Him to give it. When we hear Him say that He will do a thing, our souls exclaim, It is done!

2. The formula: Whosoever sins ye remit, &c. What is the import of this?

(1) Not the same as that of the great utterance first addressed to Peter, afterwards to the whole body of His colleagues (Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18). We are summoned to think, not of the power that can forbid or permit matters that have to do with the government of the Church, but of the question, When may sin be remitted? when retained?

(2) Dr. John Owen says, Christ here speaks of remitting or retaining sins by declaring the doctrine of the gospel; and this appears to be the true sense of this mysterious clause. God, by the voice of Christ, had already told the world whose sins He would remit, and whose retain. He who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ is saved--that is, his sins are remitted; he who refuses to believe is condemned already--that is, his sins are retained. This arrangement of remedial grace is fixed and irrevocable, and no sentence pronounced by man, whatever his office in the Church may be, can in the slightest degree alter it, nullify it, or add to it.

(3) This declarative mission is the mission of all disciples. It was given to all Christians as such--to ministers and people alike, while as yet they were undistinguished. Surely as Christ was sent by the Father to do what He still continues to do for you, so surely are you sent by Him to do this. Have we received the Holy Ghost? It is only as sharers in the life of our risen Lord that we are sent on His embassies. We must all take in, then give out, that life; tell only what we personally and vitally know; and speak, each according to the measure of His gift. The first thing wanted in the Church is more life; after that, and as the result of it, more work. There may be work without life. (C. Stanford, D. D.)

Christs appearance to His disciples

(Text, and Luk_24:36-48)

I. HE DECLARED HIS BEING WEARY IN ORDER TO TRANQUILIZE THEIR HEARTS. His benediction expressed

1. The great want of human nature, Peace. The tumult of the disciples is typical of that of those who are at war with

(1) Themselves.

(2) Society.

(3) The universe.

2. The great design of Christs mission. He came to reconcile man to his Maker, to Himself, and to the Creation--to reproduce in humanity that supreme sympathy with God which is the essential and unfailing security of spiritual tranquility.

II. HE APPEALED TO THEIR REASON IN ORDER TO ALLAY THEIR FEAR.

1. Their fear implied their belief

(1) In disembodied spirits.

(2) In the possibility of disembodied spirits appearing to them.

(3) In disembodied spirits being unfriendly to them.

2. In Christs appeal

(1) He assures them that spirits may exist apart from matter, and in this state appear to living men.

(2) He demonstrates the materiality of His resurrection body.

(3) He throws upon them an inquiry into the cause of their superstitious fear. Inquiry into our mental phenomena will soon expel superstition.

III. HE GAVE THEM EVIDENCE IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH THEIR FAITH. While they believed not for joy; just as we say, the news is too good to be true. Observe, in relation to the evidence He presents of His resurrection

1. Its nature.

(1) A palpable exhibition of the reality of His body--He eats with them.

(2) A clear showing that His resurrection answered the predictions of Scripture. All things must be fulfilled, &c.

2. Its effect. Then opened He their understandings, &c.

IV. HE PROPOUNDED HIS SYSTEM IN ORDER TO INDICATE THEIR DUTY.

1. The great doctrine of His system. Repentance and remission of sins.

2. Its world-wide aspect--All nations--not a sect or class.

3. The order of propagation, Beginning at Jerusalem.

V. HE ENDOWED THEM WITH EXTRAORDINARY POWER IN ORDER TO FIT THEM FOR THEIR EXTRAORDINARY WORK.

1. He performs a symbolical act.

2. He endows them with extraordinary authority. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The risen Jesus appearing to His disciples

I. THE TIME WHEN HE APPEARED. The same day at evening.

1. Not till He had appeared before to others. Mary Magdalene had seen Him, and Peter and the Emmaus two. It is painful to be thus passed over; to know that He is lifting up the light of His countenance upon others, while we have no glimpse of it. We do not like an earthly friend to pass us by; much less the heavenly.

2. When they did not expect Him, surely they would have left the doors open. And often does He surprise His people. The heart is closed in despair against Him. But at evening time, it is light; when light is the last thing expected. Does not this call upon us to cultivate a waiting, expecting spirit. We must not think ourselves forgotten, our turn will come.

3. When they were talking together of Him. St. Luke tells us that Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them as they spoke; not prayed. What an honour was here put on Christian conversation and communion! And our own experience corresponds. When have our hearts been warmed in social converse, and left refreshed, and longing to see one another again? Has it not been when, forgetting a vexing world, we have spoken together of our blessed Master? Where two or three are gathered together in My name, &c.

II. THE SALUTATION. We may regard it as

1. An indication of the peace that reigned within His own soul. We are most ready to speak of what our hearts are full. With distracted minds we are not likely to speak of peace, unless it be to deplore our want of it.

2. An assurance of His forgiveness.

3. An intimation of our Lords power to communicate the peace it speaks of. Observe the action, He showed unto them His hands and His side. suggesting that He had made peace for them through the blood of His cross. See here that the chastisement of your peace has been really on Me. I shall show this hand and this side to My Father on His throne, and claim peace for you.

III. THE EFFECT OF THIS APPEARANCE AND SALUTATION--more than peace, it was gladness. Here is a striking fulfilment of that promise--Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Their joy was connected with the sight of their Master. Nothing but this could comfort Mary. She goes from the garden to the disciples, and finds them absorbed in sorrow. She bears her testimony, but of what use is it? St. Mark says, They believed her not. Not one word do we read of their joy till Jesus Himself came. Then were the disciples glad. Now there is such a thing still as a sight of this risen Saviour. S Paul tells the Galatians who could never have beheld His face in the flesh, that before their eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth, crucified among them. To see Christ, then, is to understand this gospel, to receive it of Christ and heartily believe it. Have you ever thus seen the Lord? Till you have thus seen Him, you will never be happy men. (C. Bradley, M. A.)

The risen Lords greetings and gifts

(also Mat_28:9)

I. THEIR STRANGE AND MAJESTIC SIMPLICITY. Think of what tremendous experiences He had passed through since they saw Him last, and of what a rush of rapture and disturbance of joy shook the minds of the disciples, and then estimate the calm and calming power of that matter-of-fact and simple greeting. They bear upon their very front the mark of truth. Would anybody have imagined the scene so? Neither the delicate pencil of the great dramatic genius nor the coarser brush of legend can have drawn such a trait in character as this, and it seems to me that the only reasonable explanation of it is that these greetings are what He really did say. He has come from that tremendous conflict, and He reappears, not flushed with triumph, nor bearing any trace of effort, but surrounded as by a nimbus with that strange tranquility which evermore enwrapped Him. So small does the awful scene which He has passed through seem to this Divine-human Man, and so utterly are the old ties and bonds unaffected by it, that when He meets them, all He has to say to them as His first greeting is, Peace be unto you!--the well-worn salutation that was bandied to and fro in every market place and scene where men were wont to meet. Thus He vindicates the Divine tranquility of His nature; thus He minimizes the fact of death; thus He reduces it to its true insignificance as a parenthesis across which may pass unaffected all sweet familiarities and loving friendships.

II. THE UNIVERSAL DESTINATION OF THE GREETINGS OF THE RISEN LORD. Whatsoever any community or individual has conceived as its highest ideal of blessedness and of good, that the risen Christ hath in His hands to bestow. He takes mens ideals of blessedness, and deepens and purifies and refines them. The Greek notion of joy, as the thing to be most wished for those dear to us, is but a shallow one. They had to learn, and their philosophy, and their poetry, and their art came to corruption because they would not learn that the corn of wheat must be cast into the ground and die before it could bring forth fruit. They knew little of the blessing and meaning of sorrow, and therefore the false glitter passed away, and the pursuit of the ideal became gross and foul and sensuous. And, on the other hand, the Jew, with his longing for peace, had an equally shallow and unworthy conception of what that meant, and what was needed to produce it. If he had only external concord with men, and a competency of outward good within his reach without too much trouble, he thought that because he had much goods laid up for many years he might take his ease, and eat, and drink, and be merry. But Jesus Christ comes to satisfy both aspirations by contradicting both, and to reveal to each how much deeper and diviner his desire was than he dreamed it to be; and therefore how impossible it was to find the joy that would last in the dancing fireflies of external satisfactions or the delights of art and beauty; and how impossible it was to find the repose that ennobled and was wedded to action in anything short of union with God. The Lord Christ comes out of the grave in which He lay for every man, and brings to each mans door, in a dialect intelligible to the man himself, the satisfaction of the single souls aspirations and ideals, as well as of the national desires.

III. THE UNFAILING EFFICACY OF THE LORDS GREETINGS. Look at these people to whom He spoke. Remember what they were between the Friday and the Sunday morning; utterly cowed and beaten. They were on the point of parting. The Keystone withdrawn, the stones were ready to fall apart. From that time, when, by all reasonable logic and common sense applied to mens motives, the Crucifixion should have crushed their dreams and dissolved their society, a precisely opposite effect ensues, and not only did the Church continue, but the men changed their characters, and became, somehow or other, full of these very two things which Christ wishes them, namely, joy and peace. Now I want to know--what bridges that gulf? How do you get the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles out of the Peter of the Gospels? Is there any way of explaining that revolution of character, whilst yet its broad outlines remain identical, which befell Him and all of them, except the old-fashioned one that the something which came in between was the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of joy and peace in Him, a joy that no troubles or persecutions could shake, a peace that no conflicts could for a moment disturb? In His right hand He carried peace, and in His left joy. He gave these to them, and therefore out of weakness they were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, and when the time came, were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. There is omnipotent efficacy in Christs greetings! The one instance opens up the general law, that His wishes are gifts, that all His words are acts, that He speaks and it is done. Christs wishes are omnipotent, ours are powerless.

IV. OUR SHARE IN THIS TWOFOLD GREETING. When the women clung to His feet on that Easter morning they had no thought of anything but we clasp Thee again, O Soul of our souls. But then, as time went on, the meaning and blessedness and far-reaching issues of the Resurrection became more plain to them. And I think we can see traces of the process in the development of Christian teaching as presented in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. Now, in all three aspects--as proof of Messiahship, as the pattern and prophesy of immortality, and as the symbol of the better life which is accessible for us, here and now--the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands for us even more truly than for the rapturous women who caught His feet, or for the thankful men who looked upon Him in the upper chamber as the source of peace and of joy. For therein is set forth for us the Christ whose work is thereby declared to be finished and acceptable to God, and all sorrow of sin, all guilt, all disturbance of heart and mind by reason of evil passions and burning memories of former iniquity, and all disturbance of our concord with God, are at once and for ever swept away. Again, the resurrection of Jesus Christ sets Him forth before us as the pattern and the prophecy of immortal life. This Samson has taken the gates of the prison-house on His broad shoulders and carried them away, and now no man is kept imprisoned evermore in that darkness. Therefore the sorrows of death, for myself and for my dear ones, the agitation which it causes, and all the darkness into which we shrink from passing, are swept away when He comes forth from the grave, serene, radiant, and victorious, to die no more, but to dispense amongst us His peace and His joy. And, again, the risen Christ is the source of a new life drawn from Him and received into my heart by faith in His sacrifice and resurrection and glory. And if I have, deep-seated in my soul, though it may be in imperfect maturity, that life that is hid with Christ in God, an inward fountain of gladness, far beyond the effervescent, and therefore soon fiat, waters of Greek or earthly joy, is mine; and in my inmost being dwells a depth of calm peace which no outward disturbance can touch any more than the winds that rave along the surface of the ocean affect its unmoved and unsounded abysses. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Jesus stood in the midst

Jesus in our midst

I. THERE IS A PECULIAR MANNER IN OUR LORDS COMING TO HIS DISCIPLES.

1. He came gladly: for He came so soon and so often: at least four times in one day. His delights were ever with the sons of men. He is glad to come and sup with us that we may sup with Him.

2. He came to those who were quite unworthy of so great a privilege.

3. He came to the full assembly, after He had been seen by the few.

4. He came when they were met together quietly, secluded from the world and its cares. It is a good thing for the saints to be shut in, and the world shut out. You must not expect Jesus to show Himself to you if your heart is at home, or at the workshop, or seeking after vanity.

5. He came when they were all thinking and talking about Him.

6. Some one will say, He will not come here, for there are many barriers, and we are not in a condition to receive Him. But were there no difficulties then? The doors were shut, and the disciples were in fear. Whatever doors there may be between my Lord and my soul, He could pass through them or open them to get at my heart when it longs after Him. You have a fear upon you which you cannot shake off. So had the disciples, or they would not have closed the doors. But Jesus comes though sins encompass us, and doubts and fears and cares hang thick about our path. He comes as the dew which waiteth not for man.

II. OUR SAVIOUR HAD A PECULIAR MANNER WHEN HE WAS COME.

1. He stood, He did not flash across the room like a meteor, but remained in one position as though He meant to tarry. He stood in the midst. There are many preachers, but not one of them is in the midst of the family circle. The Lord alone is there, the centre of all hearts. Others are present, and they shine with differing lights, but He is the sun, the centre and ruler of the system of His Church.

2. He speaks, and His word is, Peace be unto you.

3. He showed to His disciples, not a new thought, a philosophic discovery, a deep doctrine, a profound mystery, or indeed anything but Himself. The most conspicuous thing Be showed in Himself was His wounds, and it He be present here, the chief object of faiths vision will be Himself; and the most conspicuous point in Himself will be the ensigns of His passion.

4. In so doing our Lord opens up the Scriptures. Christs presence is always known by His people by the value which they are led to attach to the Scripture.

5. They then forget all their fears. As He had given them peace with God, so now He puts aside the fear of man.

III. THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST WITH HIS DISCIPLES EXCITED VARIOUS EMOTIONS.

1. The disciples

(1) Were terrified, for they thought Him a Spirit. It is a sign of mans depravity that a spirit should alarm him. If we were more spiritual we should be glad to commune with them.

(2) When this had a little ceased Jesus said to them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? I suppose they began to think of their ill conduct to their Master, and conscience made them tremble.

(3) We are told by Mark that He also upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.

(4) Meanwhile they doubted whether it could be He, and when they were convinced they greatly rejoiced, and almost at the same time the very vividness of their joy blinded them into another doubt. Like a pendulum, they swung from joy to unbelief.

2. But come to ourselves. Suppose that our Lord were here. We should be filled with--(1)The profoundest awe. Should we not, like John in Patmos, fall at His feet as dead? At any rate, we would devoutly bow the knee before Him, and reverently adore.

(2) Overflowing love I How would our hearts melt while He spake! Brethren, He is here! Let us give that loving adoration to Him even now.

(3) Serene joy.

(4) Deep contribution.

IV. HE LEFT CERTAIN PERMANENT GIFTS, which also can be realized by His spiritual presence.

1. The realization of His person.

2. A commission.

3. The Holy Ghost which He breathed upon them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ among His people:

From this we learn

1. That the primitive disciples were in the habit of meeting for mutual comfort and edification, which says to us, Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, &c.

2. That the time of their religious gatherings was the first day of the week, which supplies authority for our observance of the Lords-day as the Christian Sabbath.

3. That when so assembled they were always visited by Christ; which shows that He keeps His promise--Where two or three, &c.

4. That where Christ presents Himself, He invariably does four things.

I. HE BRINGS A BENEDICTION. One of the last things He promised is the first which He bestows--peace. Observe this is

1. The great blessing of the covenant, including every kind of peace the human heart can want--peace with God, conscience, man.

2. A much-needed blessing, as urgently needed now as then; because of guilt and danger.

3. A purchased blessing; secured by the shedding of Christs blood.

4. An efficacious blessing. It was no mere wish, pleasant to hear, not vague or idle in significance, but an actual communication of the thing desired.

II. HE GIVES A REVELATION. He showed them, &c. This revelation was

1. Divine.

(1) In its origin He, and it is still Christ Himself who bestows upon His people the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.

(2) In its character. What He showed was Himself, than which He has nothing higher to impart. Christ crucified and risen is the highest revelation that can be given on the subject of God, man, truth, duty, salvation, eternal life.

2. Sufficient.

(1) Then. The assembled apostles required no more, nor Thomas on the following Lords-day.

(2) Now. It contains all that a sinful man wants to justify his reason in reposing faith in Christ.

3. Cheering. Then were the disciples glad. And so joy and peace to-day are the invariable results of a believing apprehension of the Saviour Rom_15:13; 1Pe_1:8).

III. HE ASSIGNS A COMMISSION. As My Father, &c. This is

1. Authoritative in its source. It emanates from Him to whom all power in heaven and earth has been given by the Father, and to whom by our saintship we owe allegiance. From Him, therefore, who has a right to command, and who cannot be disobeyed without incurring heinous guilt.

2. Imitative in its character, fashioned after the pattern of Christs, by the same authority, in the same manner, and for a similar end.

3. Alternative in its issues, being fraught with either blessing or cursing. Whosoever sins, &c.

IV. HE SUPPLIES A QUALIFICATION. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. A qualification

1. Much needed. Not by might nor by power.

2. Perfectly sufficient. Not that Christs people are to neglect subsidiary helps, such as learning, &c.; only that with the Spirit they will not be left destitute of anything requisite for their work.

3. Very real. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)

Peace be unto you

Salutations

How curiously full of meaning are the different forms of salutation which have been in vogue in different countries and ages! The joyous Greek used to say, χᾶριε!--i.e., rejoice, take a cheerful view of what is before you. The sturdy Roman used to say, Ave! Salve! Vale! Be alive, healthy, strong to surmount all enemies and difficulties; override and trample them down. The serious German, Saxon race used to say, Farewell!--fare on, travel on as best you can along this uncertain mysterious road, walk well, discreetly, and then, whatever betide, it shall be well with you. The Christian of modern times, of whatever race, says, Good-day! Good evening! God bless you! Adieu! Good-bye! &c. God and Gods goodness be with you. We commend you to a better guidance than ours. Go on towards God, and may God and all good go on with you. But there is still another form, still universal in the East, Peace be with you!--i.e., peace to the traveller amidst the ceaseless wars and feuds of the desert. Peace from robbers by night, from the enemies snares, from quarrels which embitter life if they do not destroy it, from the alarms which destroy comfort if they do not destroy life. It was this in which our Lord chose to express His best wishes for His disciples. (Dean Stanley.)

Christs salutation

1. The day mentioned is the day in commemoration of which every Sabbath now is kept. There is no difference between the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath, except the difference there is in the landscape when the sun is on it and when the sun is off it.

2. We progress in the actings of faith very slowly. Were faith in lively exercise you would see in the midst of this house a glory brighter than ten thousand thousand mountains of light, with the beams of the meridian sun falling on them. You would see in the midst Jesus; for where two or three, &c.

I. THE SALUTATION--Peace! Of all the words that fall on mans ear, none is more delectable.

1. At the sound, perhaps

(1) We think of our infancy, ere the passions of the heart uncoiled themselves, or the cares and turmoil of life were encountered.

(2) Or of some happy individual hose mind is graced with all scholarship, charmed with all sensibility, cultivated and wrought up to the mastery of the passions, and the education of the faculties, whose mind seems like a piece of music in tune.

(3) Or of some happy family, in which there is such a consentaneousness of thinking and harmoniousness of feeling, such a rippling of kindliness, such a flowing of tenderness that though there are several individuals in the family, it really seems as though they were but one heart beating in the house.

(4) Or of some happy land over which the waves of anarchy never rolled, in which the plaints of discord were never heard; where peace and contentment universally prevail; where every man sits under his own vine and his own fig-tree, having none to make him afraid.

(5) Or of a scene inclusive of and transcending all this, even of the garden of Eden itself.

2. But Christ used it in a more sacred sense than any of these. It signifies peace after a war, calm after a storm, tranquility after confusion. In nature, before the storm comes there is generally a very emphatic calm. When the sea is going to be searched through and through, there comes on the deep hush. And now big come the rain drops, now loud comes the wind, now fierce drives the tempest, and before it everything that is rotten gives way directly. Such a time will overtake us all. The peace of the worldling drifts away at once. If the worldling admit that he had any, it is generally found to consist in some reflection to this effect, that on the whole the world has gone tolerably smoothly with him, and he hopes it will continue to do so. But that is not a peace that will live in the storm. Bat the peace which Christ gives is profound and abiding. When the storm comes down on the water, we, perhaps, suppose that the storm has ploughed the ocean up to its depths. Not so! Down a few yards at most is the body of water lying in a state of perfect repose, as when God first gathered the waters into the sea. Such is the peace which Christ gives. The storm does not destroy it. It is deep, abiding peace.

3. Not indeed that peace can be found in outward things. Take away from the believer in Christ that to which worldly men may look for satisfaction, wealth, station, power, friends, health, and you have not come down to where his peace lies. Certainly, if these outward things could ever have yielded peace, they would have yielded it to Solomon. With astonishing energy and perseverance he worked the problem through; and when he had exhausted his experiments, he summed up the result--Vanity of vanities; all is vanity! And yet very few men are willing to take that lesson from Solomon.

II. THE ACT WITH WHICH THE SAVIOUR ACCOMPANIED HIS SALUTATION. He did something. Actions are more powerful than words.

1. He showed them His hands as much as to say, If these hands had never have been pierced, these lips would not have pronounced, Peace be unto you. The chastisement of your peace has been laid on Me; by My stripes ye are healed. He showed His side, so that we might say, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!

2. The showing of the hands and the side of Christ is the only symbolical movement that now remains. All types which intimated beforehand the glories of our redemption by the death of Christ are gone but this. So now, the whole of your behaviour in relation to Christ just resolves itself into this--touching the hands and side of Christ. Believing in Christ and touching Him are the same thing.

3. Then observe the point of difference there is between the actions of men and this action of our Lord in showing His hands and His side. You can never depend on the action of man--he is mutable. But Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. He is always showing His hands and His feet in heaven to signify that He is always doing so on earth to faith. Cannot you touch His hands and His side? Oh! you say, it takes such a great effort. Cannot you make a great effort? I know I can. Let your temporal affairs all get into some great extremity, and I know what you are capable of. Suppose you were drowning--some one throws a rope to you--what kind of movement do you make? All I want from you in relation toChrist is a similar effort on the part of the mind which the body takes towards the rope. Conclusion: To those who have this peace, I must speak to them in the language

1. Of congratulation.

2. Of exhortation; for Christ hath said, As my Father hath sent Me, so send I you. You are chartered for usefulness. Is there ignorance in the world--remove it. Is there delusion--dissolve it. Is there infidelity--go and supply the elements of faith. Is there immorality--go and check it. Is there misery--wipe its tears, terminate its sighs. (J. Beaumont, M.D.)

The Tears of Christ

I. THIS GREETING WAS CUSTOMARY AMONG EASTERN NATIONS.

1. It was, with slight variations, of high antiquity, and we meet with it all through the Bible.

2. In our Lords-day it had become as much part of the social habits of the people as Good-morning is among ourselves. In earlier days, no doubt, men had invoked peace from heaven with the utmost seriousness; but by this time it had become a mere conventional phrase; and yet our Lord did not scruple to use it. But it would be a great mistake to infer that He used it conventionally. A conscientious man will mean what he says, even when he uses words prescribed by custom or etiquette. And among great teachers the majority have been less forward to employ new language than to breathe a new meaning into old words. In Christ this latter method is especially observable. He picks up, as it were from the roadside, the common words which fall from men as they saunter unthinkingly through life; and He restores to them their original power and sanctity. His work was to bring reality in all its shapes into human life. Once before, in the supper-room, He rescued the blessing of peace from unmeaning formalism. Not as the world giveth give I unto you.

3. The word peace does not, in the original, mean only or chiefly rest. The Hebrew root-word means whole, entire; a thing as it should be according to its origin or capacity. Of this state of well-being, freedom from disturbance is either a condition or a result. Yet here, as so often else, the incidental meaning has displaced the original. But our Lord had His eye no doubt, at least partially, on its original sense. He meant not merely tranquility but that which leads to it--wellbeing in its largest sense as affecting the highest interests of a being like man.

II. WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SENSE SUGGESTED BY THE BLESSING TO THOSE WHO HEARD IT.

1. Not peace with the Jews without! That could not be (Luk_12:51). His followers indeed were so much as lieth in them to live peaceably with all men. But this region of possible intercourse could only extend where the truths of faith were not imperilled. Peace with the Jews at that time, like peace with the non-Christian world in later ages, was only to be had by a surrender of the honour and cause of Christ.

2. Nor peace among yourselves! Doubtless this is of priceless value, as involving the best spiritual blessings, and as an evidence to the world of the truth of our Lords religion (Joh_13:35). But this peace was not thenespecially needed. The instinct of self-preservation drew and kept them together. The sad day of divisions among Christians was yet to come.

3. But peace in their individual souls--a sense of protection which conquers or ignores fear. There they were for fear of the Jews. They knew what measure had been dealt to their Master. What could they--His disciples--expect? Then He came and said, Peace. And from His lips the blessing of peace meant safety from every adversary. This is a primary effect of Christs blessing. It distracts attention from things without. It does not destroy them. Sickness, death, the loss of friends, opposition, the bad tempers, prejudices, follies of those around us, &c., remain as before. But they no longer absorb attention. The eye of the soul is fixed on the Divine and the eternal.

III. FREEDOM FROM ANXIETY IS NOT THE ONLY OR THE CHIEF PART OF PEACE. Its root is deeper. The soul must be resting on its true object; or the tumult within will continue in thought, affection, will, conscience.

1. The Crucifixion had thrown the disciples into the greatest mental perplexity. They had trusted that it had been He that should have redeemed Israel. Upon this state of mind the Crucifixion burst like a thunderbolt. True, prophecy and He Himself had foretold it. But the human mind has a strange power of closing its ear to the unwelcome when it is half-comprehended. Christs words then describe the intellectual effect of His mere appearance. The sight of Jesus risen restored order to the thoughts of the disciples. The Crucifixion was no longer the ruin of their faith if it was followed by the Resurrection. The prophecies were consistent after all. This is still the work of Jesus in the world; when He is recognized by souls He blesses them with intellectual peace. Without Him the belief in a Holy God is embarrassed by the gravest perplexities. All the great haunting questions about life and destiny are unanswered, to any real purpose, until Jesus appears. It is indeed sometimes mistakenly supposed that a Christian knows only the peace of mental stagnation; and that in order to be what is oddly called a thinker, a man must needs be a sceptic. It is of course true that a Christian is not for ever re-opening questions which he believes to have been settled on the authority of God Himself. But to believe is not to condemn thought to inertness and stagnation; a man does not do less work at mathematics because he starts with holding the axioms to be beyond discussion. On the contrary, a fixed creed, like that of the Christian, imparts to life and nature such varied interest, that, as experience shows, it fertilizes thought. The human intelligence has, on the whole, been cultivated most largely among the Christian nations.

2. The disciples had, for the moment, by the death of Jesus, lost the object of their affections. How much they already loved our Lord they did not know until He was removed. Now they felt the weary, restless void of an aching heart. When, then, Jesus appeared He brought peace to their hearts Son_3:4). Mental satisfaction does not alone bring peace, if the heart remains unsatisfied. And that which satisfies the heart is beauty; that uncreated and eternal beauty of which all earthly beauty is but the shadow. Sooner or later trouble and death make havoc of temporal peace. Only one Being satisfies the affections in such sort, that the souls peace is insured beyond risk of forfeiture (Isa_26:3).

3. Our Lords crucifixion had disturbed all the plans for action and life which had been formed by the apostles. They had been looking forward to the establishment of a new kingdom, and to their own places in and work for it. These visions now seemed to have vanished. The apostles were like men who had just failed in business--all is despair. And the will, the energetic and sovereign faculty of the soul, suddenly set free from the tension of continuous effort, falls back upon itself, and becomes within the soul a principle of disturbance. No men know less of inward peace than the unoccupied. A leading secret of peace is work. Our Lord then restored that sort of peace which comes with occupation pursued under a sense of duty. Many a working man, who does not know how to get into the day what he has to do, supposes that the condition of idle people is to be envied. No mistake can well be greater. Work guarantees the peace of the soul; because the soul must be active in some way, and work secures healthy action.

4. But the peace which man needs most especially, and which our Lord gives most abundantly, is that of the conscience. Did the apostles as yet understand in detail how their Master would reconcile them to God? It is difficult to say. They knew that this reconciliation was, in some way, to result from His mission and life. But if the violence of His enemies had indeed prevailed, this was a mere matter of phrase and conjecture; His life was essential to the completion of His work. They knew not whether they were saved after all. They had lost that peace which comes from a sense of union with God. When, then, our Lord appeared He restored peace, because He restored the sense, however indefinite as yet, of pardon for past sin, and of reconciliation with God. Without this there can be no true peace for the soul of man. Perhaps no Christian, since the days of the apostles, has illustrated the peace which Jesus gives so fully as Augustine. Read that pathetic story of his early life in his Confessions. What a restless life was his before his conversion I The intellect tossed about on the waves of speculation, without solid hold on any one reassuring truth. The heart distracted between the ideals presented by false philosophies, and the ideals suggested by sensuality. The will unable to fasten on any serious duty; the victim of a feverish unsettlement, or of a capricious languor. The conscience profoundly stirred by the terrible conviction that the Son of Peace was not there, and alternating between the phase of insensibility and the phase of agony. Then came his conversion, and with it what a change! Peace in his understanding, which now surveys with a majestic tranquility, the vast realms of revealed truth; more penetratingly, more comprehensively than any Christian since St. Paul. Peace in his heart, which now turns its undistracted and enraptured gaze upon the Eternal Beauty, who, as he says, is always ancient yet always young. Peace in his will, for which the problem of duty has been simplified; he knows what he has to do, and he does it with all his might. Peace in his conscience. There is no longer any sense of an inward feud with the law of absolute holiness. All has been pardoned through the blood of Jesus; all is possible through His grace. (Canon Liddon.)

Christs peace the antidote for the worlds distractions:

You may have stood by the side of one of those brawling mountain streams which descend from our southern and western coasts into the sea. Such a stream rushes with its noisy waters down its narrow channel, every pebble rattles in the torrent, every ripple makes a murmur of its own. Suddenly the sound ceases, a deep stillness fills the banks from side to side. Why? It is the broad sweep of the advancing tide of the ocean that has checked the stream and occupied the whole space of its narrow channel with its own strong, silent, overwhelming waters. Even so it is with all the little cares, and difficulties, and distractions that make up the noise and clatter of the stream of our daily life. They go on increasing and increasing; they engross our whole attention till they are suddenly met and absorbed by some thought or object greater than themselves, advancing from a wider, deeper, stronger sphere. From a thousand heights the streams of human life are for ever rushing down; but there is another stream advancing into each of those channels, a tide from that wider and trackless ocean, to which they are all tending; and deep indeed is the peace which those tides may bring with them wherever their force extends. The very measure of the greatness of the idea of God and of the things of God is the depth of the peace which that idea is able to impart. (Dean Stanley.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 20:19-20. Then the same day at evening — The day on which he arose from the dead; being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut — And fastened on the inside; where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews — In this translation the arrangement of the sentence, as Dr. Campbell observes, is not proper, as it either suggests a false meaning, or at least renders the true meaning obscure. “The disciples assembled, but surely not for fear of the Jews; for, as they did not intend by violence to oppose violence, if any should be offered them, they could not but know that to assemble themselves would more expose them to danger than any other measure they could take. The plain matter is, they assembled for mutual advice and comfort, and being assembled, the doors were shut for fear of the Jews; as they were well aware of the consequence of being discovered at such a time in consultation together. Further, the words do not necessarily imply, that while the doors continued shut our Lord entered miraculously. The word κεκλεισμενων is even more literally rendered, having been shut, than, being shut, or, when they were shut: as it is the preterperfect, not the present, or imperfect participle. They may, therefore, for aught related by the evangelists, have been made by a miracle to open and give him access.” The reading of the sentence, therefore, ought to be, Jesus came where the disciples were assembled, the doors having been shut for fear of the Jews. This circumstance of the doors being shut is very happily mentioned by John, because it suggests the reason why the disciples took Jesus for a spirit, as Luke tells us they did, Luk 24:37, notwithstanding that the greatest part of them believed he was risen. Jesus stood in the midst, and saith, Peace be unto you — See the note on Luk 24:36-43. When he had so said, he showed them his hands — And his feet, (Luk 24:39,) with the prints of the nails in them; and his side — Containing the mark which the spear had left in it. Thus giving them infallible proofs, that he had the very identical body which had been nailed to the cross and pierced. Then were the disciples glad — As it might reasonably be expected they should be, when they thus saw the Lord, and were assured by such infallible tokens that he was really alive.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

§ 151.—JESUS APPEARS TO THE APOSTLES IN THE ABSENCE OF THOMAS, Joh_20:19-23.

Mar_16:14-18; Luk_24:36-49; 1Co_15:5.

John here corroborates, and adds to all of Luke’s narrative, the fact of our Lord’s appearance to the eleven, in consequence of their disbelief of the testimony of the two of Emmaus.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES

Joh_20:19. Evening of that day.—I.e. the day on which our Lord rose from the dead.—When the doors were shut.—St. John notices this fact, not only to show how terror-stricken and despairing the disciples had become, but in order to indicate that Jesus entered the room in a miraculous manner. This fact gives us a glimpse of the power of the spiritual body, showing that it is not confined by material limits such as we know them; but it tells us nothing regarding its nature. Peace, etc.—The disciples’ hearts were still troubled, therefore the first word of Jesus reminds them of one of His most blessed parting promises (Joh_14:1; Joh_14:27).

Joh_20:20. He showed them, etc.—The marks of the wounds received in winning redemption for them, to convince them that it was He whom they saw in very truth.

Joh_20:21. As My Father, etc.—Christ’s work on earth done by Him in actual bodily presence was completed; but the disciples were now to go forth in His strength to continue His work.

Joh_20:22. Breathed on them, etc. (see Joh_3:8; Gen_2:7).—“The natural meaning of the words of Jesus is, “Receive an effusion of the Spirit.” What Jesus gives them is not a simple promise, but neither is it the fulness of the Spirit; it is an earnest. Raised Himself to a degree of higher life, He hastes to make them sharers in it as far as that is possible. This communication is to the Resurrection what Pentecost will be to the Ascension. As by Pentecost He will initiate them into His ascension, so by breathing on them now He associates them with His life as the Risen One” (Godet).

Joh_20:23. Whose soever sins ye remit, etc.—“The words, closely considered, amount to this: that with the gift and real participation of the Holy Spirit comes the conviction, and therefore the knowledge, of sin, of righteousness, and judgment; and this knowledge becomes more perfect, the more men are filled with the Holy Ghost. Since this is so, they who are pre-eminently filled with His presence are pre-eminently gifted with the discernment of sin and repentance in others, and hence by the Lord’s appointment authorised to pronounce pardon of sin, and the contrary. The apostles had this in an especial manner, and by the full indwelling of the Spirit were enabled to discern the hearts of men, and to give sentence on that discernment (see Act_5:1-11; Act_8:21; Act_13:9). And this gift belongs to the Church in all ages, and especially to those who by legitimate appointment are set to minister in the Churches of Christ: not by successive delegation from the apostles—of which fiction I find no trace in the New Testament—but by their mission from Christ, the Bestower of the Spirit for their office, when orderly and legitimately conferred upon them by the various Churches. Not however to them exclusively,—though for decency and order it is expedient that the outward and formal declaration should be so:—but in proportion as any disciple shall have been filled with the Holy Spirit of Wisdom, is the inner discernment, the κρίσις, his.” (Henry Alford, D.D.) See also Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18.

Joh_20:30-31. “It cannot be doubted that St. John, … at the close of this chapter, before recording the special bearing of the resurrection life and spiritual power of Christ on the subsequent condition of the Church, … gathers up the general significance of his Gospel and its relation to other books” (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.). But these are written, etc.—The Evangelist here states the object of his Gospel. It was not his purpose to write a complete account of Christ’s life, but to record a selected series—typical of the whole—of those “signs” in word and work given by Christ which manifested His glory and proved His divine Sonship, which led to faith and salvation in the case of the disciples, and which thus would lead others also to believe and live.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Joh_20:19-31

The peace of the Resurrection.—The three portions (Joh_20:19-23; Joh_20:24-29; Joh_20:30-31) into which this passage may be divided are not easily brought into unity in treatment. Hence many homilists treat only of one or other of the divisions. The joy of Christ’s resurrection, the path from doubt to faith, the office of the ministry, its source, its equipment, its mission, are the chief points in the passage. When catechumens are to be admitted (or confirmed) the reference to young believers, their profession, their solemn vows, their work, and their hopes, ought to be especially kept in view.

Introduction.—(By His resurrection) Jesus proved Himself to be victor over sin, death, and the evil one. The Risen One has gained this victory for us; therefore those who are His should be sharers in the peace won by Him, and joyful in their faith. Thus the Risen One, even on the day of His resurrection, appeared to His followers in order to make them partakers of this peace. There is something especially blessed in this resurrection peace; and to-day we speak concerning it in order to quicken and increase our desires after it. In regard to this peace as the fruit of Christ’s resurrection we see—

I. That it cannot be found by our own reason.—

1. Thomas did not believe the tidings of the Resurrection. He desired to see first in order to believe, and therefore he missed the Easter message of peace.

2. Our natural reason seeks after proof from the senses before it is convinced. It shuts itself out from the fellowship of the faithful; the heart remains empty in its unrest and dejection.

II. How it is accorded by the Lord Jesus.—

1. He conveyed it to the assembled disciples with His greeting. He ordained them to His ministry, by which His peace would be spread abroad. He pursued Thomas with compassionate love, and aided him to arrive at the acknowledgment of His divinity.

2. The ministry of the gospel proclaims in Christ’s stead the peace of the Risen One, imparts it to us in proclaiming forgiveness, follows our erring souls, seeks to persuade them and to lead them to that faith which will lay hold of Jesus’ peace.

III. It is accompanied by a true (spiritual) life.—

1. Thomas confessed Jesus as Lord and God, indeed as his Lord and God, whose possession he would forthwith be, and to whom he looked for his true life.

2. The heart which has found true peace prevails over reason. Faith grows by means of the Word. In believing the life of Christ overflows within us, which blesses us for time and for eternity.—J. L. Sommer.

Joh_20:19-21. The joy of the Resurrection.—It was the close of the Resurrection day, a day of gladness for humanity. But that gladness had as yet found entrance into few hearts only—Mary Magdalene and her sisters in sorrow, John the beloved disciple, and Simon (1Co_15:5), and the two now hastening from Emmaus through the gathering gloom to tell their joyful news to those whom they had left sorrowing (Luk_24:33). These two have just reached Jerusalem, and entered the house where the disciples had assembled within locked doors, for fear of the Jews; and ere they told their news were met with the words, “The Lord is risen indeed,” etc. (Luk_24:24). As they sit pondering on these things—some doubting, some half-persuaded, some believing, but all sorrowful and depressed, remembering how they had denied the Lord, and all thinking with troubled hearts of what might soon befall them—the Lord Himself suddenly stands in their midst. The bolted doors could not bar His entrance, and at first the disciples are afraid (Luk_24:37; see Mat_14:26). This Gospel gives the fullest account of what Jesus’ appearance brought to the disciples.

I. It brought them peace.—

1. This peace they needed. Without were trouble and tribulation, within were fears. The Lord’s foes were the foes of His disciples.

2. There was little peace in their souls. The cross and shame had shattered their hopes, and were not yet become the symbol of victory and glory to them.

3. Then, even though strange rumours were abroad as to Christ’s having risen, and some of those present asserted the truth of this from their own personal knowledge, the truth does not seem to have met with anything like full credence, whilst in the hearts of all remained the bitter thought of having left their Lord in His hour of need.

4. Therefore the Lord came to them from the well-won fight to confer on them the firstfruits of His conquest, and raise them from their despondency and fear. Thus His first greeting recalls to their minds one of His last blessed promises (Joh_14:27).

5. And it is thus the Redeemer brings peace to all waiting hearts. Those to whom the risen Christ has not been revealed have “fightings without and fears within.” The fear of death and eternity, the unrest of conscience, the feeling of degradation caused by sin, all cease when through the barriers and bolts that close up our hearts Christ comes to reveal Himself in His risen life, and brings with Him His peace.

II. It brought them joy.—

1. When Jesus appeared among the disciples in order to allay their fears “He showed them His hands and His side” (Joh_20:20 : comp. Luk_24:39), as if He had said to them, “See in these wounds what I have endured for you: why, then, should you fear?”

2. Then we read that “the disciples were glad,” etc. Well might they be glad! The disappointed hopes, gloomy doubts and forebodings darkened their spiritual life. Spiritually, and so far as hope was concerned, they were like the dead host that Ezekiel saw in vision on the battle-plain, when bone had come to bone, etc., but the men lay prone without the breath of life and until the word of life was spoken. But among these spiritually torpid disciples the Life Himself now appeared, and as they felt the quickening influence of His presence, the darkness, the clouds and mists of doubt and fear began to disperse, and as the new day of hope arose upon them, no wonder they were glad.

3. They were glad to see their Lord again, to hear His voice, to rejoice in His presence. They rejoiced, for now the mystery of the cross and the grave would be becoming clear to them; the promise of His resurrection, and all it involved would now be recalled vividly. The conviction that He was indeed the Messiah, and that the things which He suffered, and which had almost bereft them of faith and hope, “He ought to have suffered and to enter into His glory” (Luk_24:26), would come home to them with power, dispelling and scattering doubt and fear.

4. And they would be glad also that, in spite of their faithlessness in forsaking Him in the garden, and their want of trust in His teaching, their forgetfulness of His mighty works, He had not forsaken them—that He appeared to them so graciously, that His first greeting was one of peace.

5. And that gladness which Jesus brought to His disciples was not confined to them nor to the day of His resurrection. He brings not only peace but gladness into the hearts into which He enters. Because His entrance means forgiveness of the sinful, unbelieving past, it brings comfort to troubled souls; it gives assurance that the promises of Christ are yea and amen; it dispels the darkness that hitherto, through sin, has shut out the light of God’s countenance; and in the risen Christ, baring the marks of His soul-travail, it makes men rejoice in the revelation of infinite, eternal love.

Joh_20:19-23. The Risen One for the first time among His disciples.—The whole life of the Christian should be one of joy in the Resurrection. (This idea seems to meet us in our Gospel, in that it shows us the Risen One among His followers.) Our gaze is directed to—

I. The closed doors through which He entered.—All the witnesses, whose words agreed with so many clear predictions, could not confirm and make joyful the hearts of the disciples. The timorous little company sat anxiously behind closed doors. Our hearts also are often foolish and dejected, for which cause the Lord must often come unto us too through closed doors. Evil warders refuse Him entrance to us: the fear, that He may blame in place of comforting us; the doubt, that He cannot heal our sorrows; shamefacedness, lest He may find us all too unclean; anxiety, lest He should demand that which our heart will not let go; hesitancy, in view of what the world would say were He to come in unto us. Through closed doors the Lord must come to us, and only then will it be Eastertide in our souls.

II. The greeting He gave to the disciples.—When the Risen One stepped into the circle of the disciples He did not at first reprove them, but absolved them and greeted them with unspeakable graciousness, “Peace be with you!” Thereby He called to their minds the fulfilment of His promises (Joh_14:27; Joh_16:33), and represented Himself as the Prince of Peace who had effected complete reconciliation. Thereby also He offers to each one who will have it the complete salvation won on the cross, the fulness of His grace.

III. The marks of the wounds which He showed them.—The Lord showed them His hands and His side, and in these they beheld marks of love, marks of victory, marks of peace.

IV. The ordination that He imparted to them.—The Lord imparted that ordination to His apostles, upon which afterward at the Ascension followed their introduction to the office of the ministry (comp. Mat_28:18-20). The act of ordination has three steps: their sending forth (“As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you”); their equipment for the office (“He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost”); their authority (“Whose soever sins ye remit,” etc., Joh_20:23). This is an authority and prerogative, but also a responsibility, such as no monarch possesses, yet which is imparted, and will continue to be, to all servants of the divine Word.—Appuhn, in J. L. Sommer.

Joh_20:20. Faith’s view of Christ.—When the Lord of glory left His Father’s bosom and came into this world we are sure it was for a purpose suited to His divine nature. Christ came to make men glad. It was said of Him, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord hath appointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek,” etc. (Isa_61:1).

I. What it was not that made the disciples glad.—

1. It was not riches. They were all poor fishers: none of them bad nets of their own. Like their Lord, they were poor. One of them once said, “Lord, I will follow Thee, whithersoever Thou goest.” Jesus said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay His head.” When Jesus rose again He did not give His disciples riches.

2. It was not friends that made the disciples glad.

3. Their joy did not proceed from their own righteousness. Some have all their joy from looking at themselves. The disciples did not do this. Ah, no! What would they have seen had they done so? They had once known the Lord; but they had all forsaken Him in His sufferings; one of them had denied Him: they were cast down; they did not know what to do; but they were glad when they saw the Lord.

4. The disciples’ joy did not flow from a sight of Christ with the bodily eyes. Ah! some of you may think, “Oh, if I had been there, I would have been glad”; but it was not seeing Him with the bodily eye that made them glad, for two reasons. First of all, because many saw Him, and only wagged the head and spat upon Him. Second reason: It was not by seeing Christ with the bodily eye, for many have felt the same joy that the disciples did who never saw Christ with the bodily eye.

5. The disciples’ joy did not proceed from seeing their Master again. The joy they had flowed from looking at His hands and side.

II. What it was that made the disciples glad.—

1. It was the sense they had got that His work was finished. When they saw His hands and His side, they saw His work was all completed.

2. The disciples were glad, for they saw Jesus was their living Head. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” The disciples were no doubt sad—they felt a load of guilt; but now they would rejoice, for they had got a sight of Him as an ever-living Saviour.

III. You may learn from this if you are disciples.—

1. What does your joy flow from? Does it flow from riches, from friends? The disciples’ joy proceeded from a spiritual sight of the Lord Jesus.

2. Seek a sight of Jesus. Oh! seek this joy—a joy that will not pass away.

3. To you that are seeking Christ night and day. Oh! how glad you will be when you find the Lord! Look away from all to Jesus. Oh! look to Him as a crucified, risen Saviour.

4. To you that once had this joy, but have backslidden and lost it. Ah! you must look again to Jesus. Learn, all of you, the folly of self-righteousness. Suppose the disciples had looked to themselves, what would they have seen? One had denied, all of them had forsaken Him in His sufferings; but the disciples looked only to Jesus, “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” Look, then, to Jesus, and you will have true peace, true joy, fulness of joy—joy that the world cannot give nor take away. You that are Christ’s “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.”—McCheyne.

Joh_20:21-23. A divine mission and a divine power.—Not only did Christ reassure His disciples, and make them glad by His greeting and presence at the close of the Day of Resurrection; He gave them a mission which would further increase their joy, and fill their hearts with grateful love. For it would show them that they were still to be privileged to remain in His service after all that had come and gone during the past few days.

I. The mission on which the disciples were to be sent.—

1. This commission Christ gave them was in reality a proof of their reinstatement into the apostolic office—the assurance that it was still theirs, though they had brought grievous shame on it by their want of faith and fortitude.

2. It was a mission analogous to that on which He Himself had come to the world (Joh_17:18). He had been sent into the world to redeem it through His life and works, His truth and His atoning death. But now, though He was ascending to His Father, that work was not to cease; and its instruments for the beginning of it were before Him. Already with awakening faith and hope, with hearts beating with a new gladsome energy, they were being made fit for that work, and to be the precursors of a mighty army of labourers in the world’s harvest fields, who should reap and gather fruit unto life eternal (Joh_4:36-37).

3. But this work was all dependent on Christ’s work. Had He not laboured and travailed the reaping would have been one of wrath only, and not of joy. And although Christ’s work is far above that of the apostles, and members of the Christian Church to-day, yet it had, it has, the same end, the glory of God in the redemption of men. This is the mission confided to the whole Christian Church. But how remiss many of its members are! They pray, “Thy kingdom come,” yet stand coldly looking on whilst others labour in the harvest field, and others still bring help and sustenance to the actual labourers. When will all Christians rise to a sense of their lofty duty and heavenly calling?

II. Power for the exercise of their high office was then given by the Lord to His apostles (Joh_20:22).—

1. It was as when the word of power in prophetic vision was spoken (Eze_37:9). Those who were spiritually meet, etc., were quickened for service.

2. And it was not a promise merely of what should follow at Pentecost; it was a real gift, though not the full outpouring of the Spirit. It was, as it were, a seal of their new call to the apostolic office, and an earnest of the fuller, richer outpouring yet to follow, when Jesus had ascended to the Father’s right hand. But ere that it was needful that a special gift should be imparted, so that in the interval the feeble Church might be strengthened to cohere and endure. And by breathing on them now, and giving them an effusion of the Spirit, Christ associated them with Himself in His life as the Risen One.

3. And it must be remembered that this divine “breathing” of the Spirit was not conferred on apostles alone; others were present. It is therefore typical and prophetic of the fuller outpouring on Pentecost “proceeding from the Father and the Son.” And this incident teaches that it is not intellect, or knowledge of tongues, or eloquence that makes a man an apostle, a missionary, one sent. It is now, as then, the gift of the Holy Ghost. It is not baptism or Church membership or knowledge of Scripture that makes men and women true disciples of Christ. Now, as of old, it is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Is it the lack of this gift that makes the Church so weak, and hinders the love for and the advance of the kingdom of God?

III. The power to remit and retain sins was given to the apostles with the divine office and gift.—

1. This power, promised before (Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18), was now conferred not on the apostles individually, or as apostles only (for others were present—Luk_24:33), but on those there assembled as representing the whole Church. 2. “Only he who believes in the Risen One, who seeks and finds forgiveness on the way of true repentance and genuine faith, is in a position to pass a just sentence, and to use aright the keys of the divine kingdom. Such a one will testify with unwavering freedom against sin wherever and whenever he may find it, and shut it out with God’s word and in His name. But yet with tireless patience will he seek to erect the broken reed and to warn the erring, and entreat, invite, entice, so that they, coming in repentance and faith, may have the kingdom opened to them. Both are necessary—the retaining as well as the remission. Where there is no power to retain, neither is there power to declare remission. It is indeed an act of divine love to keep back the impenitent and openly sinful from holy things.… And there need be no fear of a misuse of this power when the Holy Spirit dwells in the Church and its ministers” (F. Arndt).

3. This power is given to the whole Church; but as all the members cannot exercise it, it is committed to the regularly appointed servants of the Church. They exercise it for the community. But if the spiritual life of the community be low and the servants’ hands be not upheld by prayer, then this power may fall into disuse, and the Church be corrupted and weakened. But in that case, though not openly, yet really, the “binding and loosing” are still exercised from the heavenly throne.

Joh_20:24-30. Thomas.—

I. The character of Thomas.—In the very few words the gospel narrative has given us concerning this man, how clearly it has set his character before us! A plain-sailing, common-sense, practical, matter-of-fact man, with no idea of grasping anything supernatural; but loving—devotedly and bravely—Jesus as a Teacher, a Master, a Man. A few weeks before this, when he thought his Master was madly rushing to His death at the hands of the priests and Jewish mob, “Let us go with Him and defend Him,” cried this true-hearted follower, “and if we cannot save Him, let us die with Him!” And when what he had feared at length happened, and his Master died in the hands of His enemies, no heart more truly than that of Thomas mourned his murdered Lord. And no heart more sorely mourned for the Master’s cause, which he looked on as lost and gone for ever.

II. The unbelief of the disciple.—The disciples told him of the Master risen—the Master appearing to them, speaking to them. Thomas sadly shook his head. No, no! that was something he could not believe! That a man, crucified and buried, should come alive and rise! It was some wild delusion of theirs! He did not care to join them in their meetings. He went about alone, cheerless, hopeless, in melancholy musings, thinking of Him whom he had loved so dearly, gone from his sight for ever. And the kingdom he had hoped his Lord was to establish! that had perished with Him! Thomas was no infidel, no traitor, no turncoat, no faithless forsaking disciple. His faith in his Lord was strong as ever. His love to the memory of his Lord was true as ever. But Thomas could not, would not, believe anything except it was attested to him on the evidence of his senses: And such was his answer when they told him they had seen their Lord. Only if that testimony were given him which his mind demanded as necessary would he believe that his Lord had risen.

III. The Redeemer’s dealing with Thomas, and the disciple’s confession.—How well the Saviour knew all His followers in all their varying shades of character—in all their strength and all their weakness, in all their individual peculiarities! And how considerately and tenderly He dealt with each! How gently condescending was He with the special weakness of this one man! Had they told Jesus, think you, those words, that bold demand of Thomas? Nay! we may be very sure Jesus needed not to be told. Another “first day of the week” came round; and they met again, “Thomas with them.” No door was opened. No one saw His entrance. But suddenly the risen Lord was there! To all in the room there His “peace” was spoken; and then He turned to Thomas. The test the disciple had demanded was before him now, was within his reach. But the Bible does not tell us that Thomas applied the test. There is a marked silence as to that, which one would imagine leads most readers to understand that the spear-wound in the side and the nail-prints on feet and hands were not needed now, when Thomas looked on the face he knew so well, and heard the voice-tones that thrilled his very heart. He was practical and common-sense, and what not; and he needed, poor man, the very plainest proof. But he had it. His living Lord was before him in that room, looking on him, speaking to him. And Thomas made the confession of his faith in two words—of wondrous meaning. “My Lord!” Yes; all doubt had vanished, and he knew that Jesus, the Lord, the Master he had loved and followed, was before him. And “my God” he added—for his faith, once set in motion, bounded high into the world unseen; and he owned his earthly Lord as more, far more—almighty, the Son of God.

IV. The blessedness of faith.—The Saviour said that day to Thomas something which concerns us. We “have not seen.” But oh, let us seek by His grace to be of those who “yet have believed.” And if so, then we are—for the Lord said it that day—“blessed.”

“We stood not by the empty tomb

Where late Thy sacred body lay,

Nor sat within that upper room,

Nor met Thee in the open way;

But we believe that angels said,

‘Why seek the living with the dead?’ ”

—Rev. Thomas Hardy.

Joh_20:29. The blessedness of those who have not seen, yet believe.—The presence of Thomas among the disciples and the record of his experience should teach the Church to be patient in dealing with doubt and unbelief. Here was one who was evidently an attached follower of the Saviour, who had been drawn to Jesus by the magnetism of love, but whose materialistic and pessimistic cast of mind, which had already more than once shown itself (Joh_11:16; Joh_14:5), led at last after the Crucifixion to sullen and even bitter despair and unbelief. Yet, in the end, of all the disciples it was he who gave utterance to the highest expression of faith in our Lord’s divinity.

I. The proximate cause of the unbelief of Thomas.—

1. The remark in Joh_20:24 appears to intimate that there was a certain amount of blame in the absence of Thomas. This was a result of that weak side of his character which he had not yet learned to distrust: that trust in his own judgment, the refusal to see or believe nothing but what came within his limited ken. He could see nothing but the outward aspect of the cross—the awful tragedy which had shattered his hopes, and filled him with gloomy despair.

2. All the words of Jesus as to what was to come after the death which He foretold were either forgotten by Thomas or relegated to the region of idle dreams. The scene at the grave of Lazarus was forgotten. If he did remember it, it might only be to put aside the thought. A living Christ might do such mighty works; but One who was crucified, dead, buried—the dream for Thomas was over. It had been pleasant whilst it lasted; but now had come the awful awakening, and with it bitter grief, unbelief, despair.

3. Thus he had refrained from meeting with his fellow-disciples. Of what use were it to dwell on past hopes, and thus increase the burden of present sorrow? What comfort could they bring each other? Better with set face and resolved heart to forget the past, and front what they had to meet in the hopeless future. And when the disciples met him and told of the risen Redeemer, not only did the story seem to him, as at first it appeared to the others, “an idle tale” (Luk_24:11), but there appears to be a ring of hardness in his voice as he lays down the only conditions on which he will believe. There is a touch of impatience in his words, as if he had said, You say you saw the wound in His side, etc.; you will not find me so easily convinced. “Except I shall … put my finger,” etc. And thus for the time at least he remained, proud perhaps of his superior insight and rationality.

II. The blessedness of faith.—

1. It is possible that before Thomas became a disciple he had been influenced to some extent by that philosophical rationalism prevalent at the time, which found its chief expression among the Jews in the sect of the Sadducees. A mind of his caste could hardly fail to have been troubled by the new thought of the time.

2. The words of the disciples would seem, however, to have awakened a glimmer of hope in his darkened soul. And when after eight days had passed Jesus again appeared among the disciples, Thomas was one of the company. The Lord offered him the proof he demanded. But to see was enough for him. At once his despair and unbelief were swept away, and in a transport of joy and adoration he testified to the foolishness of his unbelief, and made full confession of the Godhead of the risen Lord.

3. Whilst in the words of Jesus in Joh_20:29 there is certainly a gentle reproof of His disciple’s faithlessness, and consequently of all similar unbelief at all times, there is yet more of comfort and joy for faithful disciples who have not seen and yet believe.

4. Our Lord does not mean here to inculcate a blind unthinking faith, or require that men should not seek to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in them. But Thomas, confident in his own rationalistic way of thinking, refused to accept the testimony of the others, because it did not coincide with what seemed to him must be the truth. His mind, like that of many, was keenly alive to the things of sense and time, but contracted in its outlook on spiritual realities. In the words of Christ, in the testimony of others, he had sufficient proof of the Lord’s resurrection, and yet he refused to look at the evidence.

5. Mere sight, sure evidence, may not lead to faith. Many of our Lord’s contemporaries saw Christ, heard His teaching, beheld His mighty works, and yet believed not. Their lot was not blessedness, but woe (Mat_11:20-24; Mat_23:13).

6. The blessedness of those who believe, although they do not see, consists in the possession of the spiritual mind which discerns spiritual things (Joh_3:5-6; Joh_3:12; Rom_8:6). This lifts them above the tyranny of the seen and temporal, which by their continual fluctuation cause unrest in the spiritual life, and often deprive the soul of comfort and peace. Those who through faith have learned to rest on Him who is the same yesterday, etc. (Heb_13:8), have an unmovable foundation on which to build life’s activity (1Co_3:12). In all this there is blessedness.

7. And all may have this blessedness. All could not see Christ, although certainly it was a source of joy to the disciples to have done so. But even for them it was expedient that He should go away (Joh_16:7). The disciples saw Him, and their testimony, confirmed by arduous labour, and in most cases by martyrdom, should be sufficient to convince. And all may have the spiritual gifts Christ bestows from His throne; being born from above, and receiving that influence of the Spirit which began at Pentecost, they may have the witness in themselves and the blessedness of those who have not seen, etc.

Joh_20:19-29. What we may learn from the intercourse of Jesus with His disciples after the Resurrection.—

I. How gentle was Jesus with His disciples.—True He “upbraided them with their unbelief,” etc. (Mar_16:14). But whilst He reproves, it is for their profit. This Gospel tells of His tenderness and love—His reassuring greeting, His blessed gift, etc. It specially records His gentle dealing with Thomas, and thus gives a pattern to the Church in all time as to the manner in which troubled, doubting disciples should be dealt with.

II. The materialistic spirit which refuses credence to what cannot be tested, etc., by the senses, is to be avoided and repressed.—Are the senses themselves infallible? Do they never err? Is there no truth above and beyond material fact? Far otherwise, say the great thinkers of all ages. They realise that knowledge is limited, that there are spheres beyond men’s reach both in the world of matter and mind, that the wisest is a very infant in knowledge, with infinitude around him. Happy he to whom spiritual discernment is given to receive the great truths revealed by God concerning the higher life. Then his life’s path will stretch before him, cleared from uncertainty and brightened with hope and promises as he presses toward the mark.

III. It is not well to forsake the assemonies of Christ’s people, lest a blessing be lost.—Had Thomas been among the disciples on the morning of resurrection he might not have fallen so deeply into unbelief. It is not wise for any simply because they cannot understand some of God’s ways or part of His word to forsake the worship of His house—to imagine that because one point cannot be understood the whole must be obscure, and that ministers as fallible men, like their hearers, will not be able to clear up what seems mysterious, etc. Spiritual truth is not grasped by the intellect. One of moderate intellectual ability may make spiritual truth clear. And, however that may be, where Christ’s people wait on Him, He will be present; and to those souls who long to know Him He will reveal Himself, however simple or humble the worship and thought.

Joh_20:30-31. The purpose of John’s Gospel.—The declaration of these great truths was fitted to lead those who received them to faith, and those who already believed to deeper trust, more close and abiding union with the living Vine, and therefore to life. And thus John fitly states here the purpose of his Gospel, when he has shown how it has led even the doubting disciple to adoring faith. And there was no need for the apostle to narrate the ascension of our Lord. To the disciples that was implied in His resurrection (Joh_20:17). It did not need that event to confirm their faith.

I. The limitations laid down in carrying out his purpose.—

1. The Evangelist simply drew what was sufficient for his purpose from a full store, reverently gathered by him (see Introduction, pp. 7–10).

2. He did not think it necessary in this book to go over ground already occupied by other books, i.e. the other Gospels. It was sufficient for him to record from his own personal experience such signs as Jesus did, both in word and deed, in the presence of His disciples, as chosen witnesses of the truth; which signs having led him and his fellow-disciples to faith and higher life, would be fitted to lead others also to the same blessed haven.

3. Doubtless there were many other details of the life of Jesus which might have been recorded. But it is not necessary to record every word and every action of a life in order that we may know what manner of life it was. The multiplication of incidents, etc., might only tend to burden the mind and lead to a confused rather than to a clear image.

4. The Gospel writers, guided by the Spirit, were true artists in divine biography. They display what is characteristic of all the books of Scripture—a wise reticence. The result is not only clearness in details, but a succinctness which brings the whole history within a moderate compass.

II. The record is that of an eye-witness confirmed by others.—

1. The signs which Jesus did were not done in a corner. They were done in the presence of faithful men, some of whom suffered martyrdom, and all of them persecution for their faith, thus witnessing to the sincerity of their testimony.

2. Thus the writer did not set down “cunningly devised fables”; he recorded facts which he could personally vouch for, and words which no one but the eternal Logos could have spoken. Those facts thus attested, and those words of heavenly wisdom, bring their own evidence with them. John’s book is therefore no fiction, but a record of divine truth, testifying to the divine Sonship of Christ.

III. The chief purpose of the record.—

1. It is that which Christ Himself brought to John—life through believing in Christ’s name, i.e. through trust in His divine power.

2. It was for this purpose that the wonderful life was manifested (Joh_1:4; Joh_1:12). This Gospel shows how through faith, leading to trustful abiding in Christ, unity with Him results, and the participation in His life which is life eternal. “I am come that they might have life,” etc. (Joh_10:18).

3. This life begins on earth, but is neither of the world nor influenced by it (Gal_2:20). It is above the world—hid with Christ in God—leading men to set their affections on things above, to have their conversation in heaven.

4. The Church to-day witnesses to the truth of this record. Believing in Christ’s name still brings life into the soul, makes men new creations. Men may have the witness in themselves. Happy are those who have. Then it will be their joy to spread this faithful record, so that others may be moved to believe, and may attain to life, and that thus over the whole earth the true Life and Light of men may bring salvation (Isa_60:1-3).

HOMILETIC NOTES

Joh_20:19-20. The risen Redeemer’s greeting of peace.

I. It is to the disciples a most joyful word (Joh_20:19-20).

II. It is to the world an acclaim full of blessing.

III. It is to the wavering a great, divine power.—M. Herold.

Joh_20:21-23. How the Lord equips His servants for their office.—He gives them—

I. For their hearts, His peace.

II. For their preaching, His Spirit.

III. For their activity, His authority.

IV. For the result, His promises.—J. L. Sommer.

Joh_20:23. The power of forgiving sins.—The result of a careful examination of Biblical teaching upon this subject is the acceptance of the following propositions:

1. That the power of forgiving sins is divinely bestowed upon the disciples of Jesus Christ in their corporate capacity, and that such power is in harmony with the purpose of Jesus Christ’s mediation and the genius of the religious epoch in which we live.

2. That Jesus Christ taught the doctrine of individual confession to the offended individual, and called upon the offended individual to forgive the offender upon receiving such confession.

3. That nowhere in the sacred Scriptures is forgiveness promised apart from confession and restitution, whether the sin lies between man and man, or between man and God.

4. That nowhere in the sacred Scriptures is there any authority given to any official person, bishop, priest, minister, or deacon, to receive secretly and confidentially a confession of sins.

5. That the confession of sins is too sacred a duty, involving consequences too many and important, to be reduced to a system and presided over by any single human being.

6. That all overt sin has a human as well as a divine aspect, and that the Church, inspired and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, has power to deal with the human aspect, according to the nature of the confession which the sinner may make.

7. That to shrink from receiving confession of sin, and dealing with it according to its merits, may have the appearance of great reverence and humility, without the reality—may show that the Church has part in the first baptism only, and not in the baptism of fire.

8. That to avoid all priestly pretension, and destroy the confessional, that infinitely hateful institution which has degraded and oppressed every nation in which it has found an existence, and further to show that all who have the Holy Ghost are kings and priests unto God, the sinner should openly confess his overt sins in the presence of the Church (which could be done by writing, or before such a number of witnesses as the Church itself might appoint), and receive from the Church such comfort as can never be refused to those who truly confess and heartily repent their sins.—Dr. Joseph Parker.

Joh_20:28. The worship of Jesus.—At other times such visible worship of our Saviour was an act of acknowledgment or of thanksgiving for mercies received.… Thus the holy women when the risen “Jesus met them, saying, All hail, came … and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him” (Mat_28:9). Thus apparently, Mary of Magdala, in her deep devotion, had motioned to embrace His feet in the garden, when Jesus bade her “Touch Me not” (Joh_20:17). Thus the eleven disciples met our Lord by appointment on a mountain in Galilee, and “when they saw Him,” as it would seem, in their joy and fear, “they worshipped Him” (Mat_28:17). Thus, pre-eminently, St. Thomas uses the language of adoration, although it is not said to have been accompanied by any corresponding outward act. When, in reproof for his scepticism, he had been bidden to probe the wounds of Jesus, he burst forth into the adoring confession, “My Lord and my God.”[8] Thus when the ascending Jesus was being borne upwards into heaven, the disciples, as if thanking Him for His great glory, worshipped Him, and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy.—H. P. Liddon (Bampton Lectures).

[8] Against the attempt of Theodore of Mopsuestia and others to resolve this into an ejaculation addressed to the Father, see Alford, in loc.

Joh_20:29. The certainty of our Saviour’s resurrection.—The resurrection of a body, before its total dissolution, is easier to be believed, than after it; and it was this last sort of resurrection which puzzled Thomas’s reason. Various objections being removed, Christ’s resurrection is proposed to our belief upon certain and sufficient grounds:—

I. The constant, uniform affirmation of such persons as had sufficient means to be informed of the truth, and were of an unquestionable sincerity.

II. The miracles which confirmed the apostle’s words.

III. That such tradition has greater reason for its belief, than can be suggested for its disbelief.

We ought to admire the commanding excellency of faith, which can force its way through the opposition of carnal reason, with an entire submission to divine revelation.—South.

Joh_20:30-31. The object which the Evangelist had in view in writing this Gospel we are not left to find out for ourselves. He explicitly says that his purpose in writing was to promote the belief that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (Joh_20:31). This purpose, he judges, he will best accomplish, not by writing an essay, nor by framing an abstract argument in advocacy of the claims of Jesus, but by reproducing in his Gospel those manifestations of His glory which elicited faith in the first disciples and in others. That which had produced faith in his own case and in that of his fellow-disciples, will, he thinks, if fairly set before men, produce faith in them also. He relates, therefore, with the utmost simplicity of language, the scenes in which Jesus seemed to him most significantly to have revealed His power and His goodness, and most forcibly to have demonstrated that the Father was in Him. At the same time he keeps steadily in view the circumstance that these manifestations had not always produced faith, but that alongside of a growing faith there ran an increasing unbelief which at length assumed the form of hostility and outrage. This unbelief he feels called upon to account for. He feels called upon to demonstrate that its true reason lay, not in the inadequacy of Christ’s manifestations, but in the unreasonable and unspiritual requirements of the unbelieving, and in their alienation from God. The Gospel thus forms the primary apologetic, which by its very simplicity and closeness to reality touches at every point the underlying causes and principles of faith and unbelief.—Marcus Dods.

Joh_20:30-31. St. John’s method as an Evangelist.—As a polemical writer, St. John selects and marshals his materials with a view to confuting, from historical data, the humanitarian or docetic errors of the time. St. John is anxious to bring a particular section of the life of Jesus to bear upon the intellectual world of Ephesus. He puts forward an aspect of the original truth which was certain to command present and local attention; he is sufficiently in correspondence with the age to which he ministers, and with the speculative temper of the men around him. He had been led to note and to treasure up in his thought certain phases of the teaching and character of Jesus with especial care. He had remembered more accurately those particular discourses, in which Jesus speaks of His eternal relation to the Father, and of the profound mystic communion of life into which He would enter with His followers through the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments. These cherished memories of St. John’s earlier years, unshared in their completeness by less privileged apostles, were well fitted to meet the hard necessities of the Church during the closing years of the beloved disciple. To St. John the gnosis of Cerinthus must have appeared to be in direct contradiction to the sacred certainties which he had heard from the lips of Jesus, and which he treasured in his heart and memory. In order to confute the heresy which separated the man Jesus from the “Æon” Christ, he had merely to publish what he remembered of the actual words and works of Jesus. His translation of those divine words may be coloured, by a phraseology current in the school which he is addressing, sufficiently to make them popularly intelligible. But the peculiarities of his language have been greatly exaggerated by criticism, while they are naturally explained by the polemical and positively doctrinal objects he had in view. To these objects, the language, the historical arrangement, the selection from conversations and discourses before unpublished, the few deeply significant miracles, the description of opponents by a generic name—the “Jews”—which ignores the differences of character, class, and sect among them, and notices them only so far as they are in conflict with the central truth manifested in Jesus,—all contribute. But these very peculiarities of the Fourth Gospel subserve its positive devotional and didactic aim even more directly than its controversial one. The false gnosis is refuted by an exhibition of the true. The true is set forth for the sake of Christian souls. These things “are written that ye might,” etc.—H. P. Liddon (Bampton Lectures).

ILLUSTRATIONS

Joh_20:19-29. The manner in which Christ manifested His resurrection.—Christ, the great Sun of righteousness and Saviour of the world, having by a glorious rising, after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed His deity to men and angels, and by a complete triumph over the two grand enemies of mankind, sin and death, set up the everlasting gospel in the room of all false religions, has now, as it were, changed the Persian superstition into the Christian devotion; and, without the least approach to the idolatry of the former, made it henceforth the duty of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising Sun. But as the sun does not display his rising to all parts of the world together, nor to the same region shows his whole light at the same instant, but by weaker glimmerings at the first gradually ascends to clearer and clearer discoveries, and at length beams it forth with full diffusion; so Christ here discovered Himself after His rising, not to all His apostles at once, nor to any of them with the same evidence at first, but by several ascending instances and arguments, till in the end He shone out in His full meridian, and made the proof of His resurrection complete in His ascension. Thomas we have one of the last in this chorus, resolving to tie his understanding close to his senses; to believe no further than be could see, nor to venture himself out but where he could feel his way. He would not, it seems, take a miracle upon hearsay, nor resolve his creed into report, nor, in a word, see with any eyes but his own. No; be must trace the print of the nails, follow the spear into our Saviour’s side, till he even touched the miracle, and felt the article of the resurrection. But as in the too inquisitive beholder, who is not content to behold the Sun by reflection, but by a direct intuition of His glorious body, there comes such a light, as at the same time both informs and chastises the over-curious eye; so Christ here, in His discovering Himself to this doubting apostle, condescends indeed to convince him in his own way; but so, that while He complies with his infirmity, He also upbraids his infidelity; humouring His patient, but not sparing his distemper; and yet all this with so gentle a hand, and such an allay of sweetness, that the reproof is only collateral or consequential, not directly reproaching him for his unbelief, but implicitly reflecting upon it, by commending the belief of others; nothing in the meantime sharp or corrosive dropping from His healing lips, even in passing such a reprehension upon His disciple. He only shows him his blind side in an opposite instance, and so leaves him to read his own case in an antithesis, and to shame himself by a comparison.—South.

Christ, in manifesting His resurrection to the world, proceeded, after a very different way from what mere human sense or reason would probably have suggested, or looked for in such a case.—Calvin.

Joh_20:19. “Peace be unto you.”—Nature prescribes reprisals; for nature is only flesh and blood, and vehement desires and hot passions, ordinarily controlled only by considerations of social prudence. Leaning upon nature, we may as well despair of getting beyond her as of forcing water to rise permanently above its natural level. But if we will we may reach a higher standard, since we are not really left to our own resources. It is the Spirit that quickeneth. He does not merely prescribe, He transforms. He is perpetually asserting His presence by His spiritual transformations; He makes the feeble strong, and the melancholy bright, and the cold-blooded fervent, and the irascible gentle, and the uninstructed wise, and the conceited humble, and the timid unflinching. And now, as of old, He filleth the hungry with good things, but the rich He hath sent empty away. He has but a scant measure of endowments to bestow on those who find in the things of sense, in the pursuit or worship of wealth and rank and reputation, their deepest and most solid satisfaction. He gives Himself most fully to those who ask for Him secretly and often. O blessed gift, so bounteously given in baptism, and then again and again repeated, of the Spirit of Christ! We seek Him without, and we find Him within us; we seek Him in great assemblies, and find Him in solitude; we seek Him in the understanding, we find Him in the heart. He enters the soul when all the doors of sense are shut; He gives His benediction to each and all of its faculties: “Peace be unto you” (Joh_20:21). The soul hears him, it sees Him not; the soul feels Him, yet as if insensibly; and His presence is itself that peace of God which passeth all understanding. Henceforth enriched by His indwelling, the soul’s desire is to desire nothing, its will to will for nothing, its care to care for nothing, its wealth to possess nothing, out of God, its one, its everlasting treasure. This is not mysticism; it is the experience of those who have heard within themselves that there is a Holy Ghost. This is the subjective side of lives which have been spent in the purest and most unselfish benevolence, but the secret of whose strength has escaped the notice of ordinary lookers-on. Depend upon it, the kingdom of the Spirit is as near to us as it was to our fathers, and that no changes of human opinion can affect the irrevocable gifts of God. One day, each and all, we shall look back upon its blessed opportunities, upon its high responsibilities, with what feelings of self-reproach or of gratitude, who shall say? Let us be wise while we may. Let us “lay not up for ourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but let us lay up,” etc. (Mat_6:19).—H. P. Liddon.

Joh_20:19. The blessedness of those who have Christ’s peace.—If we would live peaceably ourselves, we should endeavour to preserve peace and prevent differences, and reconcile dissensions among others, by doing good offices and making fair representations of intercurrent passages between them; by concealing causes of future disgust, and removing present misunderstandings, and excusing past mistakes; by allaying their passions and rightly informing their minds; by friendly intercessions and pacific advices. For the fire that devoureth our neighbour’s house threateneth and endangereth ours; and it is hard to approach contention without being engaged therein. ’Tis not easy to keep ourselves indifferent or neutral, and doing so we shall in likelihood be maligned and persecuted by both the contending parties. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” saith our Saviour; “for they shall be called the sons of God”: that is, they shall be highly esteemed and reverenced for this divine quality, wherein they so nearly resemble the God of peace and His blessed Son, the great Mediator. But, further, without respect to other recompense, and from the nature of their employment, such are immediately happy; and in this their virtuous practice rewards itself, that by appeasing others’ quarrels they save themselves from trouble, and enjoy themselves that tranquillity which they procure to others. But those informing sycophants, those internuncios of pestilent tales, and incendiaries of discord, that (from bad nature or upon base design) by the still breath of clandestine whispers, or by the more violent blasts of impudent calumnies, kindle the flames of dissension, or foment them among others, … “separating between chief friends,” and widening the distance between others, … reap in the end mischief and disturbance to themselves, nor can expect to enjoy the benefit of that quiet which they labour to deprive others of.—Isaac Barrow.

Joh_20:21. Living as children of the Resurrection.—Why wonder that all around us Christians in the Church is supernatural, if it be thus a continuous exercise of the power which raised Jesus from the dead? Or that our Bible is essentially unlike all merely human books? Or that the Church, our mother and our home, is distinct in essence from the perishing politics and societies around it? Or that in the holy sacraments we have the sources and supports of a life that nature could neither create nor sustain? Or that in Christian souls we behold graces of which nature is incapable; faith, hope, charity—charity of the deepest, tenderest kind toward God, and for God’s sake toward man; humility, purity, patience; a joy which no earthly pleasure could minister; a peace which passeth all understanding? For all that really quickens and strengthens the Christian soul is His work who raised Jesus from the grave. The resurrection of our Lord is the measure of the risen life. The risen life is, in the mental and moral order of things, what the Resurrection is among the phenomena which are discerned by the senses. The reality of the moral fact before our eyes is bound up with the reality of its historical counterpart. If Christ’s resurrection is not a fact, then is Christianity false from the first and altogether, and its spiritual no less than its intellectual life is a delusion. If Christ’s resurrection be a fact—so certain that Christians would die to attest it—then the supernatural character of the Christian life around us corresponds with the strictly supernatural fact from which it dates its origin. And as we take the measure of the beauty and power and glory of this new and higher life which has been thus bountifully bestowed on men, what remains but to lift up heart and voice to God, and cry, “It is meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God”? Yes! one thing else remains: to see that we are living as those who are “risen with Christ.” This glorious life has manners, a temper, a bearing, a line of conduct, a code of honour, peculiarly its own. The grace of God does not put force upon our wills: we are free to obey or to resist it. Therefore the apostle adds, “Seek those things that are above.” Surely, brethren, there is need for this warning; even when, as we trust, the light of heaven is already beaming on our understandings, and the love of God is already Warming our hearts.—H. P. Liddon.

Joh_20:25. Faith and evidence.—There is not a little of unbelief in these words. Thomas impugned the truth of all the testimony he had listened to. He wounded his fellow-disciples most deeply, while he apparently considered them all visionaries or liars, and himself alone wise; and trusted more to the evidence of his fingers than the testimony of his ten fellow-disciples. He boldly and pertly prescribed to the Lord the only kind of evidence he (Thomas) would be willing to receive; he laid down the most definite conditions as to the only manner in which he would be willing to acknowledge Christ as the risen One, … and brought his incredulity to wear an aspect of sheer obstinacy. But is this not the manner of unbelievers in all times? Is it not so to-day? Is it not the characteristic mark of unbelief that it demands that everything should be proved, vouched for, immediately and palpably to the senses? And are not the head shaken and the shoulders shrugged by many, when belief is asked for on what cannot be seen by the eyes or grasped by the hand? And is it not frequently said in the way of excuse that the Lord Himself demands no blind faith, and that St. Paul exhorts men to “prove all things, and hold fast what is good”? that it is impossible, even unjustifiable, for one to believe everything—that, above all, a man must be thoroughly convinced of the grounds of belief? that it is natural for sober and reasonable men not to credit all at once and without proof, on the word of the narrator, extraordinary facts as being absolutely true? that to err is human, and that the wisest of men have been deceived, not to speak of enthusiastic, imaginative Eastern women, or of a Peter who was always precipitate in his assertions, or a John who was the youngest of the apostles, with the most mobility of mind? A faith which knows not why it believes is not a true, firm faith, but a reed shaken with the wind, exposed to be influenced by every storm, by new teachers and novel opinions. In these assertions there is almost as much of what is false as of what is true. It is true we must not believe without solid ground for doing so, and must avoid credulity. But the truths of Holy Writ are truths which stand on a most firm foundation, and can point to an authority for themselves which is as eternal as God Himself. Are some of these truths beyond our reason? They are yet not contrary to it; and the reason why men do not believe them lies not so much in the doctrine and facts of Scripture, as in the hearts of men themselves.—Translated from F. Arndt.

Joh_20:28. The faith of Thomas an argument to convince and a lesson to instruct us.—When St. Paul, after his conversion, preached the name of Jesus in the synagogues of the Jews, the Scripture says that he “confounded the Jews.” And why? Because he had been a well-known persecutor of the name of Jesus, and therefore the Jews could neither challenge nor reject the testimony which he gave in favour of the God-man. For you know (he said), my brethren, in what manner I lived in the Jews’ religion, and with what excess of rage I waged war on the new Church which I acknowledge to-day to be the Church of God. It is true I was an unbeliever as you were, and more opposed to the light of grace than you. But it was for this reason that God looked on me and Jesus Christ exercised His mercy toward me, that I might become an example which would lead you to believe in Him. Yes, He Himself spoke to me; and what is the most wonderful of all wonders, has bestowed on me the disposition which you see to be in me, who laid me low that He might raise me, who blinded me that He might enlighten me, who made me, once a blasphemer, an apostle, and who, that I may now undo the evil I have done, desires that I should serve Him as a witness among you. These words in the mouth of St. Paul, I say, would come home with a divine power. And St. Luke adds that it was sufficient for the apostle to prove that Jesus was the Christ to close the mouths of all the enemies of the Christian name. Now, I say, it would be the same in the case of St. Thomas. In order to confound unbelief in the Resurrection, and therefore in the divinity of Jesus Christ, St. Thomas had only to show himself and to say aloud: I impugned His resurrection; I was greatly opposed to believing in it; but I am now forced to acknowledge its truth, and do not desire to live except to publish it abroad. To do so may cost me my life, but it shall be to me the greatest joy, if by the shedding of my blood I can witness for such a sacred truth as I ought to do. This witness-bearing may draw on me the hatred of my people; but I shall count it as nothing to be exposed to all their hatred, if I can proclaim the glory of my God. Yet once more. What could inspire this apostle with such noble feelings? Was there prepossession in his case? Was it self-interest? Was it aberration of mind? Or rather is it not evident that it was nothing of the sort? And whilst the conversion of this apostle cannot be explained otherwise than by affirming that it was the effect, incontestable and palpable, of the truth revealed to him, what more should we desire for the confirmation of our faith? And not only is the faith of St. Thomas an argument which should convince us, but a lesson which may instruct us. After it has shown us the reasonableness of faith, it teaches what we should believe, i.e. that Jesus Christ is God.—Translated from Bourdaloue.

Joh_20:29. The necessity for Christ’s resurrection.—Christ rose from the dead, not to startle godless and truth-hating men into faith, but to furnish all mankind with a new and better temple, with the means of spiritual worship and constant fellowship with God. There was a necessity for the Resurrection. Those who became intimately acquainted with Christ slowly but surely became aware that they found more of God in Him than ever they had found in the temple. Gradually they acquired new thoughts about God; and instead of thinking of Him as a sovereign veiled from the popular gaze in the hidden Holy of holies, and receiving through consecrated hands the gifts and offerings of the people, they learned to think of Him as a father, to whom no condescension was too deep, no familiarity with men too close, Unconsciously to themselves, apparently, they began to think of Christ as the true revealer of God, as the living temple who at all hours gave them access to the living God. But not till the Resurrection was this transference complete. Nay, so fixed had their hearts been, in common with all Jewish hearts, upon the temple, that not until the temple was destroyed did they wholly grasp what was given them in the resurrection of Jesus. It was the Resurrection which confirmed their wavering belief in Him as the Son of God. As Paul says, it was the Resurrection which “declared Him to be the Son of God with power.” Being the Son of God, it was impossible He should be held by death. He had come to the temple calling it by an unheard-of name: “My Father’s house.” Not Moses, not Solomon, not Ezra, not the holiest of high priests, would have dreamt of so identifying himself with God as to speak of the temple, not even as “our Father’s house” or “your Father’s house,” but “my Father’s house.” And it was the Resurrection which finally justified His doing so, declaring Him to be, in a sense no other was, the Son of God.—Dr. Marcus Dods.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

III

How Christ Frees The Circle Of Disciples From The Old Fear, And, By The Breathing Of His Spirit, Raises Them To A Presentiment Of Their Apostolic Calling

Joh_20:19-23

(Mar_16:14; Luk_24:36 ff.; Joh_20:19-31, pericope for Quasi modo geniti).

19Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut [When therefore it was evening on that day, the first of the week, and the doors had been shut, or, the doors being shut, οὔσης οὖν ὀψίας τῇ ήμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ τῇ μιᾷ σαββάτων, καὶ τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων], where the disciples were assembled [omit assembled] 18 for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. [And having said this, he showed unto them both19 his hands and his side]. Then were the disciples glad [The disciples therefore were glad], when they saw the Lord. 21Then said Jesus20 [he said] to them again, Peace be unto you: as my [the] Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost 23 [lit., Receive Holy Spirit, Λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον]John 21 : Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted [have been remitted, ὰφέωνται]22 unto them; and whosesoever sins [omit sins] ye retain, they are retained [have been retained, κεκράηνται].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

The parallel-passage in Mark recounts how Jesus after His entrance into the circle of disciples, rebuked their unbelief; the parallel in Luke makes the entrance of the Emmaus disciples into the circle of apostles precede the Lord’s appearance, and makes Peter and the two journeyers to Emmaus exchange Easter-messages; Luke also hints at the gentle reproof of the disciples’ unbelief,—the feature more powerfully brought out by Mark He likewise reports, more explicitly than John, Jesus’ invitation to the disciples to touch His hands and His feet, His eating before them, and His exposition of the Scripture concerning His sufferings and resurrection. Tholuck justly remarks that Luk_24:44-49 bears a relation to Joh_20:22-23 in our passage. Individual traits in this section of Luke may belong to a later meeting, or have been amplified later; assuredly, nothing but the section beginning with 20:50 belongs to the last manifestation of Jesus. The most important thing remaining for John, was to supply the facts of Jesus’ appearing to the disciples as they were sitting with shut doors, His announcing to them His return by bestowing upon them His peace-greeting (Joh_14:27), and His re-ratifying of their apostolic calling (forfeited by their flight), accompanying this act by a breathing upon them, which was preparatory to the outpouring of the Spirit.

Joh_20:19. When therefore it was evening on that day. [Οὔσης οὖν ὀψίας τῇ ῆμέρᾳ ἔκείνῃ τῇ μιᾷ σαββάτων.]—The evening of that Sunday, the first resurrection day.

And the doors had been shut. [καὶ τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων ὅπου ἧσαν οἱ μαθηταί].—This circumstance is emphasized, as Joh_20:26; comp. Act_12:13.

1. Unfounded softening of the expression. Calvin and others, Baumg.-Crus.: The doors had suddenly opened ad nutum divinæ majestatis ejus. According to Lücke, the statement is even reducible to a mere unexpected, sudden appearing.

2. Unfounded intensification of the expression. He pressed bodily through the closed doors. In the interest of the [Lutheran] ubiquity-doctrine, Quenstädt.

3. A miraculous appearing, unqualified as to its manner, indicative of the higher condition in which He found Himself subsequently to His transformation (Luk_24:31 : ἄφαντος γενέσθαι; Joh_21:1; Mar_16:12 : φανεροῦσθαι. F. Kühn: Wie ging Christus durch die Grabesthür? 1838. Tholuck). A. Tholuck: The description leads to the conception “of an unconfinedness to the limits of space”—bounds of locality.—Primarily it indicates nothing but a simple power of the glorified life of Christ to move unrestrainedly, to appear and disappear;—His local definedness, which is one with bodily circumscribedness, remaining the while undestroyed. According to Baur, an immaterial constitution was ascribed to Jesus; according to Meyer, the body of Christ was not yet glorified; as according to Lücke, who, in opposition to Olshausen (who distinguishes between the docetic and glorified body), remarks that a something intermediate betwixt the ethereal consistency of angels and material, corporeal solidity is to him inconceivable. Nevertheless, the idea of the body as dynamically transformed into the pure organ of the spirit is everywhere established in the New Testament (see 1Co_15:49).

Peace unto you [Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν].—The customary greeting is here filled with the weight of the resurrection-message and all that proclamation of salvation therewith connected; at the same time it is a fulfilment of the promise, Joh_14:27. See Exeg. Notes there. [Ministers are messengers of peace.]

Joh_20:20. He showed unto them [Ἔδειξεν καὶ τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὴν πλευρὰν αὐτοῖς].—See Luk_24:40. According to Meyer, a difference is constituted by the mention in that passage of the feet instead of the side.

Joh_20:21. As the Father hath sent Me [καθὼς ἀπέσταλκέν με ὁ πατήρ, κἀγὼ πέμπω ὑμᾶς].—Comp. Matthew 10; John 13; Mat_16:19; chap. 18. The second εἰρήνη ὑμῖν solemn, more definitely proclamatory of the infinite import of the salutation,—not, however, a farewell-greeting, as Kuinoel and others have interpreted it.—Even so send I you [κἀγὼ πέμπω ὑμᾶς].—Analogy of dynamical authority. The Father now sends Him out of the kingdom of resurrection and reconciliation to them; so likewise the Son sends them out of this kingdom to the world. That therewith their reinstitution into office is simultaneously expressed, in connection with an amplification of that office (henceforth they are witnesses for the Crucified and Risen One), is obvious, in accordance with the stronger analogy of Joh_21:15 ff. But as at the first bestowal of apostolic dignity, Peter took precedence of the others, so now the general restitution of the whole body precedes a more explicit restitution of Peter. Comp. Joh_17:18.

Joh_20:22. He breathed on them [καὶ τοῦτο εἰπὼν ἐνεφύσησεν καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς. The verb ἐμφυσάω occurs in the N. T. only here, but is used in the Sept. to express the act of God in the original infusion of the spirit of life into man (Gen_2:7 : ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πνοὴν ζωῆς, καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν). “This act is now by God incarnate repeated, sacramentally, representing the infusion of the new life, of which He is become by His glorified Humanity the source to His members: see Job_33:4; Psa_33:6; 1Co_15:45” (Alford).—P. S.] Different interpretations:

1. Simply the prophetico-symbolical heralding of the Holy Ghost (Theod. Mopsueste, Bullinger, Lampe, etc.). This view is contradicted by: a. the act, b. the Aorist Imperative λάβετε, c. the remark that in this case the act were but a repetition of the promise contained in the farewell-discourses.

2. It is the gratia ministerialis, rather than the former gratia sanctificationis, not, however, as yet, the pentecostal communication or gratia χαρισματική (Theophylact, Maldonat and others).

3. It is holy spirit (πνεῦμα ἅ γιον, without the article), but not yet the Holy Spirit, nor yet the Spirit of the new birth, of the world-mighty Jesus (Hofmann and Luthardt [also Gess]; see thereupon Tholuck and Meyer).

4. It is a quantitative, precursive communication of the Spirit, in accordance with Christ’s not yet perfected state of glorification (Origen, Calvin, Neander, Stier, Tholuck. Meyer: A veritable ἀπαρχή of the Holy Ghost). [Similarly Bengel (arrha pentecostes), Brückner, Hengstenberg, Godet, Ewald, Alford. The full communication of the Holy Spirit did not take place before the day of Pentecost, comp. Joh_7:39; Joh_16:7; Acts 2.—P.S.])

We have to consider on the one hand the afflation, and on the other hand the design of this bestowal of the Spirit. The afflation is an afflatus with the new life of the resurrection, and so the symbol, as the commencement, of the communication of His resurrection-life, i. e. life in His Holy Spirit. The degree of this communication, however, is determined in accordance with their present need; they must even now have power to gather the Resurrection-Church and to distinguish it from the world, in like manner as it, as the substratum of the people’s Church shortly to be established, is to be thoroughly distinguished from the Israelitish Church. In respect of this consideration, this gratia is doubtless specially ministerialis. They have not yet the gift of communicating the Holy Ghost, but they do possess that of discerning the Holy Spirit when already communicated.

Joh_20:23. Whose sins ye remit [ἄν τινων ἀφῆτε].—By proclaiming and promising to them forgiveness while ye receive them into your fellowship.—They are (have been) remitted unto them [ἀφέωνταιαὐτοῖς].—See Text. Notes. Meyer’s antithesis: “They become (will be) remitted (according to the reading ἀφίενται) and they are (have been) retained (κεκράτηνται),23 is to be refuted first by the Codd. which read ἀφέωνται [perf. pass.=ἀφεῖνται.—P. S.], secondly by the exegetical demand that the two terms should form a parallel. Their remitting of sin and. retaining of sin will, as a prophetically ministerial act, rest upon corresponding acts of God, already accomplished in the Spirit,—not, however, have these acts as a result or, still less, effectuate them. They will be influenced in these acts by Christ; they will not influence Him.24 The term, remit sins [ἀφιέναι], is akin to the term, loose [λὐειν], Mat_16:19; the term, retain [κρατεῖν], or retain together, is akin to the term, bind [δέειν]. See Comm. on Matthew at the passage designated, note (Leben Jesu, II., p. 889). The Lord does here but invert the expression, thereby indicating the now decided, New Testament stand-point, in which redemption [loosing], forgiveness, advances into the foreground. Here, then, as in those other passages, Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18, it is the potestas clavium in its broader sense, not merely, in accordance with the Heidelberg Catechism, the preaching of the holy Gospel and Christian penitential discipline (if it were confined to these, the latter branch would have to be considered as having reference also to reception into the Church: open the kingdom of heaven to believers), but in a still more extended sense in accordance with the Artic. Smalc.: Mandatum docendi evangelium, remittendi peccata, administrandi sacramenta, præterea mandatum excommunicandi; in which summing up the second and fourth items should really be regarded as expressed in the third: administrandi sacramenta. In reality the stations of the potestas are these: 1. The preaching of the gospel; 2. establishment of the preliminary conditions of reception; 3. reception into the Church; 4. penitential discipline in the real sense of the term. In a narrower sense it is undoubtedly the potestas of reception through baptism and of reception through repentance and absolution, together with the potestas of the opposite denial of reception, or exclusion. The symbolic prefiguration of the administration of the Church by the administration of the keys of the house of David, Isa_22:22, is, in consciously symbolic terms, continued in the Revelation (Joh_3:7). See Tholuck, p. 441 ff.; Julius Müller, Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1852, p. 55 [on the power of the keys, in an essay on the Divine Institution of the Ministry, reprinted in Müller’s Dogmatische Abhandlungen (1870), p. 496 ff.—P. S.].

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Christ, the Risen One, first appeared unto individual souls, then to the congregation of the faithful. We find a repetition of this in the history of the Church.

2. The night of Christmas, the darkness of Good Friday, the evening of the Supper, the first Easter evening; glorious hours of the ever brighter shining of the Dayspring from on high (Luk_1:79). At evening time it shall be light, Zec_14:7.

3. How Christ, as the Risen One, bursts though, the fear of the company of disciples: (1) the fear of the Jews; (2) the fear of His own ghost-like apparition; (3) the fear of the whole world (Joh_20:21); (4) the fear of the power of sin and guilt (Joh_20:23); (5) the fear of the terrors of judgment (“whosoesoever sins ye retain,” etc.).

4. The first Easter Church in its changing forms: a. a Church of secret, fugitive disciples, b. a Church of festive, glad believers, c. a Church of anointed and commissioned apostles.

5. How Christ cometh into the midst of His people: (1) in spite of closed doors: (2) with the salutation of peace; (3) with the firstling gift of the Spirit; (4) with the commission of the apostolic embassy; (5) with the bestowal of apostolic plenipotence.

6. The entrance of Jesus whilst the doors were shut, an evidence of His higher, glorified corporeality.

7. The peace-greeting, or the transformation of the every-day formula of salutation into the loveliest, richest Evangel by the mouth of Christ.

8. The mission of the disciples from Christ measured in accordance with the mission of Christ from the Father.

9. The first gift of the Spirit, or how, in the Easter feast of Christ, the last shadows of Good-Friday (fear of the Jews) come in contact with the first light of Pentecost (He breathed on them).

10. The inseparable connection of apostolic plenipotence with the apostolic embassy. See Mat_16:10; Joh_18:18.

[11. Forgiveness of sins the fruit of the resurrection (and death of Christ). The triumph over death is also a triumph over sin—the cause of death.—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Commentary on Mark, p. 163 f., Luke, p. 398 f. The Doct. Notes.

Quasi modo geniti: or Christ the First-born from the dead, Col_1:18.—The transformation of the apostles’ fear of the Jews into the loftiest feeling of triumph over the whole world (Joh_20:21).—How all things ensue from the peace of the Risen One: 1. The joy, the mirth of the disciples; 2. spiritual life; 3. the evangelic mission; 4. apostolic spiritual severity and clemency in the administration of the Gospel.—When the doors are shut to the world, then are they (in the highest sense) open to the Lord.—The union of familiarity and majesty in the first manifestation of the Risen One in the Church.—The first great fulfilment of the promise, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.—The day of Christ’s heavenly birth from the dead, a birthday of all Christian blessings: 1. Of peace and joy in believing; 2. of Sunday and the feast-days (for now, for the first time, do the remaining festivals receive their true signification); 3. of religious worship (cultus), and of rest from labor, in the Spirit; 4. of the apostolic mission, and of preaching; 5. of New Testament discipline and social consecration.—The life-breath of Christ, the true mission to the world.—The judicial sentence of the apostolic Church: 1. In respect of its divine institution; 2. in respect of its historical obscuration; 3. in respect of its eternal import.—Or: 1. As a sacred power; 2. as an accountable right; 3. as a solemn duty.—The great word: Sent from Christ as Christ from the Father.

Starke: The experience of an afflicted and tempted person may be very different in the evening from what it was in the morning.—The lying in wait of the wicked must conduce to the best interests of the godly, in this respect also, viz. that the godly refrain themselves from them, and hence are not led away by intercourse with them, nor condemned with them.—Zeisius: What a precious and unspeakable fruit of the merit and resurrection of Christ, is peace with God in the conscience!—Yea, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost are two particular, precious fruits of the resurrection of Jesus and of His spiritual kingdom.—Hall: When Christ, the Morning Star, riseth upon the soul and discovereth Himself unto it, nothing but joy can spring up.—Zeisius: So soon as Christ rose from the dead, He instituted the office of the ministry: of what exceeding importance then must this office be.—Hall: He who desires that Christ should entrust to him the great embassy of His Gospel must likewise first receive His Spirit.—A testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ, for the Holy Ghost is God, and therefore no one can give that Holy Ghost who is not himself God, Joh_15:20.—In the evening and at night Jesus did take in hand many momentous things for our sake: He was born in the night, He suffered Himself to be taken prisoner in the night, He instituted the Lord’s Supper in the night, and in the evening, when He was risen from the dead, He instituted the ministry of the New Testament. If we pondered these things every evening, we should make a holier use of the evening hours, and not perform so many works of darkness in the night!

Braune: In so far as we are sinful, Christ is sent unto us from the Father, but in so far as we are redeemed, we are sent, as His witnesses, unto others, that we may be co-laborers, not in our, but in His work. Amid the consciousness of our weakness and frailty, we should hold fast the sense of the loftiness of our calling as redeemed ones, and by the former feeling be but the more impelled to suffer ourselves to be redeemed and reconciled to God, to the end that the latter feeling may become true and strong; whoso but suffereth himself to be redeemed will draw others also into this beatific fellowship.—“He breathes on them;” like a friend’s breath upon the cheek, shall the Holy Spirit of God come unto man’s spirit.—Unto sanctified [consecrated] personalities the Redeemer commits the forgiveness of sins; these commissioned ones are a terror and vexation to the wicked, but friends to the good. That which the Redeemer here says concerning the remitting and retaining of sins may be compared with what He says of loosing and binding for the Kingdom of Heaven, Mat_16:19; Mat_18:18.—Sanctified [consecrated] personalities are, as St. Paul says of the Gospel, 2Co_2:16, unto some a savor of life unto life, unto others a savor of death unto death.

Gossner: He, therefore, who is sent from Christ, who is Christ’s messenger, must needs have received the peace of Christ, which is higher than all reason, must likewise needs have received the Spirit of Christ, and this seal of the Spirit and of peace must give evidence of itself in him by the devolving of peace and anointing from him to others again, by others being filled and anointed therewith. All this is contained in that little word as.—But when ministers make their appearance who have nothing to recommend them save that they are puffed up by the spirit of this world, what will they accomplish? They will puff up others also with the same spirit of the world.

Heubner: In the evening. H. Müller, Herzenssp. p. John 241: The Saviour will visit us in the evening. When the sun of the world hath set in our heart, the Sun of Righteousness ariseth.—Christians have often enough been obliged to assemble in secret; the Waldenses, for example, the Moravians, the Reformed in France, and others.—If Jesus come not into the assembly of Christians, it is cold, heartless, unfruitful.—Christ’s peace-greeting was the spoil of victory—spoil which He won by death and resurrection.—Whoso hath followed Christ unto Golgotha, to him doth He shout His word of peace.—Augustine; Cicatrices tituli gloriarum.—Crucifixion and resurrection are inseparable—one is incomplete without the other. This is the sum of Christianity.—The disciples were glad; Behold the power of the appearing, the peace, of Jesus. From His peace comes joy.—Peace is indispensable to the mission of Jesus. A man must have Jesus’ peace in his own heart if he would be a messenger of peace to others; he must first be redeemed himself, if he would preach redemption to others. Luther, in the postil to Quasimodog. Sunday, XI. 1040, writes this to all true Christians, after applying it to the Apostles and the ministry; they can meet these requisites, not by their own strength, but in Christ’s name, in the might of the Holy Ghost.—Schleiermacher, Pred. iii. p. 563.—Couard, ii. p. 326.—Marheineke, ii. p. 45.

[Craven: From Augustine: Joh_20:19. If thou comprehendest the mode [of entering] it is no miracle: when reason fails, then is faith edified.

Joh_20:20. The nails had pierced His hands, the lance had pierced His side. For the healing of doubting hearts, the marks of the wounds were still preserved.——From Chrysostom: Joh_20:21. He shows the efficacy of the cross, by which He undoes all evil things, and gives all good things; which is peace.—To the women above there was announced joy; for that sex was in sorrow, and had received the curse.——From Gregory: Joh_20:21. I love you, now that I send you to persecution, with the same love wherewith My Father loved Me, when He sent Me to My sufferings.

Joh_20:23. The disciples who were called to such works of humility, to what a height of glory are they led! Lo, not only have they salvation for themselves, but are admitted to the powers of the supreme Judgment-seat.——From Bede: Joh_20:21. A repetition is a confirmation: whether He repeats it because the grace of love is two-fold, or because He it is who made of twain one.

[From Burkitt: Joh_20:19. It has been no strange thing in the Church, that the best members of it have been put to frequent their assemblies with great fear, and been forced to meet in the night with great caution, because of the fury of the persecutors.—Let Christ’s disciples meet together never so privately, and with never so much hazard and jeopardy, they shall have Christ’s company with them.

Joh_20:21. The repetition of, Peace be unto you, was not more than needful to signify His firm reconciliation to the disciples, notwithstanding their late cowardice in forsaking Him.—As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you; By the same authority, and for the same ends, in part; namely, to gather, govern, and instruct My Church.

Joh_20:22. He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; When Christ sends forth any about His work, He will furnish them with endowments answerable to their vast employment; and the best furniture they can have, is the Holy Spirit in His gifts and qualifications suitable to their work.

Joh_20:23. There is a twofold power of remitting sins; the one magisterial and authoritative; this belongs to Christ alone: the other ministerial and declarative; this belongs to Christ’s ambassadors.—“Christ first conferred the Holy Ghost upon His apostles, and then said, Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted. Thereby intimating that it is not they, but the Holy Ghost by them, that puts away sin; For who can forgive sin, but God only?” (Augustine). The power of forgiving sin, that man hath, is only to declare that if men be truly and really penitent, their sins are forgiven them for the sake of Christ’s satisfaction.

[From M. Henry: Joh_20:19. The disciples of Christ, even in difficult times, must not forsake the assembling of themselves together, Heb_10:25.—It is a comfort to Christ’s disciples, when their solemn assemblies are reduced to privacy, that no doors can shut out Christ’s presence from them.—His speaking peace, makes peace, peace with God, peace in your own consciences, peace with one another; all this peace be with you; not peace with the world, but peace in Christ.

Joh_20:20. Conquerors glory in the marks of their wounds.—Christ’s wounds were to speak on earth, that it was He Himself, and therefore He rose with them; they were to speak in heaven, in the intercession He must ever live to make, and therefore He ascended with them, and appeared in the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain, and bleeding afresh, Rev_5:6. Nay, it should seem, He will come again with His scars, that they may look on Him whom they pierced.—When Christ manifests His love to believers by the comforts of His Spirit, assures them that because He lives, they shall live also, then He shows them His hands and His side.—A sight of Christ will gladden the heart of a disciple at any time; the more we see of Christ, the more we shall rejoice in Him; and our joy will never be perfect till we come there where we shall see Him as He is.

Joh_20:21. Christ was now sending the disciples to publish peace to the world (Isa_52:7); and He here not only confers it upon them for their own satisfaction, but commits it to them as a trust to be by them transmitted to all the sons of peace, Luk_10:5-6.—He sent them authorized with a divine warrant, armed with a divine power; sent them as ambassadors to treat of peace, and as heralds to proclaim it; sent them as servants to bid to the marriage:—hence they were called Apostles—men sent.

Joh_20:22. What Christ gives, we must receive, must submit ourselves and our whole souls to the quickening, sanctifying influences of the blessed Spirit; receive His motions, and comply with them; receive His powers, and make use of them; and they who thus obey His word as a precept, shall have the benefit of it as a promise; they shall receive the Holy Spirit as the guide of their way, and the earnest of their inheritance.

Joh_20:23. Two ways the apostles and ministers of Christ remit and retain sin, and both as having authority: 1. By sound doctrine; 2. By a strict discipline, applying the general rule of the gospel to particular persons.

[From A Plain Commentary (Oxford): Joh_20:19. Peace be unto you! Can we forget that this was the salutation of Shiloh (that is, “Peace”), even “the Prince of Peace” Himself? of Him who is delared to be “our Peace:” who bequeathed His peace to the disciples; and promised that Peace should be their abiding portion; and directed them to salute with “Peace” every house into which they entered. Peace was the subject of the angels’ carol on the night of the Lord’s nativity: behold, Peace is the first word He pronounces in the hearing of His disciples now that He is risen from death.

Joh_20:22. O most solemn and mysterious incident, as well as most solemn and prevailing words! The action of our Saviour here described may have shown emblematically (as Augustine suggests) that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Son. It may further have served to show that this was He by the breath of whose mouth all the hosts of heaven were made; and especially (as Cyril supposes), that Christ was the same who, after creating man in the beginning, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” But more than that is here intended. For it is to be thought that, at the time of man’s creation, “together with his soul, or the principle of his natural life, he received also the grace of the Holy Spirit as a principle of the Divine Life to which he was also designed.” (Bishop Bull). That is, the soul of man received from the very first “the peculiar impress of the Holy Spirit super-added,” as Clement of Alexandria writes. And Basil, expressly comparing the Divine insufflation upon Adam with that of Christ upon the Apostles, tells us that it was the same Son of God “by whom God gave the insufflation: then indeed, together with the soul, but now, into the soul.” Eusebius is even more explicit. “The Lord” (he says), “renews mankind. That grace which man enjoyed at first, because God breathed into his nostrils,—that same grace did Christ restore when He breathed into the face of the Apostles, and said, Receive the Holy Ghost.”—At the first institution of certain mysteries of the Faith, there was not wanting the outward emblem of an inward grace; which grace was afterwards conveyed without any such visible demonstration. Thus, at the Baptism of Christ, “the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him.” And now, at the ordination of His Apostles, our Lord is found to have “breathed into” their faces, when He would convey to them the gift of the same Blessed Spirit.

From Barnes: Joh_20:19. True Christians will love to meet together for worship; nothing will prevent this.

Joh_20:21. As My Father hath sent Me; As God sent Me to preach, to be persecuted, and to suffer; to make known His will, and to offer pardon to men; so I send you.——From Jacobus: Joh_20:19. Glad; So He had promised to them (Joh_16:20), “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”]

Footnotes:

[18]Joh_20:19.—Συνηγμένοι [assembled: text. rec. with E.G. K. L. Vulg.] is omitted in accordance with א. A.B.D., etc. Lachmann, Tischendorf. An exegetical addition. [Treg., Alf., Westc. likewise omit it.]

[19]Joh_20:20.—[The text. rec. omits the καί before τὰς χεῖρας with א. D.; but Lachm., Tischend. (in former edd., not in ed. 8), Treg., Alf., Westc. retain it with A. B. Syr.—P. S.]

[20]Joh_20:21.—[ὁ ’Ιησῦς is omitted by א. D. L. X., Treg., Tischend.; bracketed by Alford and Westcott; retained by Lachmann and Lange with A. B.—P. S.]

[21]Joh_20:22—[The absence of the article before πνεῦμα may indicate the partial or preparatory inspiration, as distinct from the pentecostal effusion. See the Exeg.—P. S.]

[22]Joh_20:23.—The reading ἀφέωνται in accordance with A. D. L. O. X., Lachmann—in opposition to the reading ἀφίενται, B. E. G. K„ etc., Tischendorf. On ἀφέωνται instead of ἀφεῖνται, see Winer, p. 91. [Tischend. ed, 8, Treg., Westc. and H. read ἀφέωνται, Alford ἀφίενται. ἀφιέωνται. is also found Mat_9:2; Mat_9:5; Mar_2:5; Luk_5:20; Luk_5:23; Luk_7:47; 1Jn_2:12. The old grammarians differ as to this form, some declaring it to be identical with ἀφῶνται. (as Homer has ἀφέη for ἀφῆ, others regarding it as the perf. pass, ἀφεῖνται. Winer adopts the latter view, Gr. p. 77, ed. 7. The bearing of this reading on the sense is important; see the Exeg.—P. S.]

[23][Similarly Bengel: ἀφίενται— κεκράτηνται, remittuntur— retenta sunt: illud, præsens; hoc præterilum. Mundus Est sub peccato.)

[24][An important remark. Ministerial acts are not creative but declarative of the preceding acts of Christ and the Holly Spirit. Dean Alford remarks in loc, that ministers have the power of the keys “not by successive delegation from the Apostles,—of which fiction I find in the New Testament no trace” (—the italics are Alford’s—), “but by their mission from Christ, the Bestower of the Spirit, for their office when orderly and legitimately coferred upon them by the various Churches. Not however to them exclusively,—though for decency and order it is expedient that the outward and formal declaration should be so:—but in proportion as any disciple shall have been filled with the Holy Spirit of wisdom, is the inner discernment, the κρισις, his.”—P. S.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matthew

THE RISEN LORD’S GREETINGS AND GIFTS

Mat 28:9. - Joh 20:19.

So did our Lord greet His sad followers. The first of these salutations was addressed to the women as they hurried in the morning from the empty tomb bewildered; the second to the disciples assembled in the upper room in the evening of the same day. Both are ordinary greetings. The first is that usual in Greek, and literally means ‘Rejoice’; the second is that common in Hebrew. The divergence between the two may be owing to the Evangelist Matthew having rendered the words which our Lord actually did speak, in the tongue familiar to His time, into their equivalent Greek. But whatever account may be given of the divergence does not materially affect the significance which I find in the salutations. And I desire to turn to them for a few moments now, because I think that, if we ponder them, we may gain some precious lessons from these Easter greetings of the Lord Himself.

I. First, then, notice their strange and majestic simplicity.

He meets His followers after Calvary and the Tomb and the Resurrection, with the same words with which two casual acquaintances, after some slight absence, might salute one another by the way. Their very simplicity is their sublimity here. For think of what tremendous experiences He had passed through since they saw Him last, and of what a rush of rapture and disturbance of joy shook the minds of the disciples, and then estimate the calm and calming power of that matter-of-fact and simple greeting. It bears upon its very front the mark of truth. Would anybody have imagined the scene so? There have been one or two great poets who might conceivably have risen to the height of putting such words under such circumstances into the mouths of creatures of their own imagination. Analogous instances of the utmost simplicity of expression in moments of intense feeling may be quoted from Æschylus or Shakespeare, and are regarded as the high-water marks of genius. But does any one suppose that these evangelists were exceptionally gifted souls of that sort, or that they could have imagined anything like this-so strange in its calm, so unnatural at first sight, and yet vindicating itself as so profoundly natural and sublime-unless for the simple reason that they had heard it themselves, or been told it by credible witnesses? Neither the delicate pencil of the great dramatic genius nor the coarser brush of legend can have drawn such an incident as this, and it seems to me that the only reasonable explanation of it is that these greetings are what He really did say.

For, as I have remarked, unnatural as it seems at first sight, if we think for a moment, the very simplicity and calm, and, I was going to say, the matter-of-factness, of such a greeting, as the first that escaped from lips that had passed through death and yet were red and vocal, is congruous with the deepest truths of His nature. He has come from that tremendous conflict, and He reappears, not flushed with triumph, nor bearing any trace of effort, but surrounded as by a nimbus with that strange tranquillity which evermore enwrapped Him. So small does the awful scene which He has passed through seem to this divine-human Man, and so utterly are the old ties and bonds unaffected by it, that when He meets His followers, all He has to say to them as His first greeting is, ‘Peace be unto you!’-the well-worn salutation that was bandied to and fro in every market-place and scene where men were wont to meet. Thus He indicates the divine tranquillity of His nature; thus He minimises the fact of death; thus He reduces it to its true insignificance as a parenthesis across which may pass unaffected all sweet familiarities and loving friendships; thus He reknits the broken ties, and, though the form of their intercourse is hereafter to be profoundly modified, the substance of it remains, whereof He giveth assurance unto them in these His first words from the dead. So, as to a man standing on some mountain plateau, the deep gorges which seam it become invisible, and the unbroken level runs right on. So, there are a marvellous proof of the majesty and tranquillity of the divine Man, a glorious manifestation of His superiority over death; a blessed assurance of the reknitting of all ancient ties, after it as before it, coming to us from pondering on the trivial words-trivial from other lips, but profoundly significant on His-wherewith He greeted His servants when He rose again from the dead.

II. Then note, secondly, the universal destination of the greetings of the risen Lord.

I have said that it is possibly a mere accident that we should have the two forms of salutation preserved for us here; and that it is quite conceivable that our Lord really spoke but one, which has been preserved unaltered from its Hebrew or Aramaic original in John, and rendered by its Greek equivalent by the Evangelist Matthew.

But be that as it may, I cannot help feeling that in this fact, that the one salutation is the common greeting among Greek-speaking peoples, and the other the common greeting amongst Easterns, we may permissibly find the thought of the universal aspect of the gifts and greetings of the risen Christ. He comes to all men, and each man hears Him, ‘in his own tongue wherein he was born,’ breathing forth to him greetings which are promises, and promises which are gifts. Just as the mocking inscription on the Cross proclaimed, in ‘Hebrew and Greek and Latin,’ the three tongues known to its readers, the one kingdom of the crucified King-so in the greetings from the grave, the one declares that, to all the desires of eager, ardent, sensuous, joy-loving Westerns, and all the aspirations of repose-loving Easterns, who had had bitter experience of the pangs and pains of a state of warfare, Jesus Christ is ready to respond and to bring answering gifts. Whatsoever any community or individual has conceived as its highest ideal of blessedness and of good, that the risen Christ hath in His hands to bestow. He takes men’s ideals of blessedness, and deepens and purifies and refines them.

The Greek notion of joy as being the good to be most wished for those dear to us, is but a shallow one. They had to learn, and their philosophy and their poetry and their art came to corruption because they would not learn, that the corn of wheat must be cast into the ground and die before it bring forth fruit. They knew little of the blessing and meaning of sorrow, and therefore the false glitter passed away, and the pursuit of the ideal became gross and foul and sensuous. And, on the other hand, the Jew, with his longing for peace, had an equally shallow and unworthy conception of what it meant, and what was needed to produce it. If he had only external concord with men, and a competency of outward good within his reach without too much trouble, he thought that because he ‘had much goods laid up for many years’ he might ‘take his ease; and eat, and drink, and be merry.’ But Jesus Christ comes to satisfy both aspirations by contradicting both, and to reveal to Greek and Jew how much deeper and diviner was his desire than he dreamed it to be; and, therefore, how impossible it was to find the joy that would last, in the dancing fireflies of external satisfactions or the delights of art and beauty; and how impossible it was to find the repose that ennobled and was wedded to action, in anything short of union with God.

The Lord Christ comes out of the grave in which He lay for every man, and brings to each man’s door, in a dialect intelligible to the man himself, the satisfaction of the single soul’s aspirations and ideals, as well as of the national desires. His gifts and greetings are of universal destination, meant for us all and adapted for us each.

III. Then, thirdly, notice the unfailing efficacy of the Lord’s greetings.

Look at these people to whom He spoke. Remember what they were between the Friday and the Sunday morning; utterly cowed and beaten, the women, in accordance with the feminine nature, apparently more deeply touched by the personal loss of the Friend and Comforter; and the men apparently, whilst sharing that sorrow, also touched by despair at the going to water of all the hopes that they had been building upon His official character and position. ‘We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel,’ they said, ‘as they walked and were sad.’ They were on the point of parting. The Keystone withdrawn, the stones were ready to fall apart. Then came something-let us leave a blank for a moment-then came something; and those who had been cowards, dissolved in sorrow and relaxed by despair, in eight-and-forty hours became heroes. From that time, when, by all reasonable logic and common sense applied to men’s motives, the Crucifixion should have crushed their dreams and dissolved their society, a precisely opposite effect ensues, and not only did the Church continue, but the men changed their characters, and became, somehow or other, full of these very two things which Christ wished for them-namely, joy and peace.

Now I want to know-what bridges that gulf? How do you get the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles out of the Peter of the Gospels? Is there any way of explaining that revolution of character, whilst yet its broad outlines remain identical, which befell him and all of them, except the old-fashioned one that the something which came in between was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of joy and peace in Him, a joy that no troubles or persecutions could shake, a peace that no conflicts could for a moment disturb? It seems to me that every theory of Christianity which boggles at accepting the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as a plain fact, is shattered to pieces on the sharp-pointed rock of this one demand-’Very well! If it is not a fact, account for the existence of the Church, and for the change in the characters of its members.’ You may wriggle as you like, but you will never get a reasonable theory of these two undeniable facts until you believe that He rose from the dead. In His right hand He carried peace, and in His left joy. He gave these to them, and therefore ‘out of weakness they were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens,’ and when the time came, ‘were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.’ There is omnipotent efficacy in Christ’s greetings.

The one instance opens up the general law, that His wishes are gifts, that all His words are acts, that He speaks and it is done, and that when He desires for us joy, it is a deed of conveyance and gift, and invests us with the joy that He desires if we observe the conditions.

Christ’s wishes are omnipotent, ours are powerless. We wish for our friends many good things, and the event turns wishes to mockery, and the garlands which we prepared for their birthdays have sometimes to be hung on their tombs. The limitations of human friendship and of our deepest and sincerest wishes, like a dark background, enhance the boundless efficacy of the greetings of the Master, which are not only wishes but bestowments of the thing wished, and therein given, by Him.

IV. So, lastly, notice our share in this twofold greeting.

When it was first heard, I suppose that the disciples and the women apprehended the salutation only in its most outward form, and that all other thoughts were lost in the mere rapture of the sudden change from the desolate sense of loss to the glad consciousness of renewed possession. When the women clung to His feet on that Easter morning, they had no thought of anything but-’we clasp Thee again, O Soul of our souls.’ But then, as time went on, the meaning and blessedness and far-reaching issues of the Resurrection became more plain to them. And I think we can see traces of the process, in the development of Christian teaching as presented in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. Peter in his early sermons dwells on the Resurrection all but exclusively from one point of view-viz., as being the great proof of Christ’s Messiahship. Then there came by degrees, as is represented in the same Peter’s letter, and abundantly in the Apostle Paul’s, the recognition of the light which the Resurrection of Jesus Christ threw upon immortality; as a prophecy and a pattern thereof. Then, when the historical fact had become fully accepted and universally diffused, and its bearings upon men’s future had been as fully apprehended as is possible here, there came, finally, the thought that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the symbol of the new life, which from that risen Lord passed into all those who loved and trusted Him.

Now, in all these three aspects-as proof of Messiahship, as the pattern and prophecy of immortality, and as the symbol of the better life which is accessible for us, here and now-the Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands for us even more truly than for the rapturous women who caught His feet, or for the thankful men who looked upon Him in the upper chamber, as the source of peace and of joy.

For, dear brethren, therein is set forth for us the Christ whose work is thereby declared to be finished and acceptable to God, and all sorrow of sin, all guilt, all disturbance of heart and mind by reason of evil passions and burning memories of former iniquity, and all disturbance of our concord with God, are at once and for ever swept away. If Jesus Christ was ‘declared to be the Son of God with power by His Resurrection from the dead,’ and if in that Resurrection, as is most surely the case, the broad seal of the divine acceptance is set to the charter of our forgiveness and sonship by the blood of the Cross, then joy and peace come to us from Him and from it.

Again, the resurrection of Jesus Christ sets Him forth before us as the pattern and the prophecy of immortal life. This Samson has taken the gates of the prison-house on His broad shoulders and carried them away, and now no man is kept imprisoned evermore in that darkness. The earthquake has opened the doors and loosened every man’s bonds. Jesus Christ hath risen from the dead, and therein not only demonstrated the certainty that life subsists through death, and that a bodily life is possible thereafter, but hath set before all those who give the keeping of their souls into His hands the glorious belief that ‘the body of their humiliation shall be’ ‘changed into the likeness of the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.’ Therefore the sorrows of death, for ourselves and for our dear ones, the agitation which it causes, and all its darkness into which we shrink from passing, are swept away when He comes forth from the grave, serene, radiant, and victorious, to die no more, but to dispense amongst us His peace and His joy.

And, again, the risen Christ is the source of a new life drawn from Him and received into the heart by faith in His sacrifice and Resurrection and glory. And if I have, deep-seated in my soul, though it may be in imperfect maturity, that life which is hid with Christ in God, an inward fountain of gladness, far better than the effervescent, and therefore soon flat, waters of Greek or earthly joy, is mine; and in my inmost being dwells a depth of calm peace which no outward disturbance can touch, any more than the winds that rave along the surface of the ocean affect its unmoved and unsounded abysses. Jesus Christ comes to thee, my brother, weary, distracted, care-laden, sin-laden, sorrowful and fearful. And He says to each of us from the throne what He said in the upper room before the Cross, and on leaving the grave after it, ‘My joy will remain in you, and your joy shall be full. My peace I leave to you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

JESUS APPEARS TO THE APOSTLES SUNDAY NIGHT

Luk 24:36-49; Joh 20:19-23. “Then, it being evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors being shut where the disciples were assembled on account of the fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and says to them, Peace be unto you!” Soon after the arrival of the two disciples from Emmaus, who at once joined Peter and the sisters in their testimony to the resurrection, Jesus climaxes all and puts every doubt to flight by standing in their midst, ringing out His familiar salutation, “Peace be unto you.”

Luke: “And being affrighted and terrified, they were thinking that they see a spirit.” Such is the heterogeneity between mortality and immortality that the sight of an angel or a disembodied spirit always fills mortals with trepidation. “And He said to them, Why are you disturbed? and why do reasonings arise in your heart? Behold My hands and My feet, that I am He; handle Me, and see; because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see Me having.” When Omnipotence comes to the solution of all difficulties, faith should have complete swing. Christ appeared to Nebuchadnezzar in the fiery furnace with the Hebrew children nearly six hundred years before His incarnation, and actually visited Abraham at Mamre and ate with him, 1900 B. C., in both cases exhibiting a physical body so far as human senses could apprehend. Hence e need not conclude from this Scripture that His glorification was postponed till His ascension, as the facts are rather preponderant in favor of the conclusion that He was glorified when He arose from the dead. During the forty days, we read of His appearing to them but eleven times:

1. To the women.

2. To Mary Magdalene, and doubtless other women.

3. To Peter.

4. To Cleopas and his comrade at Emmaus.

5. To the twelve apostles.

6. On Sunday night, to the apostles and saints in their meeting.

7. On the Monday night a week following.

8. At the Sea of Galilee.

9. To the apostles and five hundred brethren in a Galilean mountain.

10. To James.

11. To all the apostles.

We are assured that He never lodged with them, and did not habitually eat with them after the resurrection; doubtless spending the nights and, so far as the record extends, at least nine-tenths of the day-time, in heaven.

Doubtless we have in the life of our Lord during these forty days a beautiful photograph of His millennial reign, when He will doubtless appear and disappear, ever and anon, in different parts of the world, and, I trow, much of the time will be absent in heaven. In a similar manner, the transfigured saints, who shall rule the world as the subordinates of Christ, since they will no longer need mortal food nor sleep, will ever and anon appear at their posts of duty during the day, disappearing ad libitum, and spending the night in heaven.

“And they, still disbelieving and wondering from joy, He said to them, Have you here any food? And they gave Him a piece of baked fish; and taking it, He ate in their presence.” You see here the terrible struggle of their faith to apprehend and appropriate clearly and unequivocally the grand and paradoxical fact of His resurrection from the dead, and at the same time the conflict of overwhelming joy, inundating them with transporting rapture, thus the excitement antagonizing the necessary deliberation for faith to appropriate the glorious reality. This appeal to their senses by eating in their presence, we are to regard as a miracle for their conviction and the establishment of their faith, as we have no account of His eating except in this instance.

Joh 20:20. “Saying this, He showed them His hands and His side, and His disciples rejoiced, seeing the Lord.” These appeals to their physical senses do not prove anything physical on His part, as you see He did the same to Abraham and Nebuchadnezzar, and even on a grander scale, long before His incarnation. We must not get so critical as to lay embargoes on Omnipotence.

Luk 24:44-45 : “And He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you, being yet with you, That it behooveth all things which have been written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, concerning Me, to be fulfilled. Then He opened their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures.” Lord, help us to learn the indisputable fact that if Thou dost not open our minds, we will never understand the Scriptures. Preachers study till their heads are gray, and know so little about the Scriptures that an illiterate, sanctified Ethiopian would be an exceedingly profitable teacher. We must learn how to sit meek and lowly, like little children, at the feet of Jesus, trusting Him to open our minds, so we can understand His precious Word. The carnal wisdom of colleges will never reach the emergency.

“And He said to them, that it has been thus written that Christ is to suffer, and rise from the dead on the third day; and that repentance unto the remission of sins is to be preached among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” We here have the commission of our Lord, as given by Luke, in which repentance is the salient grace conducive to the remission of sins. The E. V. here omits eis, “unto,” much to the weakening of this wonderful passage, which Luke, in his Acts of the Apostles 2:38, parallels, “Repent, and be baptized unto the remission of your sins;” the baptism being ceremonial and symbolic of the spiritual realities revealed in these two passages, in both of which Luke formulates repentance the condition and antecedent of remission, — in the one, Peter, on the day of Pentecost, using the verb; while here, in the commission, our Lord uses the noun, and commands His apostles and their successors to preach it to all nations; i. e., “repentance unto remission of sins.” This is in perfect harmony with Paul’s commission (Act 18:26), in which he offers remission of sins and sanctification through faith alone. These two commissions are in perfect harmony, as repentance breaks off the yoke of Satan, and faith receives that of Christ, these two fundamental graces constituting the positive and negative poles of the salvation battery, the one always including the other.

“You are witnesses of these things. And I send upon you the promise of the Father; and you abide in the city until you may be endued with dynamite from on high.” There are two Greek words prominently used and translated “power.” Here rite word is dunamis, Anglicized “dynamite.” This is certainly very significant of the wonderful blessing they received at Pentecost; i. e., the dynamite of heaven, which blows all inbred sin out of us. How dares any Church to send out a preacher before he has complied with this great commandment of the Infallible! You see plainly that our Lord provides for the sanctification of all his preachers before they go out to battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The only reason why we have not conquered the world long ago, and brought back the Lord in his millennial victory and glory to transform the world into a paradise, is because of the departure from the Divine order, preachers and elders having the audacity to take the management of the Church into their own hands and run it to suit themselves, actually treating with contempt the positive and unequivocal commandment of our Savior requiring every preacher, in prayer and humiliation, to await the heavenly enduement of Pentecostal dynamite; i. e., the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire.

Joh 20:21-22. “Then Jesus said to them again, Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.” O the transcendent honor and the momentous responsibility of going in the room of Jesus, by Him invested and endued, as He was by His Father when He came on the earth, preaching the everlasting gospel! “Saying this, He breathed on them, and says to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” We must not conclude that people do not receive the Holy Ghost in the regenerated experience. They do receive Him in a measure; while in sanctification He comes in His fullness to abide in the heart. You must remember that these apostles had all stumbled during that dark period from the Gethsemane midnight till the resurrection morn. He said to them, “You will all be offended in Me this night.” They were offended — i. e., stumbled — actually giving up their faith in His Christhood, and simply believed on Him as the greatest prophet the world had seen. Hence they needed the enduement of the Holy Ghost to restore and reestablish them in the faith of His Christhood.

“Whosesoever sins you may remit, are remitted unto them; whosesoever sins you may retain, have been retained.” This passage has, by the Romanists, been pressed far into ritualism and priestcraft. The apostles and their successors, as He here says, were invested with the gospel commission to preach and work for Jesus till He returns in His glory. The Word is our authority. Hence, in the application of God’s revealed truth, there is a sense in which the called and sent minister, as the substitute and subordinate of Christ, does remit or retain sins. It is the key-power (Matthew 16) which Jesus committed to Peter and all the apostles, and to their successors to the end of time.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Section 3. (Joh 20:19-23.)

The heavenly company, and their spiritual endowment.

It is practically, therefore, as the First-born among many brethren that Mary’s message announces Him. And now we find Him in the midst of the assembly, the blessing still enlarging as He declares it to them. There is nothing indeed about the Church in this Gospel, whether as the House of God or the Body of Christ. In John we have only the Family of God, as far as doctrine goes, the line of truth which is plainly in natural connection with that of eternal life so characteristic of the Gospel. With this is found that of the indwelling Spirit, which gives to the life itself, always belonging to the children of God, its "abundant" blessedness. These are the connected truths all through, which connect with every other. We shall find them in this closing portion as elsewhere.

The evening of the first day of the week is come, and the disciples are gathered together. Let us note that this is either not reckoned in the Jewish manner, or else it is the closing evening of the Jewish day, which was from the decline of the day to sunset. Sunset was thus "between the evenings," which was the time when the passover lamb was offered, as well as the daily evening sacrifice (Exo 12:6; Exo 30:8). At this time, then, were the disciples gathered; the doors being shut for fear of the Jews; the world being armed against the Prince of peace. But no shut doors can keep Him from His own; and presently He is among them: "Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you." More than words, even of the Son of God, were needed to convey this. His word had created the worlds: but for redemption, He had said Himself, "the Son of man must be lifted up." That divinest work of all had been accomplished, and He can show them still the proofs of it in His hands and side. John says nothing of their unseemly fear, but of the joy into which it passed: "then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord."

And again He says, "Peace be to you," and sends them out into the world, to represent Him in it, as He had been sent into it to represent the Father. They belonged no more to it, as He had said to them before: -no more than He did. The world could not be at peace, nor those whose hearts were in it. They had been delivered from the corruption that was in it through lust, by the knowledge of Himself whom the world had rejected. Their portion was outside of it with Him: and thus they would be competent witnesses of that better part, and for Him who had enriched them with it from His voluntary poverty.

He follows these words with a significant action, breathing into them, and saying, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit;" with regard to which both the words and action have received various interpretation. We must, therefore, examine them with some care, the more because the symbolic action seems undoubtedly to point to something beyond the present capacity of the disciples to understand, -something, therefore, left to come to light afterwards. He does not Himself interpret His action, except the words accompanying are that interpretation. And this they can hardly be, much as they throw light upon it. We are left, therefore, to the natural significance of what is given us, seen in the light of truth revealed elsewhere, remembering that no parable can be authority for doctrine.

After all, the Lord’s breathing into them carries us necessarily back to the in-breathing of God into the first man. The very word used here, and which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, is that used in the Septuagint for this primal act, by virtue of which Adam became a living soul. Here then should be a new beginning of life, which, as such, must be from God, but from God incarnate; and with this we are already familiar, as truth that He Himself has taught us, that "as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself;" so that, "as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, so the Son quickeneth whom He will" (Joh 5:21; Joh 5:26). The Son is thus a true fountain of life for men, and, as the words declare, a divine life.

We cannot but connect this with a title given to the Lord, though not in John, of "Last Adam" (1Co 15:45): "The Last Adam is made a quickening Spirit." The contrast between the first and the Last, which we realize in His present action, is recognized and emphasized here. He is not Himself breathed into, as was the first man, but breathes into others. As the quickening Spirit, He communicates spiritual, divine life, such as we have seen to be the essential element in new birth. He is thus the Author of what is a new creation, higher in character than the old; and this is clearly what is symbolized in His present action.

Its place with reference to His work now finished is just as evident. He has told us already that, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Here, then, is this now from the other side declared. It is not, as sometimes put, a question of union, but of what is more fundamental than this. The fruit of the corn of wheat is that of life communicated, but which passes through what both the Lord and His apostle afterwards call "death" to produce it (Joh 12:24; 1Co 15:36). It is now, therefore, that He takes openly the place of the Last Adam. Life must come to man out of death, and in no other way; for death is the penalty of sin, and he is a sinner. But thus also, as springing out of this, vicariously endured, it comes accompanied with the efficacy of atonement made: he who receives it "hath eternal life, and doth not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life" (Joh 5:24). The fundamental truths of the Gospel of John are thus embodied in this inbreathing by the risen Saviour.

But then it is, necessarily, of something that His disciples have before received that He is speaking to them in it. The giving of life could not actually wait for His resurrection. The Cross, standing amid the ages, looks backward as well as forward. And the Lord, in speaking of His communication of the life in Him, takes care to assure us of this. "The hour is coming," He says, "and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live" (Joh 5:25). And when afterwards He speaks of what is (now) characteristic of eternal life, -that they "know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent," He declares at the same time that this knowledge they already had (Joh 17:6-8). There can be nothing plainer then, than that the Lord is not here communicating to His disciples what they had not received before, but that He is simply putting together in this symbolic manner things that were, in fact, already theirs. Every thing is emerging now from the obscurity of Moses’ veil (2Co 3:13) into the open glory of Christ’s face unveiled.

Now when the Lord goes on to say in plain speech, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit," it should be as plain that He is not interpreting the past, but speaking of something they had not yet received. The evangelist, when reporting to us His words at the feast of tabernacles as to the "living water," remarks that "this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him should receive;" and then he adds, "for the Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." Here, as far as words can show it, the same reception of the Spirit is spoken of. But here also a time is given before which the Spirit could not be received. Jesus must be first glorified, says the apostle. If, then, the Lord was not yet glorified at the time in which He uttered the words we are considering, these must still have had a reference to the future: that is, to that Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, to which, perhaps, we should be naturally inclined to refer them.

Now, when we remember the Lord’s previous declaration that He must go away to the Father, or else the Advocate would not come to them (Joh 16:7), there can be no right question that this glorifying of Jesus was His being glorified with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was (Joh 17:5). The fact, then, that He was upon earth when now speaking to them would be sufficient proof that the reception of the Spirit, of which He was speaking was, in fact, Pentecostal. Yet it has been imagined even that the Lord had already ascended to the Father between the time when He had said to Mary that He had not yet done so and His being here in the midst! For, they say, He forbade Mary to touch Him, because not ascended, while here and elsewhere He freely permits it. But this is simply a misinterpretation of His words to Mary, and His going to the Father is always spoken of as implying His absence from His people during the present time. Such an imaginary ascension, for which not a single direct scripture can be quoted, and which would displace that which is always spoken of as such, cannot possibly, therefore, be maintained.

But, we are told by others, the article should be omitted in the Lord’s words here, and therefore they intimate, not the Spirit as personally coming at Pentecost, but a bestowment of spiritual energy simply, which raises the life communicated to its proper resurrection power. We are not yet arrived where this question can be fully discussed, which can only be in Romans, but the lack of scripture for it is the most fatal objection. As to the absence of the article, it is absent also in that which was just now quoted from the seventh chapter, where we must read, according to this, "for Holy Spirit," or, as many read, simply "Spirit was not yet." But this would then deny the possibility of any such bestowment before the Lord’s ascension. This would be altogether fatal to any such interpretation. Besides which, the Holy Spirit, (or, if it be preferred, simply Holy Spirit) cannot be shown to be anywhere identified with life, or any degree of it. I am aware that "the Spirit is life" (Rom 8:10) may be cited against me; but that is plainly the personal Spirit. The only proper force of the words, therefore, is that the Spirit is life potentially, -is the Source of it, -to the children of God. The Spirit does not stand there for the life: nor for any grade or character of life; all the more surely, that it gives it character.

"Receive ye the Holy Spirit," means, then, simply what it says, and cannot be the interpretation of the inbreathing which precedes the words, and which do evidently speak of the giving of life; not, however, of a communication of it there and then, but of one they had already received, and by which they had become a new creation. Creation is not an increase of life, but a beginning of it, as is plain. They had received life, as we have seen, and eternal life. It is now seen as bringing them into new creation, delivering them therefore from the old; and so from sin and judgment, as connected with it. Now they are qualified to receive the Spirit, to be the power indeed of the new life as resurrection life, with the value of Christ’s blessed work for God attaching to it.

Sin is thus for them put away: they belong to a Kingdom of life and not of death, and of righteousness as inseparably connected with this. They are to be representatives of this now upon earth, remitting or retaining sins in His Name, and by His authority; not, surely, in relation to heaven and its blessedness, as has been monstrously claimed by the false church; but in relation to the sphere of His earthly interests. This is a seal upon the higher blessing into which He has introduced them; the reception of the Spirit being their qualification for it, and the condition therefore implied that they act in the power of that endowment.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20:19 meeting behind locked doors: The disciples feared prosecution for following Jesus. • Peace be with you: This was a standard Jewish greeting (see also 3 Jn 1:15), but Jesus was doing more than just greeting his disciples: he was offering the Messiah’s peace (see Isa 9:6; 52:7) and delivering the gift of his Kingdom (see John 14:27; 16:33).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh 20:19. [Τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων, on the first day of the week) It was not the Sabbath, but the day of the Resurrection, Sunday.—V. g.]—διὰ, on account of) This assigns the reason why the disciples were met together, and why the doors were shut.—ῆλθεν, came) when the disciples were not thinking of Him, much less opening the doors.—Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν, peace be unto you) A most appropriate and seasonable salutation, whereby their fear of the guilt which they had incurred by their flight, was removed; and the offence [their stumbling at Him because of the cross] was healed. A usual formula, of extraordinary power. [Thrice the same formula is repeated, Joh 20:19; Joh 20:21; Joh 20:26. The choice and peculiar gifts of the true Passover were, Peace, the mission, the Holy Spirit, remission of sins.—When about to go away, He had left and had given peace to them, ch. Joh 14:27, “Peace I leave unto you; My peace I give unto you;” ch. Joh 16:33, “That in Me ye might have peace.” He now imparts peace to them.—V. g.]

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_20:19-20. Comp. Luk_24:36 ff., where, however, the handling and the eating is already added from tradition. The account in Mar_16:14 is different. Schweizers reasons against the Johannean origin of Joh_20:19-29 amount to this, that, according to John, the resurrection of Jesus was no external one on this side of the grave, and that consequently the appearances could only be visionary. Against this Joh_2:21-22, Joh_10:17-18 are already decisive, as well as the faith and the testimony of the entire apostolic Church.

τ. θυρῶν κεκλεισμ.] can all the less be without essential significance, since it is repeated in Joh_20:26 also, and that without διὰ τὸν φόβον τ. Ἰουδ. It points to a miraculous appearance, which did not require open doors, and which took place while they were closed. The how does not and cannot appear; in any case, however, the ἄφαντος ἐγένετο, Luk_24:31, is the correlate of this immediate appearance in the closed place; and the constitution of His body, changed, brought nearer to the glorified state, although not immaterial, is the condition for such a liberation of the Risen One from the limitations of space that apply to ordinary corporeity. Euth. Zigabenus: ὡς λεπτοῦ ἤδη καὶ κούφου καὶ ἀκηράτου γενομένου τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ. More minute information concerning this change withdraws itself from more definite judgment; hence, also, the passage can offer no proof of the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity, especially as the body of Jesus is not yet that which is glorified in δόξα. According to B. Crusius, and already Beza and several others (comp. also Thenius, Evangel. der Evangelien, p. 45), the doors must have suddenly opened of themselves. But in this way precisely the essential point would be passed over in silence. According to Baeumlein, nothing further is expressed than that the disciples were assembled in a closed room.[266] But how easily would John have known how actually to express this! As he has expressed himself, τ. θυρῶν κεκλεισμ. is the definite relation, under which the ἦλθεν, κ.τ.λ. took place, although it is not said that He passed ΔΙᾺ Τ. ΘΥΡ. ΚΕΚΛ., as many Fathers, Calovius and others, represent the matter.

ΕἸς ΤῸ ΜΈΣΟΝ] into the midst, after ἔστη, as in Herod. iii. 130, and frequently. Comp. on Joh_20:7; Joh_21:3.

ΕἸΡΉΝΗ ὙΜῖΝ] The usual greeting on entrance: Peace to you! This first greeting of the risen Lord in the circle of disciples still resounded deeply and vividly enough in the heart of the aged John to lead him to relate it (in answer to Tholuck); there is therefore no reason for importing the wish for the peace of reconciliation (comp. εἰρήνη ἡ ἐμή, Joh_14:27).

ἜΔΕΙΞΕΝ ΑὐΤΟῖς, Κ.Τ.Λ.] In proof of the corporeal identity of His Person; for on the hands and on the side they must see the wounds. This was sufficient; it was not also required to exhibit the feet. Variation from Luk_24:40, when the feet are shown instead of the side, the piercing of which is not related by the Synoptics. All the more groundlessly is the present passage employed against the nailing of the feet (see generally on Mat_27:35); the more groundless also is the opinion that the σάρξ of Christ was only the already laid-aside earthly envelope of the Logos (Baur). Comp. on Joh_1:14.

ΟὖΝ] In consequence of this evidence of identity. Terror and doubt, certainly the first impression of miraculous appearance, now gave way to joy. And from out their joyful thoughts comes the utterance of John: ἰδόντες τὸν κύριον.

[266] Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 474, does not make the room at all, but only the house to be closed, and says there may also have been somebody who had been appointed to open. Schenkel, to whom the Risen One is the Spirit of the Church, can, of course, only allow the entrance through closed doors to pass as an emblem. Scholten, who considers the appearances of the Risen One to be ecstatic contemplations of the glorified One, employs the closed doors also for this purpose.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 20:19-29 . Manifestations of the risen Lord to the disciples, first without Thomas, then with Thomas .

Joh 20:19 . The time of the manifestation is defined, it was τῇ ἡμέρᾳ … σαββάτων “on that day, the first of the week,” and during the evening, οὔσης οὖν ὀψίας , which agrees with Luke’s account, from which we learn that when Jesus and the two disciples reached Emmaus, two hours from Jerusalem, the day was declining. The evening was chosen, probably because then the disciples could be found together. The circumstance that the doors were shut seemed to John significant regarding the properties of the risen body of Jesus. τῶν θυρῶν κεκλε μένων , “the doors having been shut,” i.e. , securely fastened so that no one could enter, because the precaution was taken διὰ τὸν φόβ ν τῶν Ἰουδαίων . So soon had the disciples begun to experience the risks they ran by being associated with Jesus. Calvin supposes Jesus opened the doors miraculously; but that is no suggested in the words. Rather it is indicated that His glorified body was not subject to the conditions of the natural, earthly body, but passed where it would. Suddenly ἔστη εἰς τὸ μέσον ( cf. Luk 24:36 ). “Phrasis notat se in publico omnium conspectu sistere.” Kypke. Not only as the ordinary salutation, but to calm their perturbation at this sudden apparition ( cf. Luk 24:37 ), He greets them with Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν , and to assure them of His identity ἔδειξεν … αὐτοῦ .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

19. οὔσης οὖν ὀψίας. This appearance is described also in Luk 24:36f. Lk. places it after the return of the two from Emmaus, who reported to the apostles their meeting with the Risen Jesus; this would necessarily be late in the evening (cf. Luk 24:29), probably about 8 p.m. (see for ὀψία on 6:16). The Appendix to Mark (16:14) states that He appeared to the Eleven “while they sat at meat.” It is not improbable that they were assembled in the room where the Last Supper was eaten (cf. also Act 1:13), and where Jesus had spoken the discourses of farewell (Jn. 14-16).

It would appear from Luk 24:36 that the two Emmaus disciples were present, as well as the apostles, and probably some others also (Luk 24:33). This is not necessarily inconsistent with Jn., although He speaks only of “the disciples,” for μαθηταί often includes others besides the inner circle of apostles (see on 2:2). But in the later chapters of Jn. οἱ μαθηταί generally stands for the Eleven, and the Lord’s manifestation of Himself to them in particular, as had been promised (16:16), is mentioned as fundamentally important in 1Co 15:5. Whether others were present or not, it is His appearance to the apostles on this occasion that is treated as of special significance; and the words of His commission in v. 21 are most naturally limited to those who were commissioned by Him as “apostles” at the beginning of His ministry.1

τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ, a favourite phrase in Joh 1:39; Joh 5:9; Joh 11:53; Joh 14:20; Joh 16:23; Joh 16:26, and see on 1:29 for Jn.’s precision in noting dates. He adds here, accordingly, τῇ μιᾷ σαββάτων. The rec. text has τῶν before σαββάτων as in v. 1, but אABIL om. τῶν here.

τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων … διὰ τὸν φόβον τῶν Ἰουδαίων. The rumour that the tomb was empty had spread (as is indicated in Mat 28:11), and the Jewish leaders were doubtless suspicious of any gathering of the disciples of Jesus For the phrase τὸν φόβον τῶν Ἰουδ., cf. 7:13. It is repeated at v. 26 that the doors of the room were shut at the time of the meeting a week later.

ο῞που ἦσαν οἱ μαθηταί. Only ten of the original Twelve were present (v. 24); Luk 24:33 has οἱ ε῞νδεκα. See on 2:2 for οἱ μαθηταί used absolutely.

The rec. adds συνηγμένοι (NΘ), but אABDW om. Perhaps it was inserted by scribes because of its occurrence in the words of the promise, Mat 18:20.

ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. No attempt is made to explain how He came.

καὶ ἔστη εἰς τὸ μέσον (repeated v. 26). Luk 24:36 has the more usual ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν; but εἰς τὸ μέσον after a verb of motion is quite correct (cf. Mar 3:3, Luk 6:8), and has classical authority (e.g. Xenophon, Cyropœd. iv 1:1, στὰς εἰς τὸ μέσον).

Justin (Tryph. 106) finds in Jesus standing in the midst of His brethren (cf. v. 17) a fulfilment of Psa 22:22 (quoted Heb 2:12),

διηγήσομαι τὸ ὄνομα σου τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου,

ἐν μέσῳ ἐκκλησίας ὑμνήσω σε.

καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν. These words are found also in most texts of Luk 24:36, but being omitted there by D a b e ff2 l r are described by Hort as a “Western non-interpolation” in that place. If that judgment is correct, scribes have brought the words into Lk’s text from Jn., where there is no doubt of their genuineness. It is, however, possible that the words are part of the original text of Lk.; and in that case they furnish an additional illustration of the use of Lk.’s tradition by Jn. at this point (see v. 20). Throughout their accounts of the appearance of the Risen Jesus to the apostles, it is clear that Jn. and Lk. are following the same tradition, while Jn. does not hesitate to correct and amplify or reduce the current version of it (as found in Lk.) at several points.

Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν is the ordinary Eastern salutation on entering a room, and is so used (Luk 24:36, Joh 20:19, Joh 20:26). But in v. 21 εἰρήνη ὐμῖν is solemnly repeated before the apostles receive their commission, and may carry an allusion to the parting gift of peace in 14:27.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 19-29.

1. The appearance of Jesus when the doors were shut (Joh 20:19; Joh 20:26) is a point which we are unable to explain. The evangelist has not stated the facts of the case with sufficient definiteness to make any conclusion absolutely certain. That Jesus had a body after His resurrection, which could be touched, and which bore the marks of the nails; that He could eat and walk, and could speak with the same voice as before His death; that He was seen and known to be the same person whom the disciples had been familiar with in their past association with Him, is evident from all the Gospel narratives. That, on the other hand, He appeared and disappeared at will, as He had not done before His death; that He was not recognized with the same immediateness, apparently, as He had been; that He even passed some hours with the disciples who were going to Emmaus, without any recognition on their part, seems equally clear. The mystery of His ascension may also be borne in mind in its relation to this question.

In the consideration of the particular words found in these verses (Joh 20:19; Joh 20:26), two points are worthy of notice:—first, that we have no indication in other passages of any such thing as passing through the wood of closed doors—a thing which, in itself, would seem to be in the highest degree improbable; and, secondly, that we find the fact somewhat prominently suggested that, during the forty days, Jesus made Himself visible or invisible at will. May not these points, when taken together, indicate that Jesus here did not enter, at the time mentioned, into the room where the disciples were, but simply appeared to their view within it; that He appeared now as He disappeared at the close of His meeting with the disciples from Emmaus?

2. In Joh 20:21-23 Jesus renews to the disciples their commission, or assures them again that they have it, and then bestows upon them the gift of the Holy Spirit. With respect to this gift it may be observed: (a) that it is, according to the natural interpretation of the words, an actual gift; (b) that the distinction made by some writers between πνεῦμα ἅγιον and τὸ πνεῦμα ἅγιον can hardly be sustained, and the words must here designate the Holy Spirit in the same sense in which the latter phrase is used (comp. Joh 7:39, Joh 16:13); (c) that the full gift of the Spirit seems to be placed in this Gospel, as in the Acts, after the glorification of Jesus. From these three considerations it follows that the gift here referred to was of the same nature, but not of the same measure, with that of the Day of Pentecost. It was, as Meyer remarks, an actual ἀπαρχή of the Holy Spirit.

3. The power of remitting and retaining sins which is spoken of in Joh 20:23 is not something bestowed as a mere official prerogative on the disciples, so that their mere word and will accomplish the end. Jesus Himself exercised forgiveness only on the conditions of faith and repentance, and in accordance with the will of the Father. The whole teaching of the New Testament shows that the apostles could, at the most, only pronounce the man who believed forgiven, and, as they did not possess omniscience, this pronouncing could not go beyond the point of declaring that the man was forgiven, provided he had the faith required. It was under the guidance and in accordance with the mind of the Spirit that they were to exercise this power, but not in any such sense that forgiveness depended on them or was to be determined by them alone.

4. The exclamation of Thomas, in Joh 20:28, is the final declaration of the faith of the apostles as given in this Gospel. Immediately after the record of it the writer closes his book. That this is a declaration of belief in the Divinity of Christ is proved by the words εἶπεν αὐτῷ, by which it is introduced—these words show that it is not a mere exclamation of surprise or astonishment; by the fact that ὁ κύριός μου is most naturally used as referring to Jesus (see Joh 13:13, Joh 20:13); by the connection of these words with Joh 20:30-31; by the whole progress of faith and testimony in this Gospel, as leading up to the end. If it is such a declaration, the 29th verse shows that it was accepted by Jesus. At such a moment—indeed, at any moment, but especially at such a moment, when He was soon to send forth the apostles on their great mission in the world, in which they were to proclaim His message and even to expose themselves to the danger of death in His cause

He could not have allowed them to remain under a delusion and to believe Him to be Divine when He was not. He could not have pronounced a solemn benediction on all who believed what He knew to be untrue. These words of Thomas, therefore, together with those of Jesus which follow, become a fitting climax of the whole book, both with respect to the testimony of Jesus to Himself and the answering faith of His immediate disciples.

II. The First Appearance to the Disciples: Joh 20:19-23.

The risen Lord advances by degrees in His manifestation of Himself. The appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, prepared for by that of the angels, prepares in its turn, by the message entrusted to Mary for the disciples, for His appearance in the midst of them. Two particular manifestations of the Risen One took place before this one in the course of that day—the appearance to the two disciples of Emmaus and that which was granted to Peter (Luk 24:13-32; Luk 24:34, Mar 16:12-13). That in the evening to all the disciples, which is described in what follows, is evidently identical with that which Luke (Luk 24:36 ff.) and Mark (Mar 16:14) relate. This appearance had as its essential aim to establish in them faith in the resurrection, and thereby to strengthen their faith in Him; it was to serve also as a preparation for their apostolic mission.

Vv. 19, 20. “The evening having come, therefore, on this same first day of the week, the doors of the place where the disciples were being shut because of the fear which they had of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them and says to them, Peace be to you! 20. And, after he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.The disciples therefore rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

The plural θυρῶν (the doors) denotes a two-leaved door. The words: “because of the fear,” refer to the fact of the closing which is mentioned again in Joh 20:26, but without the explanation here given.

It has been thought that this external fact was designed only to characterize the moral state of the disciples (Lucke), and that, on the arrival of Jesus, the gates were quite naturally opened (Schleiermacher). Strauss, on the other hand, is so indignant at this explanation, that he goes even so far as to declare that a real hardening of mind against the meaning of the gospel text is necessary in order to maintain it. Calvin and de Pressense suppose that the doors opened miraculously of themselves (comp. Act 12:10).

But the term ἔστη, he stood, indicates less an entrance than a sudden appearance, and in Joh 20:26, where the fact of the doors being closed is mentioned again, it is put in connection, not with the fear of the apostles, but with the mode of the appearance itself. I think, therefore, withWeiss, Keil, etc., that the sudden presence of Jesus in the midst of the disciples cannot be explained except by the fact that the body of Jesus was already subjected to the power of the spirit. In truth, this body was still that which had served Him as an organ during His life (Joh 20:20); but, as already before His death this body obeyed the force of the will (Joh 6:16-21), so now, through the transformation of the resurrection, it had approached still nearer to the condition of the glorified and spiritual body (1Co 15:44). The expression ἔστη is found again in the narrative of Luke (Luk 24:37); there it is in evident connection with the feeling of terror which the disciples at first experience and with the supposition that it is a spirit; for He was present when no one had seen Him enter. With this manner of appearing His sudden disappearances correspond (Luk 24:31 : ἄφαντος ἐγένετο).

The salutation of Jesus is the same in Luke and in John: Peace be to you! Weiss sees here only the ordinary Jewish salutation; but why, in that case, repeat it twice (Joh 20:21)? Evidently Jesus makes this formula the vehicle of a new and more elevated thought. he invites His disciples to open their heart to the peace of reconciliation which He brings to them in rising from the dead. “Having come,” says Paul (Eph 2:17), “he preached peace.”—Joh 20:20. The words: And having said this, establish a relation between the wish of Joh 20:19 and the act related in Joh 20:20. To convince them of the reality of His appearance was to give them the proof of the divine good-will which restored to them their Master, to change their terror into peace and even into joy.—The fact that He does not show them His feet cannot prove anything in favor of the opinion that on the cross the feet had not been nailed. The pierced hands and side were enough to prove His identity. Besides, it follows from Luk 24:40 that this detail has merely been omitted by John.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ in that that he presented himself before his disciples suddenly through his divine power, when the gates were shut, doth fully assure them both of his resurrection, and also of their Apostleship, inspiring them with the holy Ghost, who is the director of the ministry of the Gospel.

Either the doors opened to him of their own accord, or the very walls themselves were a passage for him.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 19. The doors were shut - for fear of the Jews] We do not find that the Jews designed to molest the disciples: that word of authority which Christ spoke, Joh 18:8, Let these go away - had prevented the Jews from offering them any injury; but, as they had proceeded so far as to put Christ to death, the faith of the disciples not being very strong, they were led to think that they should be the next victims if found. Some think, therefore, that they had the doors not only shut, but barricadoed: nevertheless Jesus came in, the doors being shut, i.e. while they continued shut. But how? By his almighty power: and farther we know not. Yet it is quite possible that no miraculous influence is here intended. The doors might be shut for fear of the Jews; and Jesus might open them, and enter in the ordinary way. Where there is no need for a miracle, a miracle is never wrought. See Clarke on Joh 20:30.

The evangelist has omitted the appearing of our Lord to the other women who came from the tomb, Mt 28:9, and that to the two disciples who were going to Emmaus, Lu 24:13, &c., which all happened in the course of this same day.

Peace be unto you.] His usual salutation and benediction. May every blessing of heaven and earth which you need be granted unto you!

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

19. When, therefore, it was evening. The Evangelist now relates that the resurrection of Christ was proved to the disciples by his presence. It did not happen without the providence of God, that all were assembled in one place, that the event might be more certain and more manifest. It is worthy of notice how gently Christ acted towards them, in not keeping them in suspense any longer than till the evening. Besides, he enlightened them, bringing the pledge of a new life, while darkness was overspreading the world.

Where the disciples were assembled. As to their having assembled, it was an indication of faith, or, at least, of religious feelings. As to the circumstance of their keeping themselves concealed by shut doors, we perceive in it some proof of their weakness; for, though the strongest and boldest minds are sometimes seized with fear, yet it may easily be inferred that the apostles, at that time, trembled in such a manner as to manifest the deficiency of their faith. This example is worthy of notice; for, though they are less courageous than they ought to have been, still they do not give way to their weakness. True, they seek concealment for the sake of avoiding danger, but they gather courage so far as to remain together; otherwise they would have been scattered hither and thither, and no man would have ventured to look at his neighbor. In this manner we ought to struggle against the weakness of our flesh, and not to indulge fear, which tempts us to apostacy. Christ also blesses their zeal, when he appears to them while they are assembled; and Thomas is justly deprived of the favor bestowed on all his brethren, because, like a wandering soldier, he had withdrawn from the standard of union. Here, then, is a lesson for those who are excessively timid, to sharpen and encourage themselves to correct their carnal fear; and particularly they ought to beware lest fear should cause them to scatter.

And while the doors were shut. This circumstance was expressly added, because it contains a manifest proof of the Divine power of Christ; but this is utterly at variance with the meaning of the Evangelist. We ought, therefore, to believe that Christ did not enter without a miracle, in order to give a demonstration of his Divinity, by which he might stimulate the attention of his disciples; and yet I am far from admitting the truth of what the Papists assert, that the body of Christ passed through the shut doors. Their reason for maintaining this is, for the purpose of proving not only that the glorious body of Christ resembled a spirit, but that it was infinite, and could not be confined to any one place. But the words convey no such meaning; for the Evangelist does not say that he entered through the shut doors, but that he suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples, though the doors had been shut, and had not been opened to him by the hand of man. We know that Peter (Acts 10:10) went out of a prison which was locked; and must we, therefore, say that he passed through the midst of the iron and of the planks? Away, then, with that childish trifling, which contains nothing solid, and brings along with it many absurdities! Let us be satisfied with knowing that Christ intended, by a remarkable miracle, to confirm his disciples in their belief of his resurrection.

Peace be to you! This is the ordinary form of salutation among the Hebrews; and by the word peace they denote all that cheerfulness and prosperity which is usually desired for a happy life. The phrase, therefore, means, “May you be well and prosperous!” I mention this, because there are some who, in explaining these words, enter into unnecessary discussions about peace and harmony, though Christ intended nothing else than to desire that his disciples might be happy and prosperous.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

19–23. The Manifestation to the Ten and others

19. Then the same day, &c.] Rather, When therefore it was evening on that day, the first day of the week. Note the great precision of the expression. ‘That day,’ that memorable day, the ‘day of days.’

Oh! day of days! shall hearts set free

No minstrel rapture find for thee?

Thou art the Sun of other days,

They shine by giving back thy rays.

Keble, Christian Year, Easter Day.

Comp. Joh_1:39, Joh_5:9, Joh_11:49, Joh_18:13, where ‘that’ has a similar meaning. Evidently the hour is late; the disciples have returned from Emmaus (Luk_24:23), and it was evening when they left Emmaus. At least it must be long after sunset, when the second day of the week, according to the Jewish reckoning, would begin. And S. John speaks of it as still part of the first day. This is a point in favour of S. John’s using the modern method in counting the hours: it has a special bearing on the explanation of ‘the seventh hour’ in Joh_4:52. See notes there and on Joh_19:14.

when the doors were shut] This is mentioned both here and Joh_20:26 to shew that the appearance was miraculous. After the Resurrection Christ’s human form, though still real and corporeal, is not subject to the ordinary conditions of material bodies. Before the Resurrection He was visible, unless He willed it otherwise; after the Resurrection it would seem that He was invisible, unless He willed it otherwise. Comp. Luk_24:31.

where the disciples were] The best authorities all omit ‘assembled.’ S. Luke says more definitely, ‘the eleven and they that were with them’ (Luk_24:33); ‘the eleven’ meaning the Apostolic company, although one was absent. It was natural that the small community of believers should be gathered together, not merely for mutual protection and comfort, but to discuss the reported appearances to the women and to S. Peter.

for fear of the Jews] Literally, because of the (prevailing) fear of the Jews (comp. Joh_7:13). It was not certain that the Sanhedrin would rest content with having put Jesus to death; all the less so as rumours of His being alive again were spreading.

came Jesus] It is futile to discuss how; that the doors were miraculously opened, as in S. Peter’s release from prison, is neither stated nor implied.

Peace be unto you] The ordinary greeting intensified. His last word to them in their sorrow before His Passion (Joh_16:33), His first word to them in their terror (Luk_24:37) at His return, is ‘Peace.’ Possibly the place was the same, the large upper room where they had last been all together.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Then the same day at evening,.... The same day Christ rose from the dead, and appeared to Mary; at the evening of that day, after he had been with the two disciples to Emmaus, about eight miles from Jerusalem, and they had returned again to the rest; and after there had been such a bustle all day in Jerusalem, about the body of Jesus; the soldiers that watched the sepulchre, giving out, by the direction of the elders, that the disciples of Christ had stolen away the body, while they slept:

being the first day of the week; as is said in Joh 20:1 and here repeated, to prevent any mistake; and that it might be clear what day it was the disciples were assembled together, and Christ appeared to them:

when the doors were shut; the doors of the house where they were, which it is plain was in Jerusalem, Luk 24:33 but whether it was the house where Christ and his disciples ate the passover together, or whether it was John's home or house, to which he took the mother of Christ, since he and Peter, and the rest, seem to be afterwards together in one place, is not certain: however, the doors were shut; which is not merely expressive of the time of night, when this was usually done; but signifies that they were really locked and bolted, and barred, for which a reason is given as follows:

where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews; after their scattering abroad upon the taking of Christ, and after his crucifixion was over; and especially after the report of his body being took away, they gathered together, and made fast the doors of the place, lest the Jews should come in upon them, and surprise them; for they might fear, that since they had took away their master's life, theirs must go next; and especially since it was rumoured abroad that they had stole away his body, they might be under the greater fear, that search would be made after them, and they be apprehended and brought into trouble on that account:

came Jesus and stood in the midst of them; on a sudden, at once, and when they had no thought or fear of anyone's coming upon them, without some previous notice; but he being the Almighty God, did, by his omnipotent power, cause the bars and bolts, and doors, in the most secret and unobserved manner, to give way to him, and let him in at once among them: when as a presage and pledge of the accomplishment of his promise to be with, and in the midst of his, when met together, either in private or public, he stood and presented himself in the midst of them: and to let them know at once he was no enemy,

he saith unto them, peace be unto you: , "peace be unto you", is an usual form of salutation among the Jews; see Gen 43:23 expressive of all prosperity in soul and body, inward and outward, spiritual and temporal; and here may have a special regard to that peace he said he gave unto them, and left with them, upon his departure from them; and which he had obtained by the blood of his cross, and now preached unto them.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

Ver. 19. When the doors, &c., for fear of the Jews] The sheep had been scattered, but now were by the great Shepherd recollected (according to the promise, Zec 13:7; "I will turn my hand upon the little ones"); yet, sensible of their late fright, they show some trepidation. Afterwards, when the Spirit came down upon them, they not only set open the doors, but preached Christ boldly in the temple without dread of danger. So did Basil; when the emperor threatened him with bonds, banishment, &c., he wished him to frighten babies with such bugbears; his life might be taken away, but not his faith; his head, but not his crown, {a} So Luther, at first so fearful and faint hearted, that in the year 1518, he wrote thus to the Pope Leo X: Vivifica, occide, voca, revoca, approba, reproba, vocem tuam vocem Christi in te praesidentis et loquentis agnoscam: I lay myself prostrate at your holiness’ feet, together with all that I am and have; quicken me, kill me, call me, recall me, approve me, reprove me, I shall acknowledge your voice to be the very voice of Christ, ruling and speaking in you. Yet afterwards he took more courage; witness among many other things, that brave answer of his to one that told him that both the pope and the emperor had threatened his ruin, Contemptus est a me Romanus et favor et furor. I hold in contempt both Roman goodwil and wrath. And when Spalatinus had sent unto him to inquire whether he would go to Worms, and appear in the gospel’s cause, if Caesar summoned him? Go, said he, I am resolved to go, though I were sure to encounter so many devils there as are tiles upon the houses. Omnia de me praesumas praeter fugam et palinodiam. Fugere nolo, multo minus reeantare. (Luth. Epist.)

{a} Pueris illa terriculamenta preponenda.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The same day at evening - On the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection of Christ.

When the doors were shut - This does not mean that the doors were fastened, though that might have been the case, but only that they were closed. Jesus had been taken from them, and it was natural that they should apprehend that the Jews would next attempt to wreak their vengeance on his followers. Hence, they met in the evening, and with closed doors, lest the Jews should bring against them the same charge of sedition that they had against the Lord Jesus. It is not certainly said what was the object of their assembling, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that it was to talk over the events which had just occurred, to deliberate about their condition, and to engage in acts of worship. Their minds were doubtless much agitated. They had seen their Master taken away and put to death; but a part of their number also had affirmed that they had seen him alive. In this state of things they naturally came together in a time and place of safety. It was not uncommon for the early Christians to hold their meetings for worship in the night. In times of persecution they were forbidden to assemble during the day, and hence, they were compelled to meet in the night. Pliny the younger, writing to Trajan, the Roman emperor, and giving an account of Christians, says that “they were accustomed to meet together on a stated day before it was light, and sing among themselves alternately a hymn to Christ as God.” True Christians will love to meet together for worship. Nothing will prevent this; and one of the evidences of piety is a desire to assemble to hear the Word of God, and to offer to him prayer and praise. It is worthy of remark that this is the first assembly that was convened for worship on the Lord’s Day, and in that assembly Jesus was present. Since that time, the day has been observed in the church as the Christian Sabbath, particularly to commemorate the resurrection of Christ.

Came Jesus ... - There is no evidence that he came into their assembly in any miraculous manner. For anything that appears to the contrary, Jesus entered in the usual way and manner, though his sudden appearance alarmed them.

Peace be unto you - The sudden manner of his appearance, and the fact that most of them had not before seen him since his resurrection, tended to alarm them. Hence, he addressed them in the usual form of salutation to allay their fears, and to assure them that it was their own Saviour and Friend.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

And the doors were[1] shut, or being shut; and remaining still shut, his glorified body entered by penetration through the doors, as he did at his resurrection. Maldonatus take notice, that Calvin was the first that denied this, against the belief of all the ancient Fathers and interpreters, who call this a miracle of divine power. (Witham) --- The same power which could bring Christ’s whole body, entire in all its dimensions, through the doors, can, without the least question, make the same body really present in the sacrament; though both the one and the other be above our comprehension. (Challoner) --- Therefore it is a want of faith to limit the power of Christ, by the ordinary rules of place, and to deny that he can be in the blessed Sacrament, and on so many altars as he pleaseth. We do not still join the Ubiquists or Brentiani, who, quite contrary to the Zuinglians, maintain, that the humanity of Jesus Christ is in every place where his divinity is. This is contrary to faith. (Bristow)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

29. Cum fores essent clausæ: januis clausis, Greek: ton thuron kekleismenon. See St. Ambrose, in Psal. cxviii.; St. Augustine, tract. 121. in Joan. De Agone Christiano, chap. 24. 4. 6. p. 257. Epist. ad Volusianum. t. 3. p. 405, where he says, demus Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare non posse. In talibus rebus tota ratio facti est potentia facientis. See St. Cyril on this place, lib. xii. p. 1092, 1103, and 1107. St. John Chrysostom, hom. lxxxv. p. 315. Lat. Ed. and hom. lxxxvii. Ed. Ben. p. 520, Greek: to gar outo lepton kai kouphon os kekleismenon eiselthein ton thuron. &c. See St. Jerome, ad Eustochium in Epitaph. Paulæ. t. 4. p. 685. and lib. i. cont. Jovin. t. 4. p. 178; St. Leo, serm. i. de Resurr.; St. Epiphanius, her. lxiv. p. 593. Ed. Petav. &c.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Luke expounds this verse, Luk 24:29, where the two disciples told Christ it was towards evening, and the day was far spent; for the Jews called the afternoon evening, as well as the time after sunset; and John tells us expressly, it was yet the first day of the week. This appearance is unquestionably the same mentioned in Luke, Luk 24:36. For it is said, the two disciples went immediately to Jerusalem, where they found the eleven gathered together, and discoursed of the Lord’s appearance to them; and while they spake, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, and said unto them, ( as here), Peace be unto you. The disciples had shut the doors of the place where they met, for fear of the Jews. Here is a great question between the Lutherans and Calvinists, how Christ came in amongst them when the doors were shut? Whether he went through the doors remaining shut? Which the Lutherans stiffly maintain, as a strong proof of the possibility of the real presence of the body of Christ in, with, or under the elements of the Lord’s supper; though we object, that this is to destroy the nature of Christ’s body, and to assign him a body which indeed is no body, being not obvious to the sense, nor confined to a place; and which must pierce another body, which is contrary to the nature of a body according to our notion of bodies. The Lutherans object:

1. That here is a plain mention of the doors being shut.

2. No mention of the opening of them.

3. Nor of Christ’s entrance upon opening any doors, windows, roof, or by any ordinary way, as men use to enter into houses.

4. Nor, had he so entered, would there have been any occasion for the disciples taking him for a spirit, as it is plain they did, Luk 24:37.

The Calvinists on the other side object,

1. That it is not said that he went through the doors.

2. That if he had gone through the doors, he would not presently have called to them to have seen him, and handled him; by which he evidenced that his body had such dimensions as our bodies have, and so could not go through a door shut.

In the Lutherans’ reason, the fourth is only considerable, the three first have no force, because all circumstances of actions are not recorded in holy writ. Nor is there much force in the fourth, for the doors by his miraculous power opened and shut, and he showed himself in the midst of them, and used to them the usual salutation amongst the Jews, Peace be unto you.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 19, 20. (3) The manifestation to the ten disciples, corresponding with the second portion of the prayer, and followed by special conference of privilege.

When therefore it was evening, on that day, being the first day of the week; i.e. the close of the day on which the Lord had risen; on "that day" which became so memorable in the history of the Church. Consequently, after most astounding and independent revelations had been made to several individuals, about 8 p.m. there occurred that which John now proceeds to describe. The note of time identifies it with the scene and event described by Luke; (Luk_24:36-43) consequently John had the former account before him in the record of his own reminiscences. To understand the full force of the passage we must bring to it the statements of Luke, Mark, and Paul. The disciples had been prepared,

(1) by the reports of the women, that the grave had been opened and was empty, and that angelic appearances had asserted the resurrection of Jesus.

(2) By the impression made on Peter and John when they found it as Mary and the other women had said. The disappearance of the body of Jesus, confirmed by the four independent lines of testimony, is strangely difficult to account for on any hypothesis except that of the Resurrection. The disciples were evidently confounded by the fact. The Pharisees and priestly party were quite aware that such an event would checkmate their supposed victory over a hated rival. The Roman soldiers were pledged in honor and by pride and passion not to allow themselves thus to be reduced to impotence. Hence there is no explanation of the rise or beginning of such a legend (see B. Weiss, "Life of Jesus," 3. pp. 390-395), except the historical fact.

(3) By an assertion of the Magdalene that she had seen the Lord, and that he had sent a special message to his brethren as to the completion of his glorification in his ascent to the Father.

(4) By the announcement, the details of which are not recited, concerning an appearance to Peter: this fact stands on remarkably strong evidence of Mark, Luke, and Paul.

(5) By the immense excitement of the appearance and disappearance of the Lord at Emmaus. This was evinced by the return of the two disciples to Jerusalem, charged with new ideas of the meaning of the Scriptures and of the will and power of God, and with fundamentally new notions of the very nature of spiritual body body entirely and absolutely under the power of the spirit. The apostles were prepared for the wonderful manifestation of a new mode of being; but they needed something more convincing than they had yet received. They were still suffering from intellectual blindness and slowness of spirit, and were apparently incapable of accepting mere testimony. Mark"s statement (Mar_16:14) embraces the special scene which John describes in much more vivid and instructive manner (vers. 26-29). But Luke expressly implies that far more than the eleven had gathered together, either in the room where the Paschal supper had been celebrated, or where the election of Matthias subsequently took place. Joseph and Nicodemus, the women, and some of the seventy disciples were there; nor can we conceive excluded from their fellowship Mary of Bethany, or Lazarus, or Simon the Cyreman, or the "brothers of the Lord" so designated. We are told that after the arrival of the Emmaus disciples, the doors having been locked (shut) where the disciples were assembled because of the (their) fear of the Jews. This expression is once again repeated (ver. 26), showing that, after the lapse of seven days, fear and precautions against surprise still prevailed. They were on both occasions in ignorance of the purpose or meaning of the Sanhedrin, nor could they tell whether the malice of the world would at once compel them to follow their Lord"s example, drink of his cup, and be baptized with his baptism. The doors were closed, when Jesus came, and stood in the midst a phrase which is here identical with that in Luke"s narrative. Now, John, who, consonantly with Luke, has recorded his evidence that the body of Christ was not a phantasmal imagination, but a veritable, visible, and tangible reality, (see Luk_24:37-43) identifiable with the very body which had been so cruelly wounded and bruised for them, takes special pains to hint, By a single clause, that the body of Christ was a new creation, and was submitted to laws profoundly different from those which we have generalized from the intimations of the five senses only. John does not say that the doors were opened by some magic process, nor that Christ simply passed through the closed doors, nor that they were miraculously removed; but that he had taken up his position before them by a process which, to the body made of the dust of the earth, would be supremely miraculous. Were we have a revelation made to prepared minds of a new order of existence (see Westcott"s "Revelations of the Risen Lord," and Milligan"s "Resurrection of Christ," on the likeness and on the unlikeness of the risen body with that which had died). It is more than possible nay, it is entirely presumable that the spiritual body becomes possessed of additional senses, of which we have no conception or experience; and, therefore, the spirit clothed with such body is alive to properties of matter and dimensions of space and active forces all of which would be supernatural to us, "cribbed, cabined, and confined" as we are now and here. Our Lord, before his Passion, gave numerous proofs of the dominance of his spirit over the body: his repeated escapes from his enemies, the power of his voice and glance, his transfiguration-glory, his superiority to gravitation in walking upon the sea and hushing its storms. So that he, on this occasion, is revealing to the world some of the functions of spiritual corporeity. He is manifesting the kind of life which will eventually be the condition of all the redeemed visible and tangible at will to those who are limited to our present condition and stage of being, but also in its normal state invisible, impalpable, to eye and touch of mortal sense. There can be little doubt that John deeply recognized what Paul described as "the spiritual body." Jesus stood suddenly in their midst, not a phantasm, as the disciples (or some of them) were ready to suggest. His first word, though consisting in form of the common salutation of the East, must have meant immeasurably more to them than it does in ordinary parlance. And Jesus saith unto them, Peace be to you! which, uttered in well-remembered tones, reminded them of how he had discriminated his "peace," and his manner of giving it from the world"s "peace," and the world"s manner of giving. (Joh_14:27) It meant the hushing of their fear, the expulsion of terrible alarm. (see Luk_24:37, Luk_24:38) This is John"s summary of all that he said. Luke, with much detail, records how the Lord proved that he was, not a mere subjective vision, but a veritable man, with flesh, and bones, and voice, and power to take food. Consequently the evangelists labor to make evident the fact that the spiritual resurrection-body, though a continuation of the old life, with signs of its identity, is, nevertheless, emancipated from the ordinary conditions of our material corporeity. This is one of the places where the narrative transcends experience and imagination, and appeals to faith in a higher order of being than crosses the field of scientific vision.

Vers. 19-23. The first appearance of Jesus to his disciples.

He meets with them on the evening of the day on which he rose from the dead.

I THE DISCIPLES WERE GATHERED TOGETHER FOR THE MEMORABLE INTERVIEW.

1. Mary"s message had evidently brought them together.

2. Their new hopefulness must have inclined them to resume their old collective life.

3. The meeting-place may have been in "the upper room." (Act_1:13)

4. It was a secret assembly, for the doors were shut for fear of the Jews." The rumors of our Lord"s resurrection, going abroad among the Jews on that eventful day, suggested the possibility or the fear of an attack upon the disciples.

II THE APPEARANCE OF JESUS TO HIS DISCIPLES. "Jesus came" and stood in the midst, and saith to them, Peace be unto you!

1. His appearance, while the doors were shut, showed that he was not now subject to the old conditions of material existence.

2. His first Words are the blessedly familiar words of his last address on the night preceding his death. They suggest

(1) more than the usual mode of Jewish salutation;

(2) that he had by his death secured peace for them; and

(3) was now come to breathe it into their souls. "He came and preached peace.

3. He gave them visible evidence of his identity. "And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side.

(1) He satisfies their senses. It was essentially necessary that the first disciples should be convinced of the fact of his resurrection.

(2) His act implies that we are not entitled to disregard the evidence of our senses. Therefore we are justified in rejecting the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation: it is quite opposed to the evidence of the senses.

4. The effect of this evidence. "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

(1) Their terror is changed into joy.

(2) At first "they believed not for joy". (Luk_24:41) But now it is the joy of settled conviction.

(3) There was in their joy all the latitude of the largest hopes that could gather round the Person of their Lord.

III OUR LORD"S RENEWAL TO HIS DISCIPLES OF HIS ORIGINAL COMMISSION. "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

1. He assures them of peace in connection with their future apostolic labors. The peace of reconciliation which they are to carry to the world must have its reflex in their own hearts.

2. He confers on them the eject of ministry as the effect of his death.

3. After conferring the office, he conveys the gift. "And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith to them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.

(1) This bestowal of the Holy Spirit was an earnest of the fuller Pentecostal effusion.

(2) The gifts of the Spirit emanate from the Son as well as the Father.

(3) The powers of remission and retaining sin do not warrant the Roman claim of absolution in the hands of a priesthood, for the following reasons.

(a) The powers here given are not given to the apostles only, but to the whole body of the disciples. (Luk_24:33)

(b) The Old Testament priests had no power of absolution. They made atonement for sin through sacrifice, but they never absolved.

(c) The powers here given are similar to those given to Peter, (Mat_16:18) which refer to absolution from Church censures.

Vers. 19-23. The first Lord"s day evening.

The most wonderful and memorable day in the world"s history was drawing to a close. The sun, whose rising beams had shone upon the empty tomb, the affrighted guards, the anxious sorrowing women, had now set.

I THE NARRATIVE INTRODUCES US TO AN ANXIOUS COMPANY. Ten apostles and some of their intimate friends and fellow-believers were gathered together, drawn by a community of interest in their unseen Savior. They had a common memory, a common love, a common sorrow. They betook them to seclusion, both from fear lest the wrath of their enemies might assail them, and from lack of sympathy outside. They were disappointed and perplexed. Yet there was inquiry, excitement, wonder, speculation, among them; for the news brought by Simon, by the women, by the two from Emmaus, awakened eager interest and most conflicting emotions.

II THE NARRATIVE RELATES THE ENTRANCE OF A DIVINE VISITOR. Unexpected, amazing, was the approach of the Master. Gracious was his greeting, welcome his familiar tones. He convinced them of his identity by exhibiting his wounds, and proved his humanity by partaking of food. And though his coming was friendly, yet he upbraided his disciples for their unbelief.

III THE NARRATIVE DEPICTS THE COMMON AND SUDDEN JOY WHICH POSSESSED THE BROTHERHOOD. (On this, see homily on ver. 20)

IV THE NARRATIVE RECORDS THE SACRED COMMISSION WITH WHICH JESUS NOW ENTRUSTED HIS DISCIPLES. It must be borne in mind that these servants of Christ had been for a long time closely associated with him, and had thus been prepared for their life-work. So tremendous a trust as this would otherwise be unaccountable.

1. They were to go among men as Christ"s representatives, as those entrusted with Divine authority, and they were to act as ambassadors for God.

2. Their special mission was to declare to men who should receive their message and should truly repent, the absolution and remission of sin. The purpose of Christ"s coming was to secure pardon and acceptance for sinful men; and this purpose was to be fulfilled by means of the ministry of the apostles and their successors.

V THE NARRATIVE MENTIONS THE SPECIAL QUALIFICATION BESTOWED UPON THOSE ENTRUSTED WITH THIS HIGH COMMISSION. The words of Christ, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit," were accompanied with the symbolic act of breathing upon them; and both denoted the reality of the Divine gift by which unlearned and feeble men were fitted to fulfill a ministry of blessing to mankind. T.

A memorable salutation.

Every one in the little company must have heard and used the salutation, "Peace be unto you!" thousands of times. Often must they have heard it, even from Jesus himself. Then, however, it was only the utterance of courtesy, and needed not to be mentioned. Now, being specially mentioned, there is evidently special meaning in it. Jesus was now coming to his disciples in utterly different circumstances from any in which he had come before.

I CONSIDER HOW THEY HAD PARTED. It was in the darkness of Gethsemane, in utter confusion, and quite unexpectedly so far as the disciples were concerned. Everybody thought of his own immediate safety. Yet the scattering and separating must have been of very short duration. The bond of union was stronger than they yet comprehended. A higher power was at work than their own inclinations and tendencies. Their conduct shows a curious mixture of courage and fear. They fastened the doors; but fastened doors would not have kept out very long any Jews who wanted to get in. If safety was the main thing, then these disciples were remaining in the most dangerous spot of all the world.

II THE APPEARANCE OF JESUS ON THE SCENE. All at once he came out of the deepest mystery. We cannot but think of his own words to Nicodemus concerning the wind: "Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." No wonder the disciples were terrified. Aforetime they had often been careless and presumptuous in their dealings with Jesus, but now a strange feeling of awe has arisen which effectually stops everything like carelessness or presumption. Then just at the moment when they can say nothing and do nothing, Jesus speaks the right word, "Peace be unto you!" They would feel that not unjustly he might have uttered words of rebuke. One thinks of Jacob"s needless fears when he heard of Esau coming to meet him with four hundred men. This assurance from the returning Jesus was much needed an assurance as well as a salutation. However weak and ignorant, thoughtless and stupid, the disciples might be, the attitude of Jesus was ever the same. He might have to wound their egotism and selfishness; but the wounds were always those of a friend, not of an enemy. There is an immense difference between a surgical operation and a malicious stab.

III THE SALUTATION IS EVER THE SAME. Out of the invisible he seeks us all, and always with the same utterance. Peace is the desire and intention, and always the end to be secured, however long and troublesome the process may be. Peace is the aim, even when Jesus says that he comes, bringing not peace, but a sword. Men too often approach one another, talking of peace, but preparing for war, and seeking for it. The appeal ever is, "Be ye reconciled to God." It is not we who have to send up the vain and agonizing cry, "O God, wilt thou not be at peace with us? Y.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mark xvi, 14 Luke xxiv, 36.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Two Appearances to the Assembled Disciples.

On the evening of Easter Day:

v. 19. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

v. 20. And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.

v. 21. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you; as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.

v. 22. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost;

v. 23. whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.

Jesus gave His disciples sufficient evidence of His resurrection. On that very same day, in the evening, after He had appeared to various individuals and small groups, He showed Himself alive to ten of the apostles. They were assembled together in some house in Jerusalem and had carefully locked the doors, lest a sudden attack of the Jews make them, too, victims of their hatred. But for the glorified body of the resurrected Lord neither locked doors nor heavy walls were a hindrance. His being was no longer circumscribed by the confines of space and time. They had been alone but a moment ago, and now Jesus stood in their midst. And His was the greeting of the resurrected Savior: Peace to you! The purpose of His coming was now realized, the enmity between God and man had been removed. God was reconciled to His wayward and erring children. The peace of the risen Lord is the comfort and joy of all believers. "For that reason Christ became man, for that reason He died on the cross and arose on the third day, in order that, wherever our hearts, the devil, and the whole world cry about and against us because of our sins as though we were not at peace, that God did not want us, -that He might say to us: No, dear man, not thus, but peace with thee, God is not angry; on that account do not fear, for thy sins I have paid, death I have killed. In this be comforted, that I have done it; then all warfare must have an end and peace must come. " When the disciples were surprised at the risen Lord’s coming and filled with superstitious fear, as though they were seeing a ghost, Jesus showed them His hands, where the marks of the nails were still plainly visible; and His side, where the soldier’s lance-head had left a deep gash. This demonstration convinced the disciples; they were glad that they actually saw the Lord. It was the same body which had hung on the cross and thus earned and merited redemption for all men. His resurrection is not only a guarantee of our resurrection, but also of the fact that our vile bodies will be changed to conform to His glorified body, and that we shall be able to recognize our loved ones in heaven. Thus there is great, overwhelming joy for all Christians in the appearances of the risen Lord. Jesus now repeats His greeting as an introduction to a commission which He is about to give to them as His representatives. As the Father had sent Him into the world, so He now transferred the authority and the power of His calling to them. They were to carry the message of the peace of Easter into all the world. He sent them forth to preach the Gospel. For that is the summary and content of the Gospel, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And having named them thus as His messengers, as His ambassadors, the Lord formally inducts them into this office. He breathed on them, thus symbolizing the transmission of, and actually conveying to them, the Spirit who lived in Him, and whom He had the authority to bestow. The power of the Spirit was to be with them in the Word: If you remit the sins of any, they are remitted to them; if you retain those of any, they are retained. Thus they received the power to pronounce forgiveness of sins; thus was the Office of the Keys instituted. The forgiveness of sins which Jesus earned by His suffering and death should be imparted and given to men through the announcement of the Gospel, publicly and privately, to single persons and to large congregations. This is the absolution of sins. That is Christ’s will and commission: His disciples should pronounce forgiveness, should take away sins, and then everyone should know and believe that by such absolution his sins are actually forgiven and taken away. The Gospel is not only a report of the salvation earned by Jesus, but it is the application of this message, the imparting of the forgiveness of sins. Only he that will not accept this forgiveness, this mercy, this salvation, thereby excludes himself from the grace of God. If such a one is told this fact, his sins are thereby retained. This power and authority was not the sole prerogative of the apostles, nor is it now in the hands of any hierarchy, but it accompanies the Gospel, it is contained in the commission of Christ to all His disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations. To the believers in general, to the Christian congregation that proclaims the message of the Gospel, the keys are given. The pastors that exercise this authority do so in the name of the congregation.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXXVIII. Fifth Appearance of Jesus].

CXXXVIII. FIFTH APPEARANCE OF JESUS. (Jerusalem. Sunday evening) bMARK XVI. 14; cLUKE XXIV. 36-43; dJOHN XX. 19-25.

b14 And afterward cas they spake these things [while the two from Emmaus were telling their story], bhe was manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at [751] meat; d19 When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus chimself dcame and stood in the midst, cof them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they beheld a spirit. [His entrance through a bolted door lent weight to their idea that he had no corporeal body. They knew nothing of the possibilities of a resurrected body.] band he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart [here, as in the previous section, Jesus shows that the heart has much to do with the belief], because they believed not them that had seen him after he was risen. [They had had the testimony of three men and perhaps a half dozen women; they had not lacked evidence.] c38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and wherefore do questionings arise in your heart? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having. 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. dand his side. [These members not only showed that he was not a disembodied spirit, but they served to identify his body with that which they had seen crucified, and hence the person who now spoke was the Jesus whom they had known and lost.] c41 And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here anything to eat? 42 And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish. 43 And he took it, and ate before them. [Thus at last satisfying them that he was not a ghost.] dThe disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: 23 whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. [Now that the apostles [752] knew their Master, he repeats his blessing, and as the New Testament is now sealed in his blood according to the commission under which he came, he, in turn, commissions the twelve to go forth and proclaim its provisions. Symbolic of the baptism which they were to receive at Pentecost, he breathes upon them, and, having thus symbolically qualified them, he commissions them to forgive or retain sin, for this was the subject-matter of the New Testament.] 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus [see p. 244], was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. [The apostles had undoubtedly seen and talked with someone, but the question was, Who? They said that it was Jesus, and Thomas, holding this to be impossible, thought that it must have been someone else whom they mistook for Jesus. But he would not be deceived; he would thoroughly examine the wounds, for these would identify Jesus beyond all doubt--if it were Jesus.]

[FFG 751-753]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

19. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week. John particularly marks the time of this important event. It is the third or fourth appearance of the Savior upon this memorable day, and the first one to the apostolic body. By a comparison with Mark 16:14–16 and Luke 24:36, we learn that at the moment of his appearance they were discussing the story of the resurrection of which many refused to be convinced, so incredulous were they.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

General Information:

It is now evening and Jesus appears to the disciples.

that day, the first day of the week

This refers to Sunday.

the doors of where the disciples were, were closed

You can translate this in an active form. AT: "the disciples had locked the doors where they were" (See: Active or Passive)

for fear of the Jews

Here "Jews" is a synecdoche for the Jewish leaders who might arrest the disciples. AT: "because they were afraid that the Jewish leaders might arrest them" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

Peace to you

This is a common greeting that means "May God give you peace" .

he showed them his hands and his side

Jesus showed the disciples his wounds. AT: "he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

fear

Jew

peace

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

19–23. THE MANIFESTATION TO THE TEN AND OTHERS

19. Before σαββάτων omit τῶν (from Joh 20:1), and before διά omit συνηγμένοι (explanatory gloss).

19. οὔσης οὖν ὀψ. Note the great precision of the expression. When therefore it was evening on that day, the first of the week: that memorable day, the ‘day of days.’ Comp. Joh 1:39, Joh 5:9, Joh 11:49, Joh 18:13, where ‘that’ has a similar meaning. Evidently the hour is late; the disciples have returned from Emmaus (Luk 24:23), and it was evening when they left Emmaus. At least it must be long after sunset, when the second day of the week, according to the Jewish reckoning, would begin. And S. John speaks of it as still part of the first day. This is a point in favour of S. John’s using the modern method in counting the hours: it has a special bearing on the explanation of ‘the seventh hour’ in Joh 4:52. See notes there and on Joh 19:14.

τ. θυρῶν κεκλ. This is mentioned both here and Joh 20:26 to shew that the appearance was miraculous. After the Resurrection Christ’s human form, though still real and corporeal (Luk 24:39), is not subject to the ordinary conditions of material bodies. It is ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ, ἐν δόξῃ, ἐν δυνάμει, πνευματικόν (1Co 15:42-44). Before the Resurrection He was visible, unless He willed it otherwise; after the Resurrection it would seem that He was invisible, unless He willed it otherwise. Comp. Luk 24:31. Οἱ μαθηταί includes more than the Apostles, as is clear from Luk 24:33. It was natural that the small community of believers should come together, to discuss the reported appearances of the Lord, as well as for mutual comfort and support under the (prevailing) fear of the Jews (comp. Joh 7:13). The Sanhedrin might go on to attack Jesus’ disciples; all the more so now that rumours of His being alive were spreading.

ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰ. It is futile to discuss how; that the doors were miraculously opened, as in S. Peter’s release from prison, is neither stated nor implied. For εἰς after ἔστη comp. Joh 19:13, (Joh 21:4). His greeting is the ordinary greeting intensified. For this very simple form of it comp. Jdg 6:23; 1Ch 12:18. His last word to them in their sorrow before His Passion (Joh 16:33), His first word to them in their terror (Luk 24:37) at His return, is ‘Peace.’ Possibly the place was the same; the large upper room where they had last been all together.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

19-23.] In the freedom of His spiritual and triumphant life, He appears to and commissions His own. Compare Luk 24:36-49: Mar 16:14-18.

19.] The circumstance of the doors being shut is mentioned here and in ver. 26, to indicate what sort of appearances these were. Suddenly, unaccounted for by any approach,—the Lord rendered Himself visible to His disciples. Nor did this affect the truth of that resurrection Body, any more than his withdrawing himself from mortal sight occasionally affected the truth of His fleshly Body. Both were done by that supernatural power dwelling in Him, by which His other miracles were wrought. It seems to have been the normal condition of His fleshly Body, to be visible to mortal eyes:—of His risen Body, not to be. But both these He could suspend when He pleased, without affecting the substance or truth of either.

διὰ τ. φόβ. τ. Ἰουδ.] This was natural enough;—the bitter hatred of the Jews (both people and rulers) to their Master,—and his own prophetic announcements,—would raise in them a dread of incipient persecution, now that He was removed.

ἦλθεν—not, by ordinary approach; nor, through the closed doors;—nor in any visible manner;—but (subjectively, of Himself) the word describes that unseen arrival among them which preceded His becoming visible to them.

ἔστη εἰς τ. μ.] Compare Luke, ver. 36, ἔστη ἐν μέσῳ. The εἰς, as in ch. 21:4, denotes the coming, and standing, in one—the standing without motion thither, which in ordinary cases would be standing as the result of motion thither;—so that in this case ἔστη itself is the verb of motion.

εἰρ. ὑμ.] See on Luke ver. 36, and ch. 14:27.

Ver. 20 answers to Luke, ver. 39.

ἐχάρησαν] The first and partial fulfilment of ch. 16:20-22: see notes there.

The disciples seem to have handled Him: see Luke, ver. 39: 1Jn 1:1, and below, ver. 25.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Assembled. Omit.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.