Luke 24:1

The manner of the re-uniting of Christ's soul and body in his resurrection is a mystery, one of the secret things that belong not to us; but the infallible proofs of his resurrection, that he did indeed rise from the dead, and was thereby proved to be the Son of God, are things revealed, which belong to us and to our children. Some of them we have here in these verses, which relate the same story for substance that we had in Matthew and Mark.

I. We have here the affection and respect which the good women that had followed Christ showed to him, after he was dead and buried, Luk 24:1. As soon as ever they could, after the sabbath was over, they came to the sepulchre, to embalm his body, not to take it out of the linen in which Joseph had wrapped it, but to anoint the head and face, and perhaps the wounded hands and feet, and to scatter sweet spices upon and about the body; as it is usual with us to strew flowers about the dead bodies and graves of our friends, only to show our good-will towards the taking off the deformity of death if we could, and to make them somewhat the less loathsome to those that are about them. The zeal of these good women for Christ did continue. The spices which they had prepared the evening before the sabbath, at a great expense, they did not, upon second thoughts, when they had slept upon it, dispose of otherwise, suggesting, To what purpose is this waste? but they brought them to the sepulchre on the morning after the sabbath, early, very early. It is a rule of charity, Every man, according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give, Co2 9:7. What is prepared for Christ, let it be used for him. Notice is taken of the names of these women, Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; grave matronly women, it should seem, they were. Notice is also taken of certain others with them, Luk 24:1, and again, Luk 24:10. These, who had not joined in preparing the spices, would yet go along with them to the sepulchre; as if the number of Christ's friends increased when he was dead, Joh 12:24, Joh 12:32. The daughters of Jerusalem, when they saw how inquisitive the souse was after her Beloved, were desirous to seek him with her (Sol 6:1), so were these other women. The zeal of some provokes others.

II. The surprise they were in, when they found the stone rolled away and the grave empty (Luk 24:2, Luk 24:3); they were much perplexed at that (Luk 24:4) which they had much reason to rejoice in, that the stone was rolled away from the sepulchre (by which it appeared that he had a legal discharge, and leave to come out), and that they found not the body of the Lord Jesus, by which it appeared that he had made us of his discharge and was come out. Note, Good Christians often perplex themselves about that with which they should comfort and encourage themselves.

III. The plain account which they had of Christ's resurrection from two angels, who appeared to them in shining garments, not only white, but bright, and casting a lustre about them. They first saw one angel without the sepulchre, who presently went in, and sat with another angel in the sepulchre, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain; so the evangelists may be reconciled. The women, when they saw the angels, were afraid lest they had some ill news for them; but, instead of enquiring of them, they bowed down their faces to the earth, to look for their dear Master in the grave. They would rather find him in his grave-clothes than angels themselves in their shining garments. A dying Jesus has more beauty in the eyes of a believer than angels themselves. These women, like the spouse, when found by the watchman (and angels are called watchers), enter not into any other conversation with them than this, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? Now here, 1. They upbraid the women with the absurdity of the search they were making: Why seek ye the living among the dead? Luk 24:5. Witness is hereby given to Christ that he is living, of him it is witnessed that he liveth (Heb 7:8), and it is the comfort of all the saints, I know that my Redeemer liveth; for because he lives we shall live also. But a reproof is given to those that look for him among the dead, - that look for him among the dead heroes that the Gentiles worshipped, as if he were but like one of them, - that look for him in an image, or a crucifix, the work of men's hands, or among unwritten tradition and the inventions of men; and indeed all they that expect happiness and satisfaction in the creature, or perfection in this imperfect state, may be said to seek the living among the dead. 2. They assure them that he is risen from the dead (Luk 24:6): "He is not here, but is risen, is risen by his own power; he has quitted his grace, to return no more to it." These angels were competent witnesses, for they had been sent express from heaven with orders for his discharge. And we are sure that their record is true; they durst not tell a lie. 3. They refer them to his own words: Remember what he spoke to you, when he was yet in Galilee. If they had duly believed and observed the prediction of it, they would easily have believed the thing itself when it came to pass; and therefore, that the tidings might not be such a surprise to them and they seemed to be, the angels repeat to them what Christ had often said in their hearing, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and though it was done by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, yet they that did it were not the less sinful for doing it. He told them that he must be crucified. Surely they could not forget that which they had with so much concern seen fulfilled; and would not this bring to their mind that which always followed, The third day he shall rise again? Observe, These angels from heaven bring not any new gospel, but put them in mind, as the angels of the churches do, of the sayings of Christ, and teach them how to improve and apply them.

IV. Their satisfaction in this account, Luk 24:8. The women seemed to acquiesce; they remembered his words, when they were thus put in mind of them, and thence concluded that if he was risen it was not more than they had reason to expect; and now they were ashamed of the preparations they had made to embalm on the third day him who had often said that he would on the third day rise again. Note, A seasonable remembrance of the words of Christ will help us to a right understanding of his providence.

V. The report they brought of this to the apostles: They returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest of Christ's disciples, Luk 24:9. It does not appear that they were together in a body; they were scattered every one to his own, perhaps scarcely two or three of them together in the same lodgings, but one went to some of them and another to others of them, so that in a little time, that morning, they all had notice of it. But we are told (Luk 24:11) how the report was received: Their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. They thought it was only the fancy of the women, and imputed it to the power of imagination; for they also had forgotten Christ's words, and wanted to be put in mind of them, not only what he had said to them in Galilee some time ago, but what he had said very lately, in the night wherein he was betrayed: Again a little while, and ye shall see me. I will see you again. One cannot but be amazed at the stupidity of these disciples, - who had themselves so often professed that they believed Christ to be the Son of God and the true Messiah, had been so often told that he must die and rise again, and then enter into his glory, had seen him more than once raise the dead, - that they should be so backward to believe in his raising himself. Surely it would seem the less strange to them, when hereafter this complaint would justly be taken up by them, to remember that there was a time when it might justly have been taken up against them, Who hath believed our report?

VI. The enquiry which Peter made hereupon, Luk 24:12. It was Mary Magdalene that brought the report to him, as appears, Joh 20:1, Joh 20:2, where this story of his running to the sepulchre is more particularly related. 1. Peter hastened to the sepulchre upon the report, perhaps ashamed of himself, to think that Mary Magdalene should have been there before him; and yet, perhaps, he had not been so ready to go thither now if the women had not told him, among other things, that the watch was fled. Many that are swift-footed enough when there is no danger are but cow-hearted when there is. Peter now ran to the sepulchre, who but the other day ran from his Master. 2. He looked into the sepulchre, and took notice how orderly the linen clothes in which Christ was wrapped were taken off, and folded up, and laid by themselves, but the body gone. He was very particular in making his observations, as if he would rather credit his own eyes than the testimony of the angels. 3. He went away, as he thought, not much the wiser, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass. Had he remembered the words of Christ, even this was enough to satisfy him that he was risen from the dead; but, having forgotten them, he is only amazed with the thing, and knows not what to make of it. There is many a thing puzzling and perplexing to us which would be both plain and profitable if we did but rightly understand the words of Christ, and had them ready to us.

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

Luk_24:1-10

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre

The first Easter morning

The realm of nature a symbol of the realm of grace.

1. The gloomy night.

2. The much-promising dawn.

3. The breaking day. (Van Oosterzee.)

The first pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre

1. How mournful they go thither.

2. How joyful they return. (Van Oosterzee.)

Easter brightness

How on Easter morning it began to be bright--

1. In the garden.

2. In human hearts.

3. Over the cross.

4. For the world.

5. In the realm of the dead. (Van Oosterzee.)

Easter morning

The first rays of the glory of Christ in the dawn of the Easter morning.

1. The stone rolled away.

2. The glittering angels.

3. The hastening women. (Arndt.)

The open grave

The open grave of the Risen One--

1. An arch of His triumph.

2. A bow of peace denoting heavenly favour and grace.

3. A door of life for the resurrection of our spirit and our body. (Hofacker.)

Easter among the graves

1. The stone of the curse Ye rolled away therefrom.

2. There dwell angels therein.

3. The dead are gone out therefrom. (Rantenberg.)

The Easter festival

A festival of--

1. The most glorious joy.

2. The most glorious victory.

3. The most glorious faith.

4. The most glorious hope. (Schmid.)

The Lords Day

Stations on the line of your journey are not your journeys end, but each one brings you nearer. A haven is not home; but it is a place of quiet and rest, where the rough waves are stayed. A garden is a piece of common land, and yet it has ceased to be common land; it is an effort to regain paradise. A bud is not a flower, but it is the promise of a flower. Such are the Lords Days; the worlds week tempts you to sell your soul to the flesh and the world. The Lords Day calls you to remembrance, and begs you rather to sacrifice earth to heaven and time to eternity, than heaven to earth and eternity to time. The six days not only chain you as captives of the earth, but do their best to keep the prison doors shut, that you may forget the way out. The Lords Day sets before you an open door. Samson has carried the gates away. The Lords Day summons you to the threshold of your house of bondage to look forth into immortality--your immortality. The true Lords Day is the eternal life; but a type of it is given to you on earth, that you may be refreshed in the body with the anticipation of the great freedom wherewith the Lord will make you free. (J. Pulsford.)

Why seek ye the living among the dead?--

The living not among the dead

I. THE FACT ANNOUNCED BY THE ANGEL IS, AS WE CAN SEE WHEN WE LOOK BACK ON IT, AMONG THE BEST ATTESTED IN HUMAN HISTORY. For forty days the apostles continually saw Jesus Christ risen, touched Him, spoke with Him, ate add drank with Him as before His death. They staked everything upon this fact. It was to them a fact of experience. One or two people may be hallucinated, but not a multitude. A large number of people will not easily be so swayed by a single interest or a single passion as to believe simultaneously in a story that has no foundation in fact.

II. The fact of the resurrection is the ground of THE REMONSTRANCE of the angels with the holy women--Why seek ye the living among the dead? But is this question applicable only to them during that pause when they felt the shock of the empty tomb? Let us consider.

1. First of all, then, it would seem that we may literally seek the living among the dead if we seek Christ in a Christianity, so termed, which denies the resurrection. If Christs body never left the grave, if it has somewhere mingled with the dust of earth, then, however we may be attracted by His moral teaching, we have no ground for hoping in Him as our Redeemer: there is nothing to prove that He was the Son of God in the way He pointed out, or that He has established any new relation between earth and heaven.

2. But nearly the same thing may happen in cases where the resurrection is not denied, but, nevertheless, men fail to see what habits of thought about our Lord it involves. His life is continued on among us; only its conditions are changed. Lo, I am with you alway, etc. I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. To think of Him as only one of the great teachers of the world, who have come and disappeared, is to lose sight of the significance of His resurrection from the grave; it is to rank Him in thought with men whose eminence has not saved them from the lot of mortality, and whose dust has long since mouldered in the tomb. It is to lose sight of the line which parts the superhuman from the human. It is to seek the living among the dead.

3. Yet more literally do we seek the living among the dead, if without formally rejecting Christianity we give the best of our thought, of our heart, of our enthusiasm, to systems of thought, or to modes of feeling, which Jesus Christ has set aside.

4. We may not be tempted in these ways to seek the living among the dead teachers or dead elements of old or untrustworthy ways of thinking. But there is a risk of our doing so, certainly not less serious and very much more common, to which we are all exposed. As you know, our Lords resurrection is a moral as well as an intellectual power. While it convinces us of the truth of Christianity it creates in us the Christian life. We are risen with Christ. The moral resurrection of Christians is a fact of experience. Resurrection from the grip of bad habits, from the charnel-house of bad passions, resurrection from the enervation, corruption, and decay of bad thoughts, bad words, bad deeds, to a new life with Christ, to the life of warm and pure affections, the life of a ready and vigorous will, of a firm and buoyant hope, of a clear strong faith, of a wide and tender charity. But, as a matter of fact, how do we risen Christians really act? We fall back, willingly or wilfully, into the very habits we have renounced. Our repentance is too often like the Lent of Louis the Fourteenth; it is a paroxysm, followed, almost as a matter of course, by the relapse of Easter. To do the great French monarch justice, he did not expect to find Christs presence in sin and worldliness, as do they who complain of the intellectual difficulties of faith and prayer, while their lives are disposed of in such a manner, that it would be wonderful indeed if faith and prayer could escape suffocation in that chaos of everything save the things which suggest God. (Canon Liddon.)

Christ, a quickening Spirit

1. Observe how Christs resurrection harmonizes with the history of His birth. Others have all been born in sin, after Adams own likeness, in his image, and, being born in sin, they are heirs to corruption. But when the Word of Life was manifested in our flesh, the Holy Ghost displayed that creative hand by which, in the beginning, Eve was formed; and the Holy Child, thus conceived by the power of the Highest, was (as the history shows) immortal even in His mortal nature, clear from all infection of the forbidden fruit, so far aa to be sinless and incorruptible. Therefore, though He was liable to death, it was impossible He should be holden of it. Death might overpower, but it could not keep possession; it had no dominion over Him. He was, in the words of the text, the Living among the dead. And hence His rising from the dead may be said to have evinced His Divine origin. Such is the connection between Christs birth and resurrection; and more than this might be ventured concerning His incorrupt nature were it not better to avoid all risk of trespassing upon that reverence with which we are bound to regard it. Something might be said concerning His personal appearance, which seems to have borne the marks of one who was not tainted with birth-sin. Men could scarce keep from worshipping Him. When the Pharisees sent to seize Him, all the officers, on His merely acknowledging Himself to be Him whom they sought, fell backwards from His presence to the ground. They were scared as brutes are said to be by the voice of man. Thus, being created in Gods image, He was the second Adam: and much more than Adam in His secret nature, which beamed through His tabernacle of flesh with awful purity and brightness even in the days of His humiliation. The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

2. And if such was His visible Majesty, while tie yet was subject to temptation, infirmity, and pain, much more abundant was the manifestation of His Godhead when He was risen from the dead. Then the Divine essence streamed forth (so to say) on every side, and environed His Manhood as in a cloud of glory.

3. He ascended into heaven, that He might plead our cause with the Father Heb_7:25). Yet we must not suppose that in leaving us He closed the gracious economy of His Incarnation, and withdrew the ministration of His incorruptible Manhood from His work of loving mercy towards us. The Holy One of God was ordained, not only to die for us, but also to be the beginning of a new creation unto holiness in our sinful race; to refashion soul and body after His own likeness, that they might be raised up together, and sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Blessed for ever be His holy name! before He went away He remembered our necessity, and completed His work, bequeathing to us a special mode of approaching Him, a holy mystery, in which we receive (we know not how) the virtue of that heavenly body, which is the life of all that believe. This is the blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us; that we, feasting upon the sacrifice, may be partakers of the Divine nature. (J. H. Newman, D. D.)

Easter good news

I. We take THE ANGELS DECLARATION first as the grand truth here--He is risen! Who is thus risen? Who was dead, and has thus sprung from the grave to life? It is Christ Jesus the Lord, who died for our sins, is risen for our justification. The Saviour is no more a sufferer; His sacrificial deed is done.

1. How deeply instructive and interesting is the Gospel history of this great resurrection miracle! Take this great truth away from the Church, all faith is then vain, all hope destroyed, and the whole majestic building of Christianity falls and crumbles into ruins for ever.

2. We delight, then, to go with these godly women to the tomb of Christ, and while, perhaps, we bring too some humble offering of pure hearts to Him, to find how little it is needed, while we hear some glad tidings of His power, and rejoice in His risen glory.

II. THE ANGELS EXPOSTULATION. This may be considered as twofold.

1. As a gentle reproof for want of faith. With all their praiseworthy affection for Christ, even when dead, these devout women, last at the cross, and first at the sepulchre, showed great forgetfulness of the Redeemers words, and their want of faith, as of the other disciples, appears thus gently reproved.

2. This is a faithful expostulation to Christians even now. True religion gives gladness, not deep gloom. (J. G. Angley, M. A.)

The Lord is risen indeed

I. CERTAIN INSTRUCTIVE MEMORIES which gather around the place where Jesus slept with the rich in His death. Though He is not there, He assuredly once was there, for He was crucified, dead, and buried.

1. He has left in the grave the spices. We will not start back with horror from the chambers of the dead, for the Lord Himself has traversed them, and where He goes no terror abides.

2. The Master also left His grave-clothes behind Him. What if I say He left them to be the hangings of the royal bedchamber, wherein His saints fall asleep? See how He has curtained our last bed!

3. He left in the tomb the napkin that was about His head. Let mourners use it to wipe away their tears.

4. He left angels behind Him in the grave. Angels are both the servitors of living saints and the custodians of their dust.

5. What else did our Well-beloved leave behind Him? He left an open passage from the tomb, for the stone was rolled away; doorless is that house of death. Our Samson has pulled up the posts and carried away the gates of the grave with all their bars. The key is taken from the girdle of death, and is held in the hand of the Prince of Life. As Peter, when he was visited by the angel, found his chains fall from off him, while iron gates opened to him of their own accord, so shall the saints find ready escape at the resurrection morning. One thing else I venture to mention as left by my Lord in His forsaken tomb. I visited some few months ago several of the large columbaria which are to be found outside the gates of Rome. You enter a large square building, sunk in the earth, and descend by many steps, and as you descend, you observe on the four sides of the great chamber innumerable little pigeon-holes, in which are the ashes of tens of thousands of departed persons. Usually in front of each compartment prepared for the reception of the ashes stands a lamp. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of these lamps, but they are all unlit, and indeed do not appear ever to have carried light; they shed no ray upon the darkness of death. But now our Lord has gone into the tomb and illuminated it with His presence, the lamp of His love is our guide through the gloom. Jesus has brought life and immortality to light by the gospel; and now in the dove-cotes, where Christians nestle, there is light; yea, in every cemetery there is a light which shall burn through the watches of earths night till the day break and the shadows flee away, and the resurrection morn shall dawn. So then the empty tomb of the Saviour leaves us many sweet reflections, which we will treasure up for our instruction.

II. Our text expressly speaks of VAIN SEARCHES. Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. There are places where seekers after Jesus should not expect to find Him, however diligent may he their search, however sincere their desire. You cannot find a man where he is not, and there are some spots where Christ never will be discovered.

1. In the grave of ceremonialism.

2. Among the tombs of moral reformation.

3. In the law.

4. In human nature.

5. In philosophy.

III. We will again change our strain and consider, in the third place, UNSUITABLE ABODES. The angels said to the women, He is not here, but is risen. As much as to say--since He is alive He does not abide here. Ye are risen in Christ, ye ought not to dwell in the grave. I shall now speak to those who, to all intents and purposes, live in the sepulchre, though they are risen from the dead.

1. Some of these are excellent people, but their temperament, and perhaps their mistaken convictions of duty, lead them to be perpetually gloomy and desponding.

2. Another sort of people seem to dwell among the tombs: I mean Christians--and I trust real Christians--who are very, very worldly.

3. Once more on this point, a subject more grievous still, there are some professors who live in the dead.house of sin. Yet they say that they are Christs people. Nay, I will not say they live in it, but they do what, perhaps, is worse--they go to sin to find their pleasures.

IV. I want to warn you against UNREASONABLE SERVICES. Those good people to whom the angels said, He is not here, but is risen, were bearing a load, and what were they carrying? What is Joanna carrying, and her servants, and Mary, what are they carrying? Why, white linen, and what else? Pounds of spices, the most precious they could buy. What are they going to do? Ah, if an angel could laugh, I should think he must have smiled-as he found they were coming to embalm Christ. Why, He is not here; and, what is more, He is not dead, He does not want any embalming, He is alive. In other ways a great many fussy people do the same thing. See how they come forward in defence of the gospel. It has been discovered by geology and by arithmetic that Moses was wrong. Straightway many go out to defend Jesus Christ. They argue for the gospel, and apologize for it, as if it were now a little out of date, and we must try to bring it round to suit modern discoveries and the philosophies of the present period. That seems to me exactly like coming up with your linen and precious spices to wrap Him in. Take them away.

V. THE AMAZING NEWS which these good women received--He is not here, but He is risen. This was amazing news to His enemies. They said, We have killed Him--we have put Him in the tomb; it is all over with Him. A-ha! Scribe, Pharisee, priest, what have you done? Your work is all undone, for He is risen! It was amazing news for Satan. He no doubt dreamed that he had destroyed the Saviour, but He is risen! What a thrill went through all the regions of hell! What news it was for the grave! Now was it utterly destroyed, and death had lost his sting! What news it was for trembling saints. He is risen indeed. They plucked up courage, and they said, The good cause is the right one still, and it will conquer, for our Christ is still alive at its head. It was good news for sinners. Ay, it is good news for every sinner here. Christ is alive; if you seek Him He will be found of you. He is not a dead Christ to whom I point you to-day. He is risen; and He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The resurrection of Christ

Let us consider, first, the evidences, and, second, the purposes of the second life of Jesus--the life after the crucifixion.

I. AS TO THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTS RESURRECTION, THERE ARE BOTH EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL LINES OF PROOF WHICH GUARD THIS GREAT AND SUBLIME DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

1. Jesus Christ actually died. A million and a half of awe-stricken witnesses saw Him die.

2. The second fact in the series of proofs is that Christ was buried. Interment is not often granted to crucified criminals. But Providence overruled the sordidness of the cautious scribes and priests, in order to multiply the witnesses to the resurrection.

3. The next fact is that the sepulchre somehow or other was emptied on the third day. How came the sepulchre to be emptied? There are only two theories. The rulers said the body was stolen out of it. The disciples said the body had risen from it. It is manifest that the enemies would not steal the body of Christ, and how improbable it is that His disciples should have done it. How could it have been done by twelve men against sixty, when Jerusalem was filled with an excited crowd, when the moon shone clearly in a cloudless oriental sky? No; it cannot be believed, and we are driven back therefore to the theory that He actually rose.

4. The internal evidence is equally convincing. Consider the existence and the spread of persecution for the testimony as to the resurrection of Christ.

II. Consider THE PRACTICAL PURPOSES WHICH THE RESURRECTION IS INTENDED TO WORK OUT IN OURSELVES.

1. It is a manifestation, a vindication of ancient prophecy and of the personal character of the Messiah as well.

2. It is a seal of the acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus, and by consequence of infinite moment to confirm the hopes of the world.

3. It is an earnest of our own rising, a pledge of immortality for the race for which the Second Adam died.

4. Look at the resurrection as an encouragement. There is a great error, brethren, in Christendom just now, and that is that we believe in a dead Christ. He is not dead, He is living--living to listen to your prayers, living to forgive your sins. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)

The living Christ

I. A SURPRISING FACT. Jesus among the dead!

1. The Saviours perfect humanity.

2. The Saviours perfect identity with the cause of man.

II. A MORE SURPRISING FACT. Jesus no longer among the dead!

1. His mission to the tomb was accomplished.

2. His vision of immortality was realized.

3. The true object of faith was secured. (The Weekly Pulpit.)

An Easter sermon

I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURRECTION.

1. If Jesus really died and then rose from the dead, materialism is completely overthrown.

2. Pantheism receives its death-blow with the establishment of Christs resurrection.

3. All far-reaching scepticism is undermined.

II. THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. Conclusion:

1. We should live less in tombs. The grave is not half as large as we think. No life is buried there. Everything Christ-like is risen. Let life, not death, be our companion.

2. We must trust Christ implicitly. The living way has been set before us. He who is the life of the world has lighted its highway from the cradle, not to, but through the tomb. (D. O. Clark.)

The living dead

I. THE DEAD ARE THE LIVING. Language, which is more accustomed and adapted to express the appearances than the realities of things, leads us astray very much when we use the phrase the dead as if it expressed the continuance of the condition into which men pass in the act of dissolution. It misleads us no less, when we use it as if it expressed in itself the whole truth even as to that act of dissolution. The dead and the living are not names of two classes which exclude each other. Much rather, there are none who are dead. Oh, how solemnly sometimes that thought comes up before us, that all those past generations which have stormed across this earth of ours, and then have fallen into still forgetfulness, live yet. Somewhere at this very instant, they now verily are! We say, they were, they have been. There are no have beens! Life is life for ever. To be is eternal being. Every man that has died is at this instant in the full possession of all his faculties, in the intensest exercise of all his capacities, standing somewhere in Gods great universe, ringed with the sense of Gods presence, and feeling in every fibre of his being that life, which comes after death, is not less real, but more real; not less great, but more great; not less full or intense, but more full and intense, than the mingled life which, lived here on earth, was a centre of life surrounded with a crust and circumference of mortality. The dead are the living. They lived whilst they died; and after they die, they live on for ever. And so we can look upon that ending of life, and say, it is a very small thing; it only cuts off the fringes of my life, it does not touch me at all. It only plays round about the husk, and does not get at the core. It only strips off the circumferential mortality, but the soul rises up untouched by it, and shakes the bands of death from off its immortal arms, and flutters the stain of death from off its budding wings, and rises fuller of life because of death, and mightier in its vitality in the very act of submitting the body to the law, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Touching but a part of the being, and touching that but for a moment, death is no state, it is an act. It is not a condition, it is a transition. Men speak about life as a narrow neck of land, betwixt two unbounded seas: they had better speak about death as that. It is an isthmus, narrow and almost impalpable, on which, for one brief instant, the soul poises itself; whilst behind it there lies the inland lake of past being, and before it the shoreless ocean of future life, all lighted with the glory of God, and making music as it breaks even upon these dark, rough rocks. Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side. God has taken our dead to Himself, and we ought not to think (if we would think as the Bible speaks) of death as being anything else than the transitory thing which breaks down the brazen walls and lets us into liberty.

II. SINCE THEY HAVE DIED, THEY LIVE A BETTER LIFE THAN OURS. In what particulars is their life now higher than it was? First, they have close fellowship with Christ; then, they are separated from this present body of weakness, of dishonour, of corruption; then, they are withdrawn from all the trouble, and toil, and care of this present life; and then, and not least, surely, they have death behind them, not having that awful figure standing on their horizon waiting for them to come up with it I These are some of the elements of life of the sainted dead. What a wondrous advance on the life, of earth they reveal if we think of them I They who have died in Christ live a fuller and a nobler life, by the very dropping away of the body; a fuller and a nobler life by the very cessation of care, change, strife and struggle; and, above all, a fuller and nobler life, because they sleep in Jesus, and are gathered into His bosom, and wake with Him yonder beneath the altar, clothed in white robes, and with palms in their hands, waiting the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. For though death be a progress--a progress to the spiritual existence; though death be a birth to a higher and nobler state; though it be the gate of life, fuller and better than any which we possess; though the present state of the departed in Christ is a state of calm blessedness, a state of perfect communion, a state of rest and satisfaction; yet it is not the final and perfect state, either.

III. THE BETTER LIFE, WHICH THE DEAD IN CHRIST ARE LIVING NOW, LEADS ON TO A STILL FULLER LIFE when they get back their glorified bodies. The perfection of man is, body, soul, and spirit. That is man, as God made him. The spirit perfected, the soul perfected, without the bodily life, is but part of the whole. For the future world, in all its glory, we have the firm basis laid that it, too, is to be in a real sense a material world, where men once more are to possess bodies as they did before, only bodies through which the spirit shall work conscious of no disproportion, bodies which shall be fit servants and adequate organs of the immortal souls within, bodies which shall never break down, bodies which shall never hem in nor refuse to obey the spirits that dwell in them, but which shall add to their power, and deepen their blessedness, and draw them closer to the God whom they serve and the Christ after the likeness of whose glorious body they are fashioned and conformed. Body, soul, and spirit,--the old combination which was on earth is to be the perfect humanity of heaven. We have nothing to say, now and here, about what that bodily condition may be--about the differences and the identities between it and our present earthly house of this tabernacle. Only this we know--reverse all the weakness of flesh, and you get some faint notion of the glorious body. Why, then, seek the living among the dead? God giveth His beloved sleep; and in that peaceful sleep, realities, not dreams, come round their quiet rest, and fill their conscious spirits and their happy hearts with blessedness and fellowship. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

A present Christ

I. THE TENDENCY TO THINK OF CHRIST AS PAST RATHER THAN PRESENT.

1. In His work of redemption.

2. In His converting power.

3. In His Pentecostal influences.

4. In His administration of earthly affairs.

II. THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF THIS TENDENCY upon the Church, collectively and individually, when indulged.

1. It tends to the exaltation of the purely dogmatic over the practical and experimental confession of Christ.

2. It encourages the substitution of speculative theories of Christs atoning work, for the actual power and continuance of that work itself in its application to human needs.

3. It deprives the Church of its great incentive to an active co-operation in the saving work of the Redeemer.

III. THE GROUNDS AND THE CONCLUSIONS of the higher and absolutely true view of Jesus Christ as personally present at all times with His people, in the power and richness of His Divine life. His promise, Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. Observe therefore--

1. The necessity and comfort of habitually thinking of Christ as personally with us in the present varied needs and trials and duties of life.

2. The cheering prospect that death will only set us free, as it set Him free, from the restraints and limitations of this mixed world, and usher us into a state of boundless spiritual activity.

3. The uniqueness and authority of the gospel of Christ as the revelation of this life of the spirit, and as the power which can effectually save us from the fear and power of death. (H. R. Harris.)

Christ is risen

I. Christ is risen, and THE LAST OPPOSING MONARCHY HAS FALLEN. Death reigns no more. Sin has been vanquished by Christs Cross, and the empire of the Prince of Darkness has been for ever destroyed.

II. He has risen, and His OWN DIVINE WORDS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED. Christ claimed to be supernatural in every sphere of being. Easter substantiates His claim to mastery over death. If this promise has been fulfilled, so will all others be.

III. He has risen, and THE DEAD HAVE NOT PERISHED. Personal immortality for each of us, and reunion with the loved and lost.

IV. Christ is risen, and NO LASTING CHRISTIAN CHURCH CAN REST ON A CLOSED TOMB. (W. M. Statham, B. A.)

The resurrection of Christ

As the resurrection of Christ is believed chiefly on the authority of His disciples, it is desirable to inquire respecting the circumstances in which they spoke.

I. THEY DID NOT EXPECT THAT HE WOULD RISE FROM THE DEAD, NOR BELIEVE THAT HE HAD RISEN, EVEN WHEN IT WAS TOLD TO THEM.

II. THEY COULD GAIN NOTHING BY ASSERTING IT, IF IT WERE UNTRUE. As a consequence of declaring His resurrection, they could foresee only affliction, reproach, and death.

III. THE DISCIPLES WERE AS WELL QUALIFIED AS ANY OTHER MEN, TO KNOW WHETHER THE THINGS WHICH THEY AFFIRMED WERE SO. The subjects respecting which they testified were cognizable by the senses. Had they been dark, abstruse principles--had they been some rare phenomena in the material world, but removed from inspection by the several senses, there would have been reason for suspecting their capacity to know, and fully to comprehend them.

IV. CHRIST APPEARED TO THEM MANY TIMES. Not once or twice only, but so often as to leave no room for doubt.

V. There is one more circumstance which gives weight to the evidence that He had risen. This relates to THE MANNER IN WHICH HE AT VARIOUS TIMES APPEARED to His disciples and others, who were associated with Him. The circumstances in which mens imaginations are wrought into the belief that they have seen spirits, are very peculiar. Except in cases of disease, they are not infested with these unfounded notions in open day, and in the society of their friends. The regions of the dead, the burial places of our acquaintance, and the scenes of some tragical event, are the favoured retreats of these terrors. But never in the enjoyment of health, in open day, and amongst tried friends, have men been known to be afflicted by these creations of their own minds. Now, it was not in scenes like these that Christ appeared to His disciples. And in most of these circumstances it is utterly impossible for the imaginations of men to form images which they might mistake for living beings. Nothing but a living man could perform the various things which the disciples have attributed to Christ. In conclusion:

1. Christs resurrection must have been a matter of great joy to His disciples. Now, instead of looking forward only to days of shame, and years of disgrace, they began to anticipate glory, and honour, and immortality.

2. The resurrection of Christ establishes the truth of Christianity.

3. The resurrection of Christ is a victory over the power of death.

4. If our resurrection be demonstrably established by the resurrection of Christ, it becomes us to be cautious how we use these bodies in the present life. (J. Foot, D. D.)

Lessons

1. In the fact of Christs resurrection we have the great proof of His Divine mission, and a call to submit to Him as our teacher and Lord.

2. Let us improve this event as a demonstration that Christs sacrifice was accepted, and an encouragement to trust in His righteousness for justification.

3. The resurrection of Christ is connected with the observance of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath.

4. Let us see that this event has its proper purifying effect on our heart and conduct. We are called to be conformed to the image of Christ in general, and we are particularly called to be conformed to Him in His death and resurrection.

5. The resurrection of Jesus Christ presents the pattern and pledge of the happy and glorious resurrection of all His followers. There will be a resurrection both of the just and of the unjust.

6. The resurrection of Christ should keep us in mind that we shall stand before Him as our judge. (James Foote, M. A.)

Angels as remembrancers

But now it should be more carefully observed that this reminding the women of what had been said to them by Christ is probably but an example of what continually occurs in the ministration of angels. The great object of our discourse is to illustrate this ministration, to give it something of a tangible character; and we gladly seize on the circumstance of the angels recalling to the minds of the women things which had been heard, because it seems to place under a practical point of view what is too generally considered mere useless speculation. And though we do not indeed look for any precise repetition of the scene given in our text, for angels do not now take visible shapes in order to commune with men, we know not why we should not ascribe to angelic ministration facts accurately similar, if not as palpable, proceeding from supernatural agency. We think that we shall be borne out by the experience of every believer in Christ when we affirm that texts of Scripture are often suddenly and mysteriously brought into the mind, texts which have not perhaps recently engaged our attention, but which are most nicely suited to our circumstances, or which furnish most precisely the material then needed by our wants. There will enter into the spirit of a Christian, on whom has fallen some unexpected temptation, a passage of the Bible which is just as a weapon wherewith to foil his assailant; or, if it be an unlookedfor difficulty into which he is plunged, the occurring verses will be those best adapted for counsel and guidance; or, if it be some fearful trouble with which he is visited, then will there pass through all the chambers of the sou] gracious declarations which the inspired writers will seem to have uttered and registered on purpose for himself. And it may be that the Christian will observe nothing peculiar in this; there may appear to him nothing but an effort of memory, roused and acted on by the circumstances in which he is placed; and he may consider it as natural that suitable passages should throng into his mind, as that he should remember an event at the place where he knows it to have happened. But let him ask himself whether he is not, on the other hand, often conscious of the intrusion into his soul of what is base and defiling? Whether, if he happen to have heard the jeer and the blasphemy, the parody on sacred things, or the insult upon moral, they will not be frequently recurring to his mind? recurring, too, at moments when there is least to provoke them, and when it had been most his endeavour to gather round him an atmosphere of what is sacred and pure. And we never scruple to give it as a matter of consolation to a Christian, harassed by these vile invasions of his soul, that he may justly ascribe them to the agency of the devil; wicked angels inject into the mind the foul and polluting quotation; and there is not necessarily any sin in receiving it, though there must be if we give it entertainment in place of casting it instantly out. But why should we be so ready to go for explanation to the power of memory, and the force of circumstances, when apposite texts occur to the mind, and then resolve into Satanic agency the profanation of the spirit with what is blasphemous and base. It were far more consistent to admit a spiritual influence in the one case as well as in the other; to suppose that, if evil angels syllable to the soul what may have been heard or read of revolting and impure, good angels breathe into its recesses the sacred words, not perhaps recently perused, but which apply most accurately to our existing condition. We do not wish to draw you away, in the least degree, from the truth that the eternal uncreated Spirit of God alone, the Holy Ghost, is the author of our sanctification, the infuser into us of the principle of Divine life, and He only is able to overrule our wills, to penetrate the deepest secrets of our hearts, and to rectify our most inward faculties. But surely it does not infringe the office of the Holy Ghost to suppose, with Bishop Bull, that good angels may, and often do, as instruments of the Divine goodness, powerfully operate upon our fancies and imaginations, and thereby prompt us to pious thoughts, affections, and actions. They were angels, as you will remember, which came and ministered to our Lord after He had been exposed in the wilderness to extraordinary assaults from the devil. He had the Spirit without measure; but, nevertheless, as though to mark to us the agency which this Spirit is often pleased to employ, it was in and through angels that consolation was imparted; even as, in the dread hour of His last conflict with the powers of darkness, there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. Not only, therefore, can I regard it as credible that angels stir up our torpid memories and bring truths to our recollection, as they did to the women at the sepulchre of Christ--I can rejoice in it as fraught with consolation, because showing that a created instrumentality is used by the Holy Ghost in the renewing our nature. And surely it may well excite gladness that there is around the Christian the guardianship of heavenly hosts; that, whilst his pathway is thronged by malignant spirits, whose only effort is to involve him in their everlasting shame, it is also thronged by ministers of grace, who long to have him as their companion in the presence of God; for there is thus what we might almost dare to call a visible array of power on our side, and we may take all that confidence which should result from being actually permitted to look on the antagonists, and to see that there are more with us than there are against. But it is hardly possible to read these words of the angels and not to feel how reproachfully they must have fallen on the ears of the women! how they must have upbraided them with want of attention and of faith. For had they but listened heedfully to what Christ had said, and had they but given due credence to His words, they would have come in triumph to welcome the living, in place of mournfully with spices to embalm the dead. But God dealt more graciously with these women than their inattention, or want of faith, had deserved; He caused the words to be brought to their remembrance, whilst they might yet inspire confidence, though they could hardly fail also to excite bitter contrition. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Risen

A rising Saviour demands a rising life. For remember, brethren, there are two laws. One law, by which all men gravitate, like a stone, to the earth--another law, equally strong, the law of grace, by which every renewed man is placed under the attractive influence of an ascending power, by which he must be always drawn higher and higher. For just as when a man, lying upon the ground, gets up and stands upright, his upright posture draws up with it all his limbs, so in the mystical body of Jesus Christ, the risen Head necessarily draws up all the mystical members. The process of elevation is one which, beginning at a mans conversion to God, goes on day by day, hour by hour, in his tastes, in his judgments, in his affections, in his habits. First it is spiritual, then it is material. Now, in the rising spirit of the man, first he sees higher and higher elevations of being, and gradually fits for the fellowship of the saints and the presence of God. And presently, on that great Easter morning of the resurrection, in his restored body, when it shall wake up, and rise satisfied with its Redeemers likeness, made pure and ethereal enough to soar, and blend and co-operate with the spirit in all its holy and eternal exercises. But what I wish to impress upon you now is, that this series in the ever-ascending scale begins now; that there is, as every believer fee]s, a daily dying, so there is also, as our baptism tells us, a daily resurrection. It is always well to take advantage of particular seasons to do particular proper things. Now to-day the proper thing is to rise, to get up higher. This Easter day ought not to pass without every one of us beginning with some new affection, some new work. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

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

Luk 24:1. Upon the first day of the week, &c. — On the morning of the first day of the week, when every thing was made ready, all the women, mentioned Luk 24:10; and Mar 16:1; and certain others with them, who were not from Galilee, went out very early, carrying the spices which they had prepared, to the sepulchre, at which some or all of them arrived about the rising of the sun. Whether they went and returned all in one company, or at different times, and by different ways, is not quite certain. See the notes on Mat 28:1-10; Mar 16:1-2; John speaks of none of the women who made this visit to the sepulchre but Mary Magdalene. Yet, because he mentions none but her, it does not follow that there were no others with her. In the gospels there are many such omissions. For instance, Mark and Luke speak of one demoniac only, who was cured at Gadara, though Matthew tells us there were two who had devils expelled out of them at that time In like manner Mark and Luke speak only of one blind man, to whom Jesus gave sight near Jericho, while from Matthew it is certain two had that benefit conferred on them there. Before Jesus rode into Jerusalem both the ass and its colt were brought to him, though Mark, Luke, and John speak only of the colt. Wherefore, since it is the manner of the sacred historians in other instances to make such omissions, John may be supposed to have mentioned Mary Magdalene singly in this part of his history, notwithstanding he knew that others had been with her at the sepulchre; and the rather, because his intention was to relate only what things happened in consequence of her information, and not to speak of the transactions of the rest, which his brother historians had handled at large.

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

PERIOD NINTH.

THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION, Luk_24:1-53.

§ 145.—FIRST VISIT OF THE WOMEN TO THE SEPULCHRE, Luk_24:1-11.

See notes on Mat_28:1; Mat_28:5-8; Mar_16:2-8; Joh_20:1-2.

5. The living—

The living one. Among the dead—In the sepulchre where the dead repose.

7. Saying—From this passage it would seem that our Lord had, even before leaving Galilee, assured these women that he was to be crucified and rise again. Perhaps they had assigned it a symbolic meaning and forgotten it; and now it is brought fresh by the angelic words to their memories and they realize its fulfilment.

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

Vers. 1-49. THE RESURRECTION. All the four evangelists give an account of the Resurrection. None of the four, however, attempt to give a history of it simply from a human point of sight. Each Gospel probably reproduces the special points dwelt on in certain great centres of Christian teaching, in what we should now term different schools of thought. (Attempts have been made by theological scholars to classify these as Jewish, Gentile, Greek, Roman; but only with indifferent success).

The teaching which St. Matthew"s Gospel represents, evidently in the Resurrection preaching dwelt with peculiar insistence on the great Galilaean appearance of the Risen. St. Luke confines himself exclusively to the appearance, in Judaea. St. John chooses for his Resurrection instruction scenes which had for their theatre both Galilee and Judaea. St. John, as his central or most detailed piece of teaching, dwells on a fishing scene on Gennesaret, the actors being the well-known inner circle of the apostles. While St. Luke chooses for his detailed Resurrection narrative a high-road in a Jerusalem suburb; and for actors, two devoted, but historically unknown, disciples.

Then there is no question of discrepancies in this portion of the great history. It is not easy to frame a perfectly satisfactory harmony of all the events related by the four, after the Lord had risen; for, in fact, we possess no detailed account or history of what took place in that eventful period in presence of the disciples. We simply have memoranda of eye-witnesses of certain incidents connected with the Resurrection selected by the great first teachers as specially adapted to their own preaching and instruction.

The events of the first Easter Day have Been tabulated by Professor Westcott, in what he terms a provisional arrangement, as follows:

APPROX TIME.

Very early on Sunday

The Resurrection, followed by the earthquake, the descent of the angel, the opening of the tomb. (Mat_28:2-4)

5 a.m....

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, probably with others, start for the sepulchre in the twilight. Mary Magdalene goes before the others, and returns at once to Peter and John, (Joh_20:1, etc.)

5:30 a.m....

Her companions reach the sepulchre when the sun had risen. (Mar_16:2) A vision of an angel. Message to the disciples (Mat_28:5, etc,; Mar_16:5, etc.).

6 a.m....

Another party, among whom is Joanna, come a little later, but still in the early morning (Luk_24:1, etc.; comp. Mar_16:1, note). A vision of "two young men." Words of comfort and instruction. (Luk_24:4, etc.)

6:30 a.m....

The visit of Peter and John. (Joh_20:3-10) A vision of two angels to Mary Magdalene. (Joh_20:11-13) About the same time the company of women carry their tidings to the apostles. (Luk_24:10, etc.)

7 a.m....

The Lord reveals himself to Mary Magdalene. (Joh_20:14-18 Mar_16:9) Not long after he reveals him self, as it appears, to the company of women who are returning to the sepulchre. Charge to the brethren to go to Galilee. (Mat_28:9, etc.)

4-6 p.m....

The appearance to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. (Luk_24:13, etc.; Mar_16:12)

After 4 p.m...

An appearance to St. Peter. (Luk_24:34; comp. 1Co_15:5)

8 p.m....

The appearance to the eleven and others. (Luk_24:36, etc.; Mar_16:14 Joh_20:19, etc.)

In the above table one point must be specially noticed: two companies or separate groups of women are mentioned as going to the sepulchre with the same pious object of assisting in the final embalming of the sacred body.

If this be assumed to be the fact, there will be nothing improbable in the supposition that both these groups of women, all doubtless intimate friends belonging to the little company of the Master, but living probably some distance apart in Jerusalem, came together some time on the sabbath day, and then arranged to meet early on the first day at the sepulchre. Probably the spices purchased in some haste just before the sabbath commenced were judged inadequate.

(1) For in Luk_23:56 we read of a company of women, most probably including all, i.e. both groups, of holy women, who, after beholding the sepulchre, "returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day.

(2) In Mar_16:1 we read, When the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought not had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him." This company (alluded to in Mar_16:1) arrives the first at the sepulchre, and sees the vision of one angel. (Mar_16:5) The other company (alluded to in Luk_24:1) arrives not long after at the sepulchre, and sees the vision of two angels. (Luk_24:4)

In considering the accounts of the Resurrection, the following memoranda will be found suggestive:

(1) The holy women are the principal actors in all the four accounts of the circumstances connected with the tomb. But their assertions were not believed by the disciples until their statements were confirmed by the Lord"s personal appearance.

(2) When St. Paul (1Co_15:5-8) sums up the great appearances of our Lord, the basis of our faith, he makes no reference to

his appearance to Mary Magdalene (Joh_20:14, etc.; Mar_16:9) or to the women. (two Maries mentioned Mat_28:9, Mat_28:10)

(3) No evangelist describes the Resurrection-no earthly being having been present. St. Matthew is the evangelist who, in his narrative, goes furthest back. He mentions the shock of the earthquake, the awful presence of the angel, the benumbing terror which seized the guards who were watching. Most probably these signs accompanied the Resurrection.

(4) The risen Lord appeared only to his own.

(5) That no future doubt should be thrown on the reality of the appearances of the Risen, he showed himself not only to solitary individuals, but to companies, i.e. to two, to the eleven (repeatedly), and to above five hundred brethren at once. And these manifestations took place

(a) at different hours of the day;

(b) in different localities in Judaea, in Galilee, in rooms of houses, in the open air.

Vers. 1-12. The Resurrection. At the sepulchre.

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. In the foregoing general note on the Resurrection, the probability has been discussed of the holy women having been divided into two companies who separately came to the sepulchre. St. Luke"s notice here refers to the party who arrived the second at the tomb.

Vers. 1-12. The Resurrection-morning.

Who are the witnesses to the Resurrection? What is the evidence on which it was believed by the first disciples? on which it is received by all Christians still?

I THE WITNESSES ARE THE HOLY WOMEN AND THE APOSTLES. It is (ver. 1) the very early morning: "while it was yet dark," says St. John; "as the day began to dawn," says St. Matthew; "at the rising of the sun," says St. Mark. Then the women hasten towards the sepulchre. How many formed the company, or, as seems to be implied, the two companies, of women we know not. The names of five are given, and the rest are grouped under the phrases, the "others that were with them," and "the others from Galilee." They quickly pass through the silent streets.

Jerusalem is still asleep; neither memory of what had happened, nor fear of what might happen, has disturbed its repose. They have only one care (ver. 1) the complete embalming of the body which had been hastily laid in the rock-hewn sepulchre of Joseph. There is no idea beyond this; there is no hope even against hope that, on this the third day, he would rise again. With the eagerness characteristic of woman"s nature, they proceed, the question never suggesting itself until they near the tomb, "Who shall roll away the stone from the mouth of the cave?" It would seem that they did not know of the guard which had been commanded to watch or of the sealing of the stone, for that had been done on the sabbath morning; but some of them had observed the setting of the stone a block three or four feet in height, and two or three in breadth, requiring several men to move it. "How shall it be moved? how shall we find an entrance?" is the question before them as they press towards the holy place. Now, what are the facts? In the dawn, half-clear and half-dark, as the east begins to lighten, Mary of Magdala, the foremost of the company, sees the cave standing wide open the stone having been rolled aside. Horror-struck, she turns to her companions, and, yielding to the moment"s impulse, she speeds back to the city to communicate her fears to Peter and John. (Joh_20:1, Joh_20:2) In the meantime, her companions venture forward. Timidly they enter the tomb, or the vestibule of the tomb, to search for the body. Lo, there, (Mat_28:2, Mat_28:3) on the stone which had been pushed into a corner, sits one "whose countenance is like lightning, and his raiment white as snow," and prostrate on the ground are the Roman sentries. The women start., but the assuring word, "Fear not ye," is spoken, and the invitation (Mat_28:6) is given to "come and see the place where the Lord lay." Yes, guardians, and only guardians, are these one where the head, another where the feet, of Jesus had been token of the complete, protecting care of his Father. And these guardians ask (vers. 5-7), "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" and repeat the testimony, "He is not here: he is risen," bidding them remember his own words, and bear the news of the Resurrection to the sorrowing company. It is with fear and great joy that they depart, running to bring the disciples word. They encounter scepticism. Their hot, eager sentences (ver. 11) seem to the apostles "as idle tales, and they believe them not." Peter and John, however, have already obeyed the importunate pleading of Mary. And there, to be sure, as they reach the sepulchre, is the open door. John, who is first, looks in without entering; Peter, coming up, enters at once. "John," observes Matthew Henry, "could outrun Peter, but Peter could out-dare John." Undoubtedly the tomb is empty. Examining it, they discover (ver. 12) the linen clothes laid by themselves; and the napkin which had surrounded the head laid by itself. There had been no haste. Not thus would any have acted who had borne away the sacred form. Peter, after minute examination of the surroundings, "departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass." John, with the quick intuition of love, not only wondered, but believed felt sure that these grave-clothes were the sign of a victory. Such is the account of that ever-memorable morning. The arrangement of its events may not be absolutely accurate; in the ignorance of all that occurred, it is impossible to supply every link in the chain of narrative. The evangelists are so filled with the one reality, "He is risen," that they are not careful as to the minutiae of the circumstances. On the Resurrection, as personal, as real, the structure of Christian life and doctrine is reared. By the effect of the Resurrection the apostles were transformed. The foolish and slow-hearted fishermen of the past became the princes of a new and heavenly kingdom. "With great power they gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

II But WITHOUT FURTHER DWELLING ON THE EVIDENCES OF THE RESURRECTION AS A HISTORICAL FACT, CONSIDER IT AS A MIGHTY SPIRITUAL FORCE. Consider what the apostle calls "the power of the Resurrection." What is the central truth of the forty days between the Resurrection and Ascension? Study the brief account of these forty days, and you see at once a change in the manner and conditions of the revelation of Christ. shows himself only to chosen witnesses. St. Mark says that he appeared to the disciples "in another form." The eyes of the disciples are declared to be so held (ver. 16) that they do not know him. It is the same Jesus, but much is altered. "He came and he went as he pleased; material substances such as the fastened doors were no impediment to his coming; when he was present his disciples did not, as a matter of course, know him." These forty days were what the sunrise is to the day; they were the beginning of the relation in which he stands to his Church now. All his self-revelations are pictures of the way and truth of his presence as we are called to realize it. Men had seen him without knowing him; now they know him without seeing him. We behold him, as Newman has finely said, "passing from his hiding-place of sight without knowledge to that of knowledge without sight." As a transition-time, giving us intimations of the glory in which he is abiding and of the grace in which he is dealing with us, regard the period that was ushered in by the early morning of the first day of the week. It was a great day. Four appearances are noted. The first, (Joh 20) to Mary of Magdala, followed or preceded, perhaps, by an appearance to the other women; (Mt 23) the second (vers. 13-35), to the two brethren journeying to Emmaus; the third, to Simon Peter (ver. 35); and the fourth, (Joh_20:19-23) to the disciples assembled at night when the doors were shut for fear of the Jews. Each of these appearances is significant. St, Luke relates the second. One remark only as to Mary of Magdala. Renan has asserted that the glory of the Resurrection belongs to her; that, "after Jesus, it is Mary who has done the most to the founding of Christianity." There can be nothing more contrary to the explicit statements of the evangelists than much that is contained in the brilliant French man"s statement. But the message of Mary is indeed the basis of the faith of the Church, the basis of the faith of humanity. "If Christ is not risen, our hope is vain; we are yet in our sins." And the commandment which sent her to the disciples is the inspiration of all Christian hearts. "Go, tell my brethren." Tell the message of the risen Lord in the light with which the countenance is irradiated; tell it in the glad obedience by which the life is sanctified; tell it through all that you do and are; tell let your teaching cease only with your breathing that Christ has risen, that the imprisoning stone has been rolled away, and the kingdom of heaven is open to all believers, its gates being closed neither by day nor by night, for there is no night there.

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-12. Side-lights from the Resurrection.

The simple, unpretending story of the Resurrection, as here narrated, brings into view other truths than that great and supreme fact of the rising of our Lord. We have our attention called to

I THE CONSTANCY AND THE EAGERNESS OF TRUE AFFECTION, (Ver. 1) No thought had these women of deserting him whom they loved but whom the world hated and had now slain. On the contrary, the enmity of those that maligned and murdered him made their affection to cleave all the more firmly to him. It attended him right up to the very last; it followed him to the grave; it came to bestow those final ministries which only devoted affection would have cared to render. And it showed itself as eager as it was constant. "Very early in the morning they came unto the sepulchre." True love to our Lord will stand these tests. It will survive the enmities and oppositions of an indifferent or a hostile society; it will be unaffected by these except, indeed, to be strengthened and deepened by them; moreover, it will show its loyalty and its fervour by the eagerness of its service, not waiting for the last hour of necessity, but availing itself of the first hour of opportunity.

II THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DIFFICULTIES AS WE GO ON OUR WAY OF FAITHFUL SERVICE. We know from Mark (Mar_16:3) that these women were full of apprehension lest they should be unable to get the stone rolled away from the door. But they went on their way to do their sacred office; and when they reached the spot they found their difficulty vanished (ver. 2). This is the common experience of the seeker after God in Christ, of the man desirous of discharging his duty in the fear of God, of the Christian worker. "Who will roll away that intervening stone?" we ask timidly and apprehensively. "How shall we get over that insurmountable barrier? How will our weakness prevail against such solid obstacles?" Let us go on our way of faith, of duty, of loving service, and we shall find that, if some angel has not been on the scene, the hindrance has disappeared, the way is open, the goal within our reach, the service within the compass of our powers.

III THE SURPRISES THAT AWAIT US AS WE PROCEED, These women found an empty grave, visitants from the unseen world, a most unexpected though most welcome message; instead of a mournful satisfaction, they found a new hope, far too good and far too great to be held all at once within their heart (vers. 4-7). Peter, too, found himself the subject of a great astonishment (ver. 12). God has his merciful surprises for us as we proceed on our Christian path. He may surprise us with a sudden fear or a sudden sorrow; but he also surprises us with an unanticipated peace; with an unlooked-for joy; with a new, strange hope; before long he will introduce us to the blessed surprise of the heavenly realities.

IV THE NEARNESS OF THE HEAVENLY TO THE EARTHLY SPHERE. (Ver. 4) Angels were always at hand to render service in the great redemptive work. Why should we think of heaven as "beyond the stars"? Why should we not think of it as encompassing us on every side, only separated from us by a thin veil, through which our mortal senses cannot pass to its glorious spectacles and its blessed harmonies?

V THAT GOD HAS MUCH BETTER THINGS IN STORE FOR US THAN WE THINK POSSIBLE. Neither the wondering women nor the incredulous apostles could believe in such a happy issue as they were assured of, though they had been carefully prepared to expect it (ver. 11). In the feebleness of our faith we say to ourselves, "Surely God is not going to give me that, to place me there, to bestow on me such a heritage as this!" But why not? For him to make all grace, all power, all life, to abound, is for him to do what he has promised, and what he has been doing since he first opened his hand to create and to bestow. C.

HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-12. The Resurrection discovered.

When the women and the other mourners left the Lord"s tomb on the evening of the Crucifixion, it was with the intention, after the sabbath was past, of completing the embalmment. This office of love seems to have been left largely to the women; for it is they who make their way, in the early morning of the first day of the week, to the sepulchre. They seem to have had no knowledge, for they had no apprehension, of the Roman guard, which was manifestly placed at the sepulchre on the Jewish sabbath, when the disciples and the women were keeping the sad day in strictest privacy. Their one apprehension was how to roll away the stone; but, like so many apprehended difficulties, it was found to vanish away some hands stronger than women"s had been before them and had rolled away the stone, and left them no difficulty in discovering an empty tomb. The narrative of John about Mary Magdalene"s visit is quite consistent with Luke"s narrative; for, as Gilbert West has pointed out in his admirable analysis of the Resurrection-history, Mary rushes off alone to tell the disciples, "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him implying that others had been with her at the tomb. Without any misgivings, therefore, about the reliable character of the history, let us point out the instructive steps in the discovery of our Lord"s resurrection.

I THE WOMEN WITH THE SPICES DISCOVER AN EMPTY TOMB. (Vers. 1-3) They had employed the evening after the sabbath was past in preparing all that was needful for embalming thoroughly and finally the Saviour"s body. It was with this fragrant burden they made their way in the twilight towards the tomb, to find their fears groundless and the stone already removed. But a new fear now laid hold on them. There is no body in the tomb; it is empty. They do not appear to have taken in the significance of the grave-clothes carefully put aside because never to be needed more, as John did at his subsequent visit; their whole anxiety was about what had become of the dear body which they had come to embalm. The empty tomb was a discovery. The first impression, as indicated by Mary"s message, (Joh_20:2) was that their enemies had seized the body and disposed of it to defeat all their ideas of embalming. One thing is certain from the history, that neither the women nor the disciples could have been parties to the removal of the body.

II THE WOMEN THAT WAITED GOT EXPLANATIONS FROM THE ANGELS. (Vers. 4-7) Mary Magdalene, acting on impulse, seems to have hurried off to tell Peter and John about the discovery of the empty tomb, while her companions wait longer to get some explanation, if possible, regarding it. And the waiting women are not disappointed. Angels appear in shining garments, and, as the women sink before them in terror, they proceed to reassure them with the glad tidings, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man mast be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." It was the angels that reminded them of the promise of resurrection, and how it was now fulfilled. This is the second stage, therefore, in the discovery of the Resurrection. The fear of the women had been that the Jews had got the body. But there could have been no such plot carried out, for the very simple reason that, if they had got the body and it had not risen, they could have produced such evidence at the Pentecost as would have overturned the apostolic testimony, and prevented the inauguration of the Christian society. The angelic explanation, based as it was on our Lord"s previous promises, was the only satisfactory one. The Resurrection was the fulfilment of Christ"s deliberate plan.

III THE REPORT OF THE WOMEN TO THE ELEVEN AND THE REST. (Vers. 8-11) It is quite reasonable to suppose that Mary Magdalene was the forerunner of the rest, and through her report induced Peter and John to start at once for the sepulchre, while the main body of the women, consisting of Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others, returned more leisurely to make their report. At all events, the narrative of Luke implies all that is given by Matthew and by John. For the disciples who went to Emmaus distinctly say that certain of the disciples "went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said; but him they saw not" (ver. 24) implying that the women, in their report, had spoken of having seen the Master. The testimony of the women was based upon a threefold foundation first, the assurance of the angels; secondly, the promise of resurrection given in Galilee by the Lord; thirdly, according to Matthew"s account, an interview with the risen Lord himself. (Mat_28:9, Mat_28:10) It was a remarkable testimony certainly, but at the same time it had ample warrant.

IV THE BEST-ATTESTED FACTS MAY SEEM, TO DAZED MINDS, THE IDLEST FANCIES. (Ver. 11) The poor disciples are, however, so overpowered with grief and disappointment that they are utterly unprepared for the announcement of the Resurrection. Here the suppler mind of woman is revealed in contrast to the more plodding, sifting, logic-demanding mind of man. The women enjoy the consolations of the Resurrection much sooner than the men. They take in the evidence at a glance. They do not question. They simply accept. But the disciples will not believe in a hurry. And so the messengers of the best tidings ever related unto men are at first in the position of the Master ..... himself, and constrained to cry, "Who hath believed our report?" And the unbelieving criticism of to-day is more unreasonable than the disciples were before the women. Because the resurrection of Christ may break in upon the ideas of nature"s absolute uniformity which the critics have adopted, the whole evidence of resurrection-power continued through the ages is to be treated as an idle tale! Minds may be so dazed with grief or with success on certain lines as to discredit the completest evidence ever offered to the world. Before prejudice, the strongest facts get resolved into the idlest fancies. We should earnestly seek an impartial mind.

V PETER"S FIRST ATTEMPT TO DEAL WITH THE EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. (Ver. 12) Peter, as we learn from John"s account, accompanied by John, rushes off to see the sepulchre. He reaches it after John, but pushes past him, and goes into the sepulchre. There he sees the linen clothes laid by themselves, yet departs without reaching anything but perplexity. To John"s keener intellect the grave-clothes, so neatly deposited and the napkin laid in a place by itself, show that Jesus had risen, and laid aside his sleeping-clothes, as we do our night-dresses in the morning, because he had entered on the day of resurrection. John becomes a believer in the Resurrection on circumstantial evidence. Peter, it would seem, cannot make it out, and has to get a personal interview somewhat later on that day (cf. ver. 34), before he can take it in. It thus appears that one mind may handle the Resurrection evidence successfully, while another may only stumble through it into deeper perplexity. But when a soul like Peter is in earnest, the Lord will not leave him in the darkness, but will grant such further light as will dispel the gloom and dissipate all perplexity. Meanwhile the discovery of Christ"s resurrection is but the interesting first stage in the remarkable evidence to part of which we have yet to proceed. R.M.E.

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

CRITICAL NOTES

Luk_24:1. Very early in the morning.—Rather, “at early dawn” (R.V.); lit. “deep dawn.” And certain others with them.—Omit these words; omitted in R.V. Probably a harmonistic insertion.

Luk_24:4. Two men.—I.e., men in appearance. Shining garments.—Rather, “dazzling apparel” (R.V.); the word “shining” literally meaning “flashing.”

Luk_24:5. The living.—The ground of the rebuke lies in the designation applied to our Lord, “the Living One” (absolutely)—He who hath life in Himself (Joh_5:26), and of whom it is elsewhere said, that God raised Him up; “having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it.”—Speaker’s Commentary.

Luk_24:6. Yet in Galilee.—These were women from Galilee to whom the angels spoke (see chap. Luk_23:55).

Luk_24:7. Sinful men.—The Gentiles (chap. Luk_18:32).

Luk_24:11. Idle tales.—R.V. “idle talk.”

Luk_24:12. Then arose Peter, etc.—This verse is omitted by one of the great uncial MSS., D., but is no doubt genuine. Departed, wondering in Himself.—Rather, “departed to his home, wondering,” etc. The change arises from connecting the phrase translated “in himself” with “departed” and not with “wondering,” and rendering it by “to his home.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Luk_24:1-12

The Empty Tomb.—None of the evangelists describe the rising of Jesus from the dead, but all of them assign it to an hour early in the morning of the first day of the week, before the visit of the women to the tomb where He had lain. They came to the place as the day began to dawn, but Jesus had already left the tomb. The rising of the Sun of Righteousness anticipated the dawn of the natural day. Three classes of persons are here mentioned as having relationship with Christ, each possessing special characteristics—the women, the angels, and the apostles.

I. The love of the women.—As soon as the Sabbath was past and the darkness of the night was about to give way to the coming day, the band of holy women assembled together and set out for the tomb, carrying the spices with which they proposed to anoint the body of their Lord. Love to Him made them regardless of their own comfort, and generous in their gifts to Him, and drew them together into holy fellowship one with another. Bountiful provision had been made by others already for embalming the body of Jesus, but they will not be satisfied unless they are allowed to join in showing this last mark of affection for Him. It is the motive that animates us that gives value to the offerings we make to God or the services we seek to render to our fellows. Love to Christ is the one strong emotion that distinguishes these women all through the incident here recorded, but in the course of the strange experience through which they passed many other emotions and feelings rose to the surface. On their way to the tomb they were anxious about being able to carry through the work on which they were bent. The stone that sealed the tomb was large, and they wondered who would roll it away for them. Yet, after all, the obstacle existed only in their imaginations, for when they reached the tomb the stone was rolled away. In like manner many of the obstacles that our imaginations conjure up as likely to hinder our service of Christ or of our fellows disappear of themselves if we press on resolutely in the path of duty. Feelings of surprise, perplexity, and fear filled their minds when they came to the tomb and found it open and empty, and had a vision of angels; but these feelings were succeeded by great joy as they realised the fact that He whose lifeless body they had come to embalm had risen from the dead, in accordance with the prophetic words He had spoken in Galilee, but which they had been unable to understand. Love to Jesus kept alive a spark of faith within their hearts, and they gradually attained to that spirituality of mind which enabled them to grasp spiritual truths and to understand the deep significance both of Christ’s death and of His resurrection. In obedience to a very natural impulse they hastened to convey the news of the resurrection to their fellow-disciples. Yet, as often afterwards in the experience of those who proclaim the gospel, their message did not win immediate credence; the faith which filled their hearts did not find entrance to those of others, and the tidings they brought seemed as idle tales. In their disappointment the words of the prophet may well have recurred to their minds, “Lord, who hath believed our report?”

II. The kindly ministrations of the angels.—As angels heralded the birth of the Saviour, so was it fitting that they should herald His rising from the dead. On the one occasion their message was that He who was Lord of all had deigned to assume our nature and appear in fashion as a man; now they proclaim Him as the conqueror of death, and as having entered into a glorified existence and delivered from the weaknesses and limitations of the condition which he had for a time accepted. They appear as guardians of the tomb where He had lain, and reveal, by their words and manner, their deep interest in the mystery of the redemption of the human race by the sufferings and death of their Divine Lord. They can scarcely understand the slowness of these disciples in comprehending the great fact of the resurrection, and their words are almost a reproof—“How could it be thought that the Living One could remain among the dead, or could be long holden of the bands of death?” Very beautiful and tender is the way in which the minds of the disciples are gradually prepared to receive the assurance that Christ had indeed risen. Had He appeared to them at once in living form, as they journeyed to the tomb, or had He presented Himself to them at the instant they stood by it and found it empty, the sudden shock of wonder and joy might have been too great for them; but in His love He caused the truth to distil slowly into their minds. First, the sight of the empty tomb prepared them for some great event that had happened, and then the message of the angel filled their hearts with wonder, joy, and hope. It is as we are able to bear it that spiritual truth is communicated to us.

III. The unbelief of the apostles.—Blameworthy as was the reception which the apostles gave to the first tidings of the resurrection, their unbelief shows us that nothing but the actual fact of Christ’s having risen from the dead could have produced the change in them which they subsequently underwent. Men whose minds were so unprepared for the event were not likely to have been the subjects of hallucination. Their doubt tends to “the more confirmation of our faith.” One indication of incredulity is that the apostles did not go at once and in a body to verify the reports which the women had brought them. St. Luke speaks merely of St. Peter as setting out to visit the tomb, while the fourth evangelist tells us that he himself was the only one who accompanied him. The intensity of feeling which animated him is indicated in his “running” to the tomb. He who had sinned so grievously against his Master is not afraid at the thought of the possibility of meeting Him, for his mind is cleansed and strengthened, and his love quickened, by the genuineness of his repentance. He saw that the tomb was empty, and that the grave-clothes were carefully folded up and laid aside. It cannot be that enemies have violated the sanctity of the grave and taken away the body. Can it be after all that the tidings the women brought are true, and that these signs of deliberation and care indicate that the Lord, come to life again, has divested Himself of the habiliments of the grave, as no longer fit for Him? Yet a little while and the wonder which this sight has aroused will be dissolved in joy, as the penitent apostle again beholds the face of his Master. The last time he saw Jesus was at the moment when he was strenuously denying that He knew the Man;—then “Jesus turned and looked on Peter.” The circumstances and emotions of this first interview between the disciple and the Lord after the resurrection are not revealed to us; they are a secret, known only to them. Holy reticence concerning the most sacred moments of our lives is not inconsistent with full and open testimony to the Saviour.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk_24:1-12

Luk_24:1-3.

I. The love and devotion manifested by these holy women.—

(1) In their visiting the tomb at early dawn; and

(2) in the preparations they had made for embalming the body of their Lord.

II. Their surprise and distress at finding the tomb open and the body of the Lord Jesus no longer in it.—That which should have given them encouragement and hope was only a ground of anxiety and sorrow.

Luk_24:4. “Much perplexed.”—Parallel between the announcement of the Nativity and that of the Resurrection.

1. On both occasions heavenly visitants speak words of encouragement and hope to anxious, expectant souls.

2. On both occasions attendant circumstances are related at length, but a veil of mystery hangs over the beginning of the Incarnation and of the Resurrection of the Lord.

“Two men.”—The supposed discrepancies in the number of the angels seen near the sepulchre of Jesus are effectively dealt with in the well-known words of Lessing: “The evangelists do not count the angels. The whole grave, the whole region round about the grave, was invisibly swarming with angels. There were not only two angels, like a pair of grenadiers who are left behind in front of the quarters of the departed general; there were millions of them. They appeared, not always one and the same, not always the same two; sometimes this one appears, sometimes that; sometimes at this place, sometimes at that; sometimes alone, sometimes in company; sometimes they said this, sometimes they said that.”

Luk_24:5-6. The Living not Among the Dead—

1. A gentle remonstrance.

2. The announcement of a fact.

Luk_24:5. “The living.”—The Living One and the Cause of life, for He said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” (Joh_11:25).

The Living Sought Among the Dead.—Who comes under these words of rebuke, and does this now?

I. It is done, in the worst sense, by those whom Scripture calls “the children of this world.”

II. The same question has its application to formalism in religion.

III. We approach more nearly to its first meaning when we speak of its bearing upon the case of doubters.

IV. Upon those Christians who never advance beyond the cross and the grave into the clear light and full glory of a risen Saviour.—Vaughan.

Luk_24:6. “Is risen.”—The Resurrection is

(1) a restoration of the broken bond between soul and body;

(2) a continuation of the previous life (cf. Luk_24:39); and

(3) a glorification of the former existence.

Luk_24:7. “Sinful men.”—According to Jewish phraseology the Gentiles are denoted by this epithet. The sins of the Jews themselves are recalled by the word “delivered.”

Luk_24:8. “They remembered His words.”—By which we are taught that, though they had made little proficiency in the doctrine of Christ, still, it was not lost, but was choked up, until in due time it yielded fruit.—Calvin.

Luk_24:9. “Told all these things.”—Compare their journey to the sepulchre with their return from it. Then their hearts so heavy with sorrow; now “anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows.”

Luk_24:10. “And other women.”—Among them was Salome, the mother of James and John (Mar_16:1), and perhaps also Susanna, mentioned by St. Luke in connection with Joanna in Luk_8:3.

Luk_24:11. “They believed them not.”—The verb is in the imperfect and implies persistent incredulity. “They disbelieved them.”—Farrar.

Luk_24:12. “Wondering.”—The sight which produced merely wonder, in the case of St. Peter, produced belief in the case of St. John (Joh_20:8).

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.

SECOND SECTION

THE PERFECT TRIUMPH

Luk_24:1-48

A. Over the Might of Sin and Death. Luk_24:1-12

1Now [But] upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared [end verse with “prepared,”1], and certain others with them. 2And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. 3And they entered in, and [having entered in they] found not the bodyof the Lord Jesus.2 4And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout,behold, two men stood by them in shining [glittering] garments: 5And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye theliving among the dead? 6He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake untoyou when he was yet in Galilee, 7Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into thehands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 8And they remembered9[or, called to mind] his words, And returned from the sepulchre, and told [reported3]10all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them,which told these things unto the apostles. 11And their words seemed to them as idletales, and they believed them not. 12Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.4

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

General Remarks.—In the history of the Resurrection and Ascension also, Luke preserves the same character which we have already more than once remarked in him. In that which he communicates in common with the two other Synoptics, he is less detailed and exact than they, so that he must rather be complemented from them, than they, on the contrary, from him. But, on the other hand, he furnishes us new contributions to the knowledge of the Risen and Glorified Lord, the contents and tendency of which are in the most beautiful agreement with the broad humanistic character of his gospel, as will appear from the expositions of the individual accounts. The appearance on the evening of the first resurrection day he relates, Luk_24:36 seq., much more at length than John, and that our historical faith in a visible Ascension rests almost exclusively on his testimony, as well at the end of the gospel as at the beginning of the Acts, scarcely needs mention. Respecting the history of the Resurrection and its Enantiophanies in general, comp. Lange on Matt., Luke 28. After that which is there so admirably remarked, we are at liberty to occupy ourselves exclusively with the account of Luke. “In resurrectione et vita, quam ostendit quadraginta diebus, reficimur el delectabilibus pascimur argumentis.” Bernard of Clairvaux.

Luk_24:1. Very early in the morning, ὅρθρου βαθέος, or, according to the reading of A., C., D., [Cod. Sin.] with an unusual ancient genitive βαθέως, see Tischendorf, ad loc. The account is immediately connected with Luk_23:56, and the women of whom Luke here makes mention can be no others than those of whom he has said, 24:55, that they had come with Jesus from Galilee. Altogether arbitrary, therefore, is Bengel’s remark: aliœ, quœ non venerante Galilœa. Since Luke, Luk_24:10, mentions three of these women by name, and then adds, αἱ λοιπαὶ σὺν αὐταῖς,, the company, according to his account, consisted at least of five. Mary Magdalene all the Evangelists mention. Matthew and Mark speak of the other Mary, the mother of James. Mark mentions as third only the name of Salome, while Luke, in her stead, places Joanna as third. It may be that this difference may be explained from their having gone in two divisions to the grave (Lange); although it is, on the other hand, a question whether a going out in company at so early a morning hour is not psychologically more probable. It is difficult to establish anything certain here, but at all events, unreasonable, where the account of the one Evangelist complements very well that of the other, but does not exclude it, to consider difference and opposition, without further inquiry, as words of like signification.

Luk_24:2. The stone rolled away, τὸν λίθ.—By whom it had been rolled away appears from Matthew; with what unnecessary propositions and anxieties the women on the way to the grave had occupied themselves is related to us by Mark. After Mary Magdalene had viewed the stone that was rolled away, she hurries back to the city to bring this intelligence to Peter and John (Joh_20:2 seq.); this Luke is silent about, but, on the other hand, he describes to us the terror and joy of the other women in a vivid manner.

Luk_24:4. Two men.—“The angels are designated according to that form of manifestation which they had in the view of the women.” Meyer. As respects the well-known controversy as to the number of the angels, we are satisfied, instead of occupying ourselves with all the harmonistic schemes that have been in earlier or modern times thought out, to remind the reader rather of the well-known word of Lessing in his Duplik, where he, with a liberality strange to most of the modern critics, wrote: “Cold discrepancy-mousers, do ye not then see that the Evangelists do not count the angels? The whole grave, the whole region round about the grave, was invisibly swarming with angels. There were not only two angels, like a pair of grenadiers who are left behind in front of the quarters of the departed general; there were millions of them; they appeared not always one and the same, not always the same two; sometimes this one appeared, sometimes that; sometimes on this place, sometimes on that; sometimes alone, sometimes in company; sometimes they said this, sometimes they said that.”

Luk_24:5. Why seek ye.—In the redaction of the angels’ discourse in Luke, it is especially the groundlessness of the seeking of Him in the mansions of the dead who already is actually living, which especially comes into the foreground. The difference in the account of the angels’ address is an internal argument for its truth, since the women, in the agitation of the moment, could not possibly have stated correctly, and with diplomatic exactness, the intelligence heard, Enough that all the Evangelists concur in the main matter. “Thus is the fact of the first announcement of the resurrection of Christ represented to us, not in the form of its abstractly objective course, but taken together with its living working in the living image of the first Easter harmonies which it called forth. But these harmonies now do not present themselves in the measured mood of a unisonous choral, but in the form of a four-voiced very agitated fugue.” Lange.

Luk_24:6. When He was yet in Galilee.—The reminder of that which the Lord had uttered particularly in Galilee takes in Luke the place of the direction to go into Galilee, as the place where the Risen One should be seen again, as he, moreover, communicates afterwards no Galilean appearance whatever. The prophecies of the Passion, which the women had forgotten, were known to the angels. Why it is psychologically impossible that the women should now first remember again the predictions of our Lord’s resurrection if He had really so definitely uttered them (Meyer), we do not comprehend.

Luk_24:9. Told all these things.—Obediently to the express command of the angel, which Matthew and Mark state. The mood in which they return from the grave is also, in particular, not stated to us more particularly by Luke; on the other hand, we owe to him the account that they proclaimed the joyful message in a yet wider circle than merely to the Twelve, as we soon after shall learn, Luk_24:22-24, yet more particularly from the journeyers to Emmaus. Respecting the here-named women themselves, see on Luk_8:2-3.

Luk_24:11. As idle tales, ὡσεὶ λῆρος, nonsense and superstitious gossip, crazy talk. Dutch: ydel geklap. That they also brought the intelligence with the same result to the ἀδελφοῖς of the Lord (Act_1:14) is undoubtedly possible (De Wette), but by no means proved. The individual experience of the Magdalene, who is connected in Luk_24:10 also with the other women, and, according to Joh_20:18, gives her individual account, is, for brevity’s sake, passed over by Luke. It appears, however, from his condensed account, that she too found no better reception than the other messengers of the Resurrection.

Luk_24:12. Then arose Peter.—Comp. Joh_20:2-10. John is here unmentioned, but from Luk_24:24 it appears, at all events, that several of the disciples on this morning had gone to the grave. Had Luke, as Baur supposes, wished to place in the background the appearance vouchsafed to Peter by the narrative of the appearance which the journeyers to Emmaus experienced, then he might just as well have left this whole narrative of the apostles’ visit to the grave entirely unmentioned. As to the rest, in view of the brevity of Luke’s account, it cannot be a matter of surprise that he speaks of μόνα, but does not mention the σουδάριον (Joh_20:7).

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See Lange on the parallels in Matthew and Mark.

2. “The re-awakening of the dead Christ has, humanly apprehended, something so sublimely touching and beautiful, that if it were a fable, as it is not, the truth of history would be wished for it.” Herder. To have comprehended the great miraculous fact on its purely human side especially, and to have described it, and thus to have brought it yet nearer to us on this side than was done by Matthew and Mark, this belongs to the incontrovertible merits of Luke.

3. The announcement of the Resurrection by angels, like that of the Nativity, was in the highest degree worthy of God, and the receptivity of the women for the objectively present angelophany was conditioned by their subjective frame of mind. No inventor would have contented himself with one or two heavenly messengers, when in the Christmas night a whole throng of the heavenly host had come down to earth. A Resurrection without such extraordinary circumstances would have been a spring without flowers, a sun without rays, a triumph without triumphal crown.

4. A remarkable agreement exists between the awakening of the first and of the second life of our Lord upon earth. In both beginnings we see doubters and anxious ones quieted by a heavenly messenger. In both the attendant circumstances are related at length, but over the commencing point itself of the life and of the Resurrection of our Lord there remains a mysterious veil. He is awakened by the power of the Most High, as He by the same power had been conceived (Luk_1:35; Rom_6:4). By His Resurrection He becomes manifest as God’s Son (Rom_1:4), as He had been named even before His birth (Luk_1:32).

5. The Resurrection of our Lord is, first, the Restoration of the life which appeared to be quite ended, while the broken bond between soul and body is again knit together; secondly, a Continuance of the previous life, wherewith the consciousness of its identity again awakes (Luk_24:39), the memory returns, and the objective fact acquires also subjective truth for the Risen One Himself; finally, the Glorification of the former existence, whose burdens now all fall away, so that the Risen One shows Himself entirely different from before, without being on that account another.

6. The Scripture testifies that Christ rose with a truly human body, from an actual sleep of death, in the literal sense of the word, out of the grave. Condemned, therefore, is the Docetic representation, by which either the reality or the identity of His body is doubted, or the manner of His resurrection so represented that it becomes entirely impossible to conceive a true corporeality (see, for instance, the essay of F. Kuhn: Wie ging Jesus durch des Grabes Thür? Bonn, 1838). But not less is the coarser or more refined rationalistic interpretation, according to which the revivification of the Lord becomes only the awakening out of a seeming death, against the Scripture and the Christian consciousness. How would it be possible that the double expression of the self-consciousness of the Lord (Rev_1:18), “I was dead, and behold I am alive again,” should contain in its second part objective, in the first only subjective, truth? Finally, we reject the one-sided symbolical interpretation, according to which the Resurrection history is regarded only as an unessential involucrum of religious ideas, not as a fact in itself (Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Strauss).

7. The possibility of the Resurrection of the Lord from the dead is a priori controverted by those who, in Pantheistic or Rationalistic wise, ignore every essential distinction between spirit and matter. Over against this we have simply to bring to mind that the justice of the fundamental anthropological views of unbelief is yet in no wise proved. To explain the possibility of the Resurrection so perfectly that one clearly sees that it, according to natural laws, not only can take place, but also must take place, is a preposterous requirement, since the fact precisely by such an explanation would lose the character of a miracle, and sink out of the class of the Miracula down into that of the Mirabilia. Enough that the possibility is grounded in the personality of the Lord, for whom death, not less than sin, as we have already previously reminded the reader, may be called something entirely and utterly preternatural. It is a folly to dispute about this possibility with such as deny the miraculous deeds of the earlier period of His history. Only when these latter are proved or allowed can we go farther, and find it also assumable and rational that He, although bodily in the grave, could not see corruption. Whether we have to conceive His Resurrection as the fruit of a quiet but regularly proceeding development in the grave, very much as in the dead pupa the arising life of the butterfly is, as in a closed laboratory, developed, or whether we have rather to assume a magnificent transition, in consequence of which the hitherto entirely senseless corpse in an instant was, as it were, streamed through with Divine life—this is a question to the decisive answer of which all fixed historical data are wanting to us. Enough that we have to conceive of the Lord’s Resurrection as being both the proper work of the Son (Joh_10:18), and as also a miraculous act of the Father (Act_2:24). Whoever takes our Lord for that which He, according to His own word and according to that of His apostles, is, accounts the raising again of the God-man, wonderful as it is, as being in the highest sense of the word perfectly natural, since the presupposition becomes Christologically unreasonable that He should have remained in death. As to the conception of the miracle itself, there deserve here to be compared the weighty remarks of Schenkel, in Gezler’s Protestant. Monatsblatt, 1833, and by Rothe in his Abhandlung zur Dogmatik in the Theol. Stud. u.Krit., 1858, i.

8. For the Lord Himself the hour of the Resurrection was, without doubt, an hour of blessed joy and glorious triumph, and then also an hour of hopeful preparation for the different revelations which He on the very first day bestowed on different friends in different places. We stand here at the entrance of one of the most remarkable transition periods of His outer and inner life, of a character almost like the transitions in His twelfth or thirteenth year. From henceforth He enters into an entirely different relation to His foes and to His friends, to the world of spirits, to the kingdom of darkness, to death and the grave, yea, in a certain measure, even to the Father. Hitherto we have learned to know Him as the Son who must yet become perfect and learn obedience by that which He suffered (Heb_2:10; Heb_5:8); now we find Him entirely perfected and purified, as it were, at the foot of His throne.5 An hour like this He had on earth never yet seen, and not less than at the Baptism (Luk_3:21), may we suppose Him now also to have consecrated the new life in prayer to the Father. Nay, as His whole first life may be named a preparation for His suffering and death, so now did His second life become a preparation for the hour of ascension. Perverted as it is essentially to identify Resurrection and Ascension (Kinkel, Weisse), as little may we forget that the two are most intimately united. With every day which removed our Lord farther from the empty grave He drew nearer and nearer to His waiting crown, and the blessed celebration of His victory coalesced with the still preparation for His coronation in an admirable unity, so that He, even on the first day, might speak of an entry into His glory, Luk_24:26. Yet scarcely do we venture to enter more deeply into this sanctuary. If we cannot even express what a glory and blessing is reflected in the Lord’s Resurrection, what must then the experience have been? In the appearances of the Risen One has His glory become most clearly visible for the finite eye, and to them we have, therefore, above all things, to give heed if we will learn to know Christ and the power of His Resurrection, Php_3:10. The fulness of detail with which Luke communicates to us the fourth appearance compensates in rich measure his silence respecting the first and the second, while the third, Luk_24:34, is only intimated by him. Respecting the number and sequence of these appearances, see Lange, Matthew, p. 540 seq.

9. In view of the supreme moment of this miraculous fact, we cannot be at all surprised that it has been in manifold ways glorified by Christian art. Painting owes to it masterpieces of Raphael, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Caracci, Rubens, and others. In the most of these pictures Christ appears surrounded with heavenly glory, as He breaks the bands of death and swings the banner of victory, while the watchers of the grave are trembling and fleeing. Yet, in view of the difficulties of representing the moment of the Resurrection itself, perhaps the efforts to paint what immediately preceded or followed it deserve the higher esteem. The journey of the holy women to the grave, and the second appearance to Mary Magdalene, both by Ary Scheffer, belong to his most admirable masterpieces. Hymnology has been enriched by the Resurrection with the exquisite lays of a Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Gellert, Klopstock, Claudius, Manzoni, and others, [and our own Hastings, whose “How calm and beautiful the morn,” is scarcely equalled.—C. C. S.] The scene of the Easter bells in Faust has bestowed on Goethe a part of his own earthly immortality.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

General Points of view:—The Resurrection of the Lord—I. In relation to the history of the world. The vanquishing of the might of sin and death, which had revealed itself in all manner of forms, as well among Israelites as among the heathen nations; the implanting of a new principle of life in man and in mankind. The empty grave the boundary between the old and the new economy, 2Co_5:17. The triumph of the might of light over the might of darkness in the course of the history of the world, typically expressed in the triumph of the second Adam over all the powers of darkness and death. II. In relation to Israel. The sublimest expectations of the Old Testament are fulfilled, Psa_16:9, et alibi, and what there was typified in Joseph, David, Israel, that, namely, the way of humiliation led to the highest glory, was realized in unexampled measure. The triumph of the King of Israel, the beginning of the temporary overthrow, rejection, hardening of Israel, and yet also the pledge of its final re-establishment. The empty grave the dumb and yet eloquent accuser of the Messiah’s murderers. III. In relation to the Apostles and first friends of our Lord. His Resurrection the foundation of their renewal to a life of faith, hope, and love, after that all with His death had appeared lost. The Easter morning the commencement of a new period for every one among them and for their whole body. The certainty that their Master lives, bestows on their spirit new life, on their heart new joy, on their feet new strength, on their future, new hope. Even unbelief has seen itself forced to the acknowledgment that a transformation such as becomes manifest in the circle of the disciples between Good Friday and Whitsunday, can only be explained by their having believed in the great fact which the Easter morning proclaims. But how this subjective certainty could have arisen, unless from the objectively present fact, no apostle of unbelief has been able to explain to us in a way which, psychologically, and, much less, historically, has even any degree of probability. IV. In relation to Jesus Himself. The Resurrection is: a. the satisfactory solution of the otherwise entirely inexplicable events of His life, whereby the otherwise disturbed harmony of His life is again restored; b. the crown of His miraculous deeds, especially of His raisings from the dead; c. the seal of His declarations in respect to His own person and to His condition after His death; d. the decisive step on the way to His glorification, after the status exinanitionis now lay forever behind Him. V. In relation to the foundation of the Kingdom of God in general, the Lord’s Resurrection is the indispensably necessary condition, without which the coming forward of the apostles, the conversion of thousands of Jews, and the union of many thousand heathen with them in one spiritual body, must have remained something entirely inexplicable. VI. Nay, for the whole Doctrine of Salvation, Jesus’ Resurrection is the conditio sine qua non of the personal redemption, renovation, and resurrection of all His people. The certainty of reconciliation is not perfectly assured so long as it has not become manifest that the sacrifice of the Son has been accepted by the Father; on this account, also, Paul lays yet more weight upon the Lord’s Resurrection than even upon His death (Rom_5:10; Rom_8:34). a. The type, b. the ground, c. the power, of our Lord, we find offered only in faith on the Christ who has personally arisen from the dead, and it is by this great fact of the Easter morning that, a. the possibility, b. the certainty, c. the glory of our own resurrection, so far as we believe on Him, is triumphantly confirmed. All this offers to the Christian homilete on the highest feast of the church a so infinite wealth of points of view and considerations, that we can scarcely conceive how any one who has experienced in himself, at least incipiently, the truth of the apostle’s word, Gal_2:20, could ever be able on this feast to complain that he had entirely preached himself out.

On the Section.—The first Easter morning; the realm of nature a symbol of the realm of grace, a. the gloomy night, b. the much-promising dawn, c. the breaking day.—The first pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre: a. how mournful they go thither, b. how joyful they return.—The experience of the first female friends of our Lord on the day of His Resurrection a proof of the truth of the declaration, Psa_30:5. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.—The stone rolled away.—How on Easter morning it began to be bright: 1. In the garden; 2. in the human hearts; 3. over the cross; 4. for the world; 5. in the realm of the dead.—The first Easter gospel: 1. The hearers; 2. the preacher; 3. the message; 4. the fruit of the sermon.—How unbelief mourns precisely for that which was to give it the first ground of hope.—The empty grave viewed not joyfully, but doubtfully.—The Easter morn a festal day for the angels of heaven also.—The fruitless seeking of the living among the dead: 1. Of the living Christ in the grave; 2. of the living Christian in the dust of the earth.—“He is not here,” for the first and only time the absence of Christ a source of inexpressible joy.—The coincidence and the diversity between the first Christmas night announcement and the first Easter morning announcement.—Jesus’ Resurrection the confirmation of His earlier and the pledge for the fulfilment of His later words.—Of how many words of the Master does the Christian become mindful at the view of the empty grave!—No command was on the Resurrection morning so often given and carried out, as that to proclaim the joyful message to others also.—The distinction between the unbelief of the first apostles and friends of Jesus in His Resurrection, and that of modern criticism.—Only the Risen Saviour Himself was able to put an end to the doubt and sorrow of His first friends.—They doubted, that we might not need to doubt.—The empty grave viewed by a fallen apostle; he: 1. Longingly entered it; 2. carefully examined it: 3. found it empty; 4. left it thoughtful.—The lovely harmony of the Easter evening arising from the manifold sharp dissonances of the Easter morning.

Starke:—Quesnel:—What one will do for love to Christ he must accomplish very soon and carefully.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—No stone is so great but the mighty Providence of God can lift it.—Believers often find Jesus not as they seek Him.—Canstein:—The angels have ten times served the Son of God from His manifestation in the flesh to His Ascension.—God has many means and ways to comfort the terrified; if He does it not through the holy angels, yet it comes to pass through the angels of the church.—Bibl. Wirt.:—With God there is no respect of persons; to Him a woman is as good as a man, &c., Gal_3:28.—The holy angels abide by the word of Christ.—Canstein:—To forget Christ’s word brings trouble.—Sometimes weak women must be evangelists to men, that ought to be so strong.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—The secret of the Resurrection passes all men’s reason and thoughts.—Jesus, the Supreme Good, is worthy that we leave not off till we find Him.—Osiander:—Faith and unbelief wrestle sometimes in a man.

Arndt:—The first rays of the glory of Christ in the dawn of the Easter morning: 1. The stone rolled away; 2. the glittering angels; 3. the hastening women.—Krummacher:—In the miracle of the Resurrection we behold: a. the glory of the Father, b. the glory of the Son, c. the glory of the elect.—Nitzsch:—The happiness of the disciples of Jesus to be revivified by the resurrection of their Head.—Flatt:—The morning of the Resurrection of Jesus: 1. How it diffuses the brightest morning twilight over the earth, and in its light the morning of eternity beams kindly upon us.—W. Hofacker:—The open grave of the Risen One: 1. An arch of His triumph; 2. a bow of peace denoting heavenly favor and grace; 3. a door of life for the resurrection of our spirit and our body.—Rieger:—How God wills not that we should seek and anoint a dead Jesus in the grave.—Ahlfeld:—The celebration of the first Easter.—Souchon:—The Easter preaching of the angel.—Stier:—The Resurrection of Christ the true comfort of all believers: 1. In tribulation; 2. in sin; 3. in death.—Rautenberg:—Easter among the graves: 1. The stone of the curse is rolled away therefrom; 2. there dwell angels therein; 3. the dead are gone out therefrom.—The great Easter consolation: 1. For sorrowing love; 2. for the troubled conscience.—Schmid:—Easter the most glorious feast: 1. Of the most glorious joy; 2. of the most glorious victory; 3. of the most glorious faith; 4. of the most glorious hope.—Jaspis:—How we may celebrate Easter in the right spirit.

Footnotes:

[1]Luk_24:1.—The clause which follows in the Recepta, καὶ τινες σὺν αὐταῖς, is probably, as Kuinoel already conjectured, an interpolation from Luk_24:10. The words are wanting in B., C., [Cod. Sin.,] L., 33, Vulgate, Itala, and others, and are rejected by Lachmann, Tisohendorf, [Meyer, Tregelles, Alford.]

[2]Luk_24:3.—The words of the Recepta, τοῦ κυρίου ̓Ιησοῦ, are omitted in D. but appear in all the other uncials, and though rejected by Tisohendorf and marked as doubtful by Van Oosterzee, are retained by Lachmann, Meyer, Alford. Tregelles omits τοῦ κυρίου, following one Cursive, and some Versions. The great weight of authority, therefore, is for the words in question. A concordance of the Acts will show that “The Lord Jesus” is a favorite appellation with Lake, as Alford remarks. But the concurrence of both appellations would, as he also remarks, be quite sure to provoke the erasure sometimes of one and sometimes of the other, thus leading to a doubt of the genuineness and the consequent omission of both.—C. C. S.

[3]Luk_24:9.—Revised Version of the American Bible Union.—C. C. S.

[4]Luk_24:12.—Although Luk_24:12 is wanting in Cod. D. and moreover in the Syriac, Itala, Jerome, &c., yet it appears to be original and genuine, and only to have been omitted, because it appeared to conflict with Luk_24:24. An interpolator would, in the interest of harmony with Joh_20:1-10, not have neglected to mention also the ά́λλος μαθητής. The very incompleteness and fragmentariness of the report is an argument for its genuineness.

[5][The author, of course, by the word “purified” has anything in mind but a purification of the Sinless One from sin. But He is now purified even from the sinless infirmities which appertain to humanity as yet unglorified.—C. C. 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.

Luke

THE FIRST EASTER SUNRISE

Luk 24:1 - Luk 24:12.

No Evangelist narrates the act of Resurrection. Apocryphal Gospels cannot resist the temptation of describing it. Why did the Four preserve such singular reticence about what would have been irresistible to ‘myth’ makers? Because they were not myth-makers, but witnesses, and had nothing to say as to an act that no man had seen. No doubt, the Resurrection took place in the earliest hours of the first day of the week. The Sun of Righteousness rose before the Easter Day sun. It was midsummer day for Him, while it was but spring for earth’s calendar. That early rising has no setting to follow.

The divergences of the Evangelists reach their maximum in the accounts of the Resurrection, as is natural if we realise the fragmentary character of all the versions, the severely condensed style of Matthew’s, the incompleteness of the genuine Mark’s, the evidently selective purpose in Luke’s, and the supplementary design of John’s. If we add the perturbed state of the disciples, their separation from each other, and the number of distinct incidents embraced in the records, we shall not wonder at the differences, but see in them confirmation of the good faith of the witnesses, and a reflection of the hurry and wonderfulness of that momentous day. Differences there are; contradictions there are not, except between the doubtful verses added to Mark and the other accounts. We cannot put all the pieces together, when we have only them to guide us. If we had a complete and independent narrative to go by, we could, no doubt, arrange our fragments. But the great certainties are unaffected by the small divergences, and the points of agreement are vital. They are, for example, that none saw the Resurrection, that the first to know of it were the women, that angels appeared to them at the tomb, that Jesus showed Himself first to Mary Magdalene, that the reports of the Resurrection were not believed. Whether the group with whom this passage has to do were the same as that whose experience Matthew records we leave undetermined. If so, they must have made two visits to the tomb, and two returns to the Apostles,-one, with only the tidings of the empty sepulchre, which Luke tells; one, with the tidings of Christ’s appearance, as in Matthew. But harmonistic considerations do not need to detain us at present.

Sorrow and love are light sleepers, and early dawn found the brave women on their way. Nicodemus had bound spices in with the body, and these women’s love-gift was as ‘useless’ and as fragrant as Mary’s box of ointment. Whatever love offers, love welcomes, though Judas may ask ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ Angel hands had rolled away the stone, not to allow of Jesus’ exit, for He had risen while it was in its place, but to permit the entrance of the ‘witnesses of the Resurrection.’ So little did these women dream of such a thing that the empty tomb brought no flash of joy, but only perplexity to their wistful gaze. ‘What does it mean?’ was their thought. They and all the disciples expected nothing less than they did a Resurrection, therefore their testimony to it is the more reliable.

Luke marks the appearance of the angels as sudden by that ‘behold.’ They were not seen approaching, but at one moment the bewildered women were alone, looking at each other with faces of dreary wonder, and the next, ‘two men’ were standing beside them, and the tomb was lighted by the sheen of their dazzling robes. Much foolish fuss has been made about the varying reports of the angels, and ‘contradictions’ have been found in the facts that some saw them and some did not, that some saw one and some saw two, that some saw them seated and some saw them standing, and so on. We know so little of the laws that govern angelic appearances that our opinion as to the probability or veracity of the accounts is mere guess-work. Where should a flight of angels have gathered and hovered if not there? And should they not ‘sit in order serviceable’ about the tomb, as around the ‘stable’ at Bethlehem? Their function was to prepare a way in the hearts of the women for the Lord Himself, to lessen the shock,-for sudden joy shocks and may hurt,-as well as to witness that these ‘things angels desire to look into.’

Their message flooded the women’s hearts with better light than their garments had spread through the tomb. Luke’s version of it agrees with Mark and Matthew in the all-important central part, ‘He is not here, but is risen’ {though these words in Luke are not beyond doubt}, but diverges from them otherwise. Surely the message was not the mere curt announcement preserved by any one of the Evangelists. We may well believe that much more was said than any or all of them have recorded. The angels’ question is half a rebuke, wholly a revelation, of the essential nature of ‘the Living One,’ who was so from all eternity, but is declared to be so by His rising, of the incongruity of supposing that He could be gathered to, and remain with, the dim company of the dead, and a blessed word, which turns sorrow into hope, and diverts sad eyes from the grave to the skies, for all the ages since and to come. The angels recall Christ’s prophecies of death and resurrection, which, like so many of His words to the disciples and to us, had been heard, and not heard, being neglected or misinterpreted. They had questioned ‘what the rising from the dead should mean,’ never supposing that it meant exactly what it said. That way of dealing with Christ’s words did not end on the Easter morning, but is still too often practised.

If we are to follow Luke’s account, we must recognise that the women in a company, as well as Mary Magdalene separately, came back first with the announcement of the empty tomb and the angels’ message, and later with the full announcement of having seen the Lord. But apart from the complexities of attempted combination of the narratives, the main point in all the Evangelists is the disbelief of the disciples, ‘Idle tales,’ said they, using a very strong word which appears only here in the New Testament, and likens the eager story of the excited women to a sick man’s senseless ramblings. That was the mood of the whole company, apostles and all. Is that mood likely to breed hallucinations? The evidential value of the disciples’ slowness to believe cannot be overrated.

Peter’s race to the sepulchre, in Luk 24:12, is omitted by several good authorities, and is, perhaps, spurious here. If allowed to stand as Luke’s, it seems to show that the Evangelist had a less complete knowledge of the facts than John. Mark, Peter’s ‘interpreter,’ has told us of the special message to him from the risen, but as yet unseen, Lord, and we may well believe that that quickened his speed. The assurance of forgiveness and the hope of a possible future that might cover over the cowardly past, with the yearning to sob his heart out on the Lord’s breast, sent him swiftly to the tomb. Luke does not say that he went in, as John, with one of his fine touches, which bring out character in a word, tells us that he did; but he agrees with John in describing the effect of what Peter saw as being only ‘wonder,’ and the result as being only that he went away pondering over it all, and not yet able to grasp the joy of the transcendent fact. Perhaps, if he had not had a troubled conscience, he would have had a quicker faith. He was not given to hesitation, but his sin darkened his mind. He needed that secret interview, of which many knew the fact but none the details, ere he could feel the full glow of the Risen Sun thawing his heart and scattering his doubts like morning mists on the hills.

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

VII. His Resurrection and Ascension

CHAPTER 24

1. The Resurrection. (Luk 24:1-12)

2. The Walk to Emmaus; the Appearance of the Risen Son of Man. (Luk 24:13-35)

3. The Appearance to the Eleven. (Luk 24:36-45)

4. The Commission. (Luk 24:46-48)

5. The Ascension. (Luk 24:49-53.)

The account of the Resurrection in Luke’s Gospel has also its characteristic features. He alone reports the full account of the walk to Emmaus. It is a precious story showing forth the fact that the risen One is the same tender, loving, sympathizing friend of His own. He joined Himself to the two disciples, who bad left Jerusalem. Their hearts were filled with Sadness and perplexity. He Himself drew near and their eyes were holden that they could not recognize Him. In a perfectly human way He joined Himself to them and asked them about their troubles. Then He reproved them for their unbelief and opened the Scriptures unto them. Constrained by them, He abides with them, as He always will with those who belong to Him. In the breaking of bread, their eyes were opened and they knew Him and He vanished from them. They returned to Jerusalem where they found abundant proof that the Lord is risen indeed.

The appearance to Simon is not fully made known. What took place between the Lord and the disciple who failed Him is a blessed secret between them. He then appeared again with His gracious “Peace be unto you.” He showed them His hands and feet. He had a body of flesh and bones. He was not a phantom, but a real man. His body was real for He ate fish and honeycomb. All this belongs properly to the Gospel of the Manhood. It is the fullest demonstration of His physical resurrection. All the wicked “isms,” including Russellism and Christian Science, which deny His physical resurrection stand here fully convicted.

It may be well to mention here the twelve distinct appearances of our Lord after His resurrection. He appeared:

1. To Mary Magdalene alone. Mar 16:1-20; Joh 20:14.

2. To the women returning from the sepulchre. Mat 28:9-10

3. To Simon Peter alone. Luk 24:34

4. To the two disciples going to Emmaus. Luk 24:13, etc.

5. To the apostles at Jerusalem, except Thomas who was absent. Joh 20:19

6. To the apostles at Jerusalem, a second time, when Thomas was present. Joh 20:26-29.

7. At the sea of Tiberias, when seven disciples were fishing. Joh 21:1

8. To the eleven disciples, on a mountain in Galilee. Mat 28:16

9. To above five hundred brethren at once. 1Co 15:6

10. To James only. 1Co 15:7

11. To all the apostles on Mount Olivet at His ascension. Luk 24:51.

12. To Paul as an untimely birth. 1Co 15:8-9.

Three times we are told that His disciples touched Him after He rose. Mat 28:9; Luk 24:39; Joh 20:27. Twice we are told that He ate with them. Luk 24:42; Joh 21:12-13,

The Gospel of Luke ends with the commission given to His disciples and the ascension of the Lord “while He blest them.”

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE WOMEN GO TO THE SEPULCHER

Mat 28:1. “And at the end of the Sabbath, at the dawn, toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the sepulcher.” Mar 16:2-4. “And it being exceedingly early, on the first day of the week, they are coming to the tomb, the sun approaching the horizon. And they were saying to one another, Who shall roll for us the stone away from the door of the sepulcher? And looking up, they see that the stone has already been rolled away; for it was exceedingly great.”

Luk 24:1-3 : “And on the first day of the week, at the depth of the dawn, they came to the sepulcher, bearing the aromatics which they prepared, and certain ones along with them. And they found that the stone had been rolled away from the sepulcher; and coming in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” Joh 20:1-2 : “On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene comes to the sepulcher early in the morning, it being yet dark, and sees that the stone has been rolled away from the sepulcher.” The reason why on this item I quote all of the writers is because of the infidel criticism that has been concentrated upon this important point of the inspired history, vigorous efforts having been made to establish disharmony among the four historians. You see there is none, the E. V. translation of Mark, representing them as coming at sunrise, being here corrected, the Greek simply meaning, “the sun approaching the horizon,” and, as you see, perfectly harmonizing with Matthew, “at the dawn, toward the first day of the week,” Luke, “at the depth of the dawn,” and John, “early in the morning, it being yet dark.”

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

24:1-12 Women were the first to find the tomb empty and to hear the announcement of the resurrection. This is strong evidence for the historicity of the resurrection accounts. In first-century Judaism, women were not regarded as reliable witnesses, so the church would never have created stories in which women discovered the empty tomb.

24:1 But very early on Sunday morning: The early church worshiped on the first day of the week (Sunday) instead of the seventh (Saturday, the Sabbath) because Jesus rose on a Sunday morning (cp. Acts 20:7; Rev 1:10).

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

Luk 24:1. Τίνες, some) viz. other women, who had not come from Galilee.

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

Luk_24:1-12. Comp. on Mat_28:1-8; Mar_16:1-8.

The question of the special sources from which Luke has taken the considerable portion that is peculiar to him in the account of the resurrection (Griesbach: from the mouth of the Joanna named by him alone, Luk_24:10), as well as in all that still follows that account, cannot be decided; but assuredly he did not as yet know the conclusion of Mark as it now stands.

βαθέως (see the critical remarks): the adverb[267] of degree is immediately annexed to a substantive. See on 2Co_11:23. Hence: deep in the morning, i.e. in the first morning twilight. Comp. Plat. Crit. p. 43 A, Prot. p. 310 A. The opposite is: ὁ ἔσχατος ὄρθρος, Theocr. xvi. 63.

Luk_24:2. ΕὖΡΟΝ ΔῈ Κ.Τ.Λ.] agrees as little as Mar_16:4 with the narrative of the rolling away of the stone in Mat_28:2.

Luk_24:4. ἘΝ Τῷ ΔΙΑΠΟΡ. ΑὐΤ. ΠΕΡῚ ΤΟΎΤΟΥ] while they were in great perplexity concerning this. Comp. Plat. Phaedr. p. 237 A, Soph. p. 217 A, Tim. p. 49 B. In the New Testament only in Luke. Still Lachmann and Tischendorf have the simple form ἀπορεῖσθαι (B C D L א), but this easily crept in through neglect of the compound form. Also Luk_9:7, Act_2:12, the reading ἨΠΟΡΕῖΤΟ occurs.

ἘΠΈΣΤ.] as Luk_2:9.

ἌΝΔΡΕς] The angels (Luk_24:23) are designated according to the form of the appearance which they had in the view of the women.[268] Comp. Act_1:10; Mar_16:5. And their clothes had a flashing brightness (ἀστραπτ.).

Luk_24:5. τί ζητεῖτε κ.τ.λ.] indicating the groundlessness of their search.

τὸν ζῶντα] denotes Jesus not as Him who is Himself the life (Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, following Joh_1:4), nor yet the conquering life (de Wette), but, according to the context, quite simply Him who is alive, and no νεκρός. Comp. Luk_24:23.

μετὰ τῶν νεκρῶν] the grave is in general conceived of as the place where the dead are, where, therefore, he who is sought, is sought among the dead. Luk_24:6 f. ὡς ἐλάλ] Luk_9:22, Luk_18:32 f. The reference to Galilee (Matthew and Mark) Luke could not adopt; see Luk_24:49-50.

τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρ.] The designation of Himself previously used by Jesus. After the resurrection He no longer calls Himself by this name. Comp. Luk_24:26. ἀνθρώπ. ἁμαρτ.] heathens. Comp. Luk_18:32; Gal_2:15. Otherwise Mat_26:45.

Luk_24:8. It is psychologically improbable that the remembrance occurred to them now for the first time and at the prompting of the angel, if Jesus actually foretold His resurrection in terms so definite. But see on Mat_16:21.

Luk_24:9. κ. πᾶσι τοῖς λοιποῖς] who adhered to the company of the disciples as followers of Jesus.

Luk_24:10 f. According to the corrected reading (see the critical remarks), ἦσαν δὲ … Ἰακώβου is a supplementary enumeration of the most eminent of the women who brought the tidings; after which by means of καὶ αἱ λοιπαὶ κ.τ.λ. the same bringing of the tidings is related also of their female companions, and then by καὶ ἐφάνησαν κ.τ.λ. the narration is further continued. There were, however (these women who returned and announced, etc.), Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; moreover (καὶ), the rest of the women with them told this to the apostles, and their words appeared to them as a fable, and they believed them not. As to Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, see on Mat_27:55 f.; as to Joanna, on Luk_8:3.

ἐφάνησαν] the plural of the verb with the neuter plural (see, in general, Winer, p. 456 [E. T. 645]) denotes here the declarations of the several individual persons. See Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. iv. 3. 12.

λῆρος] a foolish rumour, trick. Plat. Protag. p. 347 D, Hipp. maj. p. 304 B: λήρους καὶ φλυαρίας; Xen. Hist. iv. 8. 15; Arist. Plut. 23, and elsewhere; Soph. Trach. 435: ληρεῖν ἀνδρὸς οὐχὶ σώφρονος.

Luk_24:12. The disciples did not believe the women, but Peter, hasty and impetuous as he was, desired to inform himself by his own sight about this enigmatical state of affairs. To take ἔδραμεν as a pluperfect (Paulus) is on account of βλέπει impossible; a perverted system of harmonizing, in which even Calvin led the way. Of the ἄλλος μαθητής of Joh_20:3, Luke says nothing, but, according to Luk_24:24, does not exclude him. The account is vague in the connection of its several parts,[269] as even Luk_24:34 presupposes something that is not related.

παρακύψ.] stooping down into the grave, Joh_20:5; Joh_20:11.

μόνα] so that thus the corpse was gone.[270]

πρὸς ἑαντ.] not: with Himself (as Mar_14:4; Luk_18:11), so that it would belong to θαυμάζων (Luther, Castalio, Grotius, Wolf, Schegg, and others, following the Vulgate), in which case, however, it would be superfluous, and its position before θαυμάζων would have no motive; but it belongs to ἀπῆλθε: to his home, i.e. πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ διαγωγήν, Euthymius Zigabenus. Comp. Joh_20:10. Examples in Kypke, I. p. 33 7.

θαυμάζ. τὸ γεγονός] συνῆκε γὰρ, ὅτι οὐ μετετέθη· ἦ γὰρ ἂν μετὰ τῶν ὀθονίων μετετέθη, Euthymius Zigabenus.[271] Comp. Joh_20:7 f.

[267] βαθέως might, it is true, be also the genitive of the adjective (see generally, Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 246 f.). Thus Bleek, Buttmann, and Schegg. Only no certain instance of such a genitive form occurs in the New Testament.

[268] Schleiermacher makes out of this, persons commissioned by Joseph of Arimathaea. By means of such, Joseph had had the body of Jesus brought away from the grave, in which it had been provisionally laid. See L. J. p. 471. At an earlier period Schleiermacher made another shift, but not a better. See Strauss in Hilgenfelds Zeitschr. 1863, p. 386 ff.

[269] Since vv. 24 and 34 presuppose what nevertheless is not previously narrated, it is certainly to be assumed that vv. 112 and ver. 13 ff. have been taken from two distinct sources, which Luke in his working up has not sufficiently compared together. There has not been wanting here, moreover, the supposition of a tendency. According to Baur (Theol. Jahrb. 1853, p. 61), the scene at Emmaus is to put in the background the manifestation which was made only to Peter.

[270] That the grave was empty is so decidedly and clearly in the whole of the New Testament (in opposition to Weizsäcker, p. 572) the correlative of the resurrection of Jesus (see also Rom_6:4; Col_2:12), that it is not at all to the purpose when Keim (Geschichtl. Chr. p. 134) adds to the expression of his belief in an appearance of Jesus in glorified corporeality, it makes no matter whether the grave was empty or not. Keim, moreover, contends with force against the visionary view of the resurrection. See against this kind of view, also Gebhardt, D. Aufersteh. Christ. 1864, p. 18 ff.; Düsterdieck, Apol. Beitr. I. p. 8 ff.; Weiss in the Stud. u. Krit. 1866, p. 173 f.; Uhlhorn, D. modernen Darstell. d. Leb. Jesu, 1866, p. 115 ff.

[271] Even this simple observation of Euthymius Zigabenus is sufficient to show that every other cause by which the corpse may have disappeared from the grave, apart from His resurrection, is inconceivable. Schenkel, indeed (in his Zeitschr. 1865, 5), when he defines the resurrection as the real mysterious self-revelation of the personality of Christ emerging living and imperishable from death, uses for this purpose no grave, since he makes the personality of Christ emerge only from death, not from the grave. But the certainty that Christ came forth from the grave is at the foundation of every mention of the resurrection throughout the whole New Testament, in which reference, especially also the moral idea of συνθάπτεσθαι and συνεγείρεσθαι Χριστῷ (Rom_6:4; Col_2:12; Col_3:1; Eph_2:6) is of importance.

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.

Luk 24:1-11 . The women at the tomb (Mat 28:1-10 , Mar 16:1-8 ).

Luk 24:1 . τῇ δὲ μ . τ . σ .: the δὲ answers to the μὲν in the preceding clause (Luk 23:56 ) and carries the story on without any break. The T.R. properly prints the clause introduced by τῇ δὲ as part of the sentence beginning with καὶ τὸ μὲν , dividing the two clauses by a comma. ὄρθρου βαθέως ( βαθέος , T. R., a correction), at deep dawn = very early. βαθέως is either an adverb or an unusual form of the genitive of βαθύς . This adjective is frequently used in reference to time. Thus Philo says that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea περὶ βαθὺν ὄρθρον . The end of the dawn was called ὄρθρος ἔσχατος , as in the line of Theocritus: ὄρνιχες τρίτον ἄρτι τὸν ἔσχατον ὄρθρον ἄειδον (Idyll xxiv., v., 63). ἀρώματα : the μύρα omitted for brevity.

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

Chap.

24:1-12.] The Women coming to the sepulchre learn that He is risen, and announce it to the Apostles, but are not believed. Mat 28:1-10. Mar 16:1-8. Joh 20:1-10. See notes on Matt.

1.] ὄρθρ. βαθ., deep dawn, i.e. just beginning to dawn (in Plato, Crito, § 1, we have οὐ πρῲ ἔτι ἐστίν; πάνυ μὲν οὖν. πηνίκα μάλιστα; ὄρθρος βαθύς) = σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης, John, and τῇ ἐπιφωσκ. εἰς μίαν σαβ., Matt., and λίαν πρωΐ, Mark; but not ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλ., Mark also: see notes there. βαθέως may be an old form of the gen. as rendered above, or the adv.

ἦλθον—the same women as those afterwards mentioned (ver. 10) who told the Apostles the intelligence. The reference is to γυναῖκες αἵτινες, &c. ch. 23:55.

ἀρώματα, which (ch. 23:56) they had made ready before the sabbath; in Mar 16:1, had bought the evening before, διαγεν. τοῦ σαβ.

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

1. The Women at the Sepulchre: Luk 24:1-7.

Vers. 1-7. The women play the first, if not the principal, part in all those accounts; a special duty called them to the tomb.

They were, according to Mat 28:1, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (the aunt of Jesus); according to Mark (Mar 16:1), those same two, and Salome the mother of James and John; according to Luke (Luk 24:10), the first two, along with the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward (Luk 8:3). John names only Mary Magdalene. But does not Mary herself allude to the presence of others when she says (Luk 24:2): “We know not where they have laid Him”? If John names her so specially, it is because he intends to give anew the account of the appearance which tradition had either omitted or generalized (Matthew), and which, as having taken place first, had a certain importance. As to the time of the women’s arrival, Luke says, Very early in the morning; Matthew, ὀψὲ σαββάτων, which signifies, not Sabbath evening, but (like the phrases ὀψὲ μυστηρίων, peractis mysteriis, ὀψὲ τρωϊκῶν, after the Trojan war; see Bleek): after the Sabbath, in the night which followed. By the τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ, Matthew expresses the fact that it was at the time of daybreak. Mark says, with a slight difference, which only proves the independence of his narrative (to Luk 24:8), At the rising of the sun.

The object of the women was, according to Matthew, to visit the sepulchre; according to the other two, to embalm the body.

The fact of the resurrection itself is not described by any evangelist, no one having been present. Only the Risen One was seen. It is of Him that the evangelists bear witness. Matthew is the one who goes furthest back. An earthquake, due to the action of an angel (γάρ), shakes and dislodges the stone; the angel seats himself upon it, and the guards take to flight. Undoubtedly, it cannot be denied that this account, even in its style (the parallelism, Luk 24:3), has a poetic tinge. But some such fact is necessarily supposed by what follows. Otherwise, how would the sepulchre have been found open on the arrival of the women? It is at this point that the other accounts begin. In John, Mary Magdalene sees nothing except the stone which has been rolled away; she runs instantly to apprise Peter and John. It may be supposed that the other women did not accompany her, and that, having come near the sepulchre, they were witnesses of the appearance of the angel; then, that they returned home. Not till after that did Mary Magdalene come back with Peter and John (Joh 21:1-9). It might be supposed, indeed, that this whole account given by the Syn. regarding the appearance of the angel (Matthew and Mark), or of the two angels (Luke), to the women, is at bottom nothing more than the fact of the appearance of the angels to Mary related by John (Joh 20:11-13) and generalized by tradition. But Luk 24:22-23 of Luke are not favourable to this view. Mary Magdalene, having seen the Lord immediately after the appearance of the angels, could not have related the first of those facts without also mentioning the second, which was far more important.

In the angel’s address, as reproduced by the Syn., everything differs, with the single exception of the words which are identical in all, He is not here. A common document is inadmissible. In Luke, the angel recalls to the memory of the women former promises of a resurrection. In Matthew and Mark, he reminds them, while calling on them to remind the disciples, of the rendezvous which Jesus had appointed for His own in Galilee before His death. Προάγει, He goeth before, like an invisible shepherd walking at the head of His visible flock. Already, indeed, before His death Jesus had shown His concern to reconstitute His Galilean Church, and that in Galilee itself (Mar 14:28; Mat 26:32); ὑμᾶς, you, cannot apply to the apostles only, to the exclusion of the women; it embraces all the faithful. It is also certain that the last words, There ye shall see Him, do not belong to the sayings of Jesus which the women are charged to report to the disciples. It is the angel himself who speaks, as is proved by the expression, Lo, I have told you (Matthew); and more clearly still by the words, As He said unto you (Mark). This gathering, which Jesus had in view even in Gethsemane, at the moment when He saw them ready to be scattered, and which forms the subject of the angel’s message immediately after the resurrection, was intended to be the general reunion of all the faithful, who for the most part were natives of Galilee, and who formed the nucleus of the future Church of Jesus. After that, we shall not be surprised to hear St. Paul speak (1 Corinthians 15) of an assemblage of more than 500 brethren, of whom the 120 Galileans of Pentecost were the élite (Act 1:15; Act 2:7); comp. also the expression my brethren (Joh 20:17), which certainly includes more than the eleven apostles. — There follows in Matthew an appearance of Jesus to the women just as they are leaving the tomb. It seems to me that this appearance can be no other than that which, according to John, was granted to Mary Magdalene. Tradition had applied it to the women in general. Comp. the expressions, They embraced His feet (Matthew), with the words, Touch me not, in John; Tell my brethren (Matthew), with Go to my brethren and say unto them, in John. Finally, it must be remarked that in the two accounts this appearance of Jesus immediately follows that of the angel.

In Matthew’s mind, does the promise, There shall they see me, exclude all appearance to the apostles previous to that which is here announced? If it is so, the contradiction between this declaration and the accounts of Luke and John is glaring. But even in Matthew, the expression, There [in Galilee] ye shall see me, Luk 24:7, is immediately followed by an appearance of Jesus to those women, and that in Judaea (Luk 24:9); this fact proves clearly that we must not give such a negative force to Matthew’s expression. What we have here is the affirmation of a solemn reunion which shall take place in Galilee, and at which not only the apostles, but the women and all the faithful, shall be present. That does not at all exclude special appearances granted to this or that one before the appearance here in question.

The following was therefore the course of events:

Mary Magdalene comes to the sepulchre with other women. On seeing the stone rolled away, she runs to inform the disciples; the other women remain; perhaps others besides arrived a little later (Mark). The angel declares to them the resurrection, and they return. Mary Magdalene comes back with Peter and John; then, having remained alone after their departure, she witnesses the first appearance of Jesus risen from the dead.

On the Resurrection of Jesus.

I. The fact of the resurrection.

The apostles bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus, and on this testimony founded the Church. Such is the indubitable historical fact. Yet more: they did not do this as impostors. Strauss acknowledges this. And Volkmar, in his mystical language, goes the length of saying: “It is one of the most certain facts in the history of humanity, that shortly after His death on the cross, Jesus appeared to the apostles, risen from the dead, however we may understand the fact, which is without analogy in history” (die Evangel. p. 612). Let us seek the explanation of the fact.

Did Jesus return to life from a state of lethargy, as Schleiermacher thought? Strauss has once for all executed justice on this hypothesis. It cannot even be maintained without destroying the moral character of our Lord (comp. our Comm. sur Jean, t. ii. p. 660 et seq.).

Were those appearances of Jesus to the first believers only visions resulting from their exalted state of mind? This is the hypothesis which Strauss, followed by nearly all modern rationalism, substitutes for that of Schleiermacher. This explanation breaks down before the following facts:—

1. The apostles did not in the least expect the body of Jesus to be restored to life. They confounded the resurrection, as Weizsäcker says, with the Parousia. Now, such hallucinations would suppose, on the contrary, a lively expectation of the bodily reappearance of Jesus.

2. So far was the imagination of the disciples from creating the sensible presence of Jesus, that at the first they did not recognise Him (Mary Magdalene, the two of Emmaus). Jesus was certainly not to them an expected person, whose image was conceived in their own soul.

3. We can imagine the possibility of a hallucination in one person, but not in two, twelve, and finally, five hundred! especially if it be remembered that in the appearances described we have not to do with a simple luminous figure floating between heaven and earth, but with a person performing positive acts and uttering exact statements, which were heard by the witnesses. Or is the truth of the different accounts to be suspected? But they formed, from the beginning, during the lifetime of the apostles and first witnesses, the substance of the public preaching, of the received tradition (1 Corinthians 15). Thus we should be thrown back on the hypothesis of imposture.

4. The empty tomb and the disappearance of the body remain inexplicable. If, as the narratives allege, the body remained in the hands of Jesus’ friends, the testimony which they gave to its resurrection is an imposture, a hypothesis already discarded. If it remained in the hands of the Jews, how did they not by this mode of conviction overthrow the testimony of the apostles? Their mouths would have been closed much more effectually in this way than by scourging them. We shall not enter into the discussion of all Strauss’s expedients to escape from this dilemna. They betray the spirit of special pleading, and can only appear to the unprejudiced mind in the light of subterfuges. But Strauss attempts to take the offensive. Starting from Paul’s enumeration of the various appearances (1 Corinthians 15), he reasons thus: Paul himself had a vision on the way to Damascus; now he put all the appearances which the apostles had on the same platform; therefore they are all nothing but visions. This reasoning is a mere sophism. If Strauss means that Paul himself regarded the appearance which had converted him as a simple vision, it is easy to refute him. For what Paul wishes to demonstrate, 1 Corinthians 15, is the bodily resurrection of believers, which he cannot do by means of the appearances of Jesus, unless he regards them all as bodily, the one as well as the other. If Strauss means, on the contrary, that the Damascus appearance was really nothing else than a vision, though Paul took it as a reality, the conclusion which he draws from this mistake of Paul’s, as to the meaning which must be given to all the others, has not the least logical value.

Or, finally, could God have permitted the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, manifesting itself to the disciples, to produce effects in them similar to those which a perception by the senses would have produced? So Weisse and Lotze think. Keim has also declared for this hypothesis in his Life of Jesus.But, 1. What then of the narratives in which we see the Risen One seeking to demonstrate to the apostles that He is not a pure spirit (Luk 24:37-40)? They are pure inventions, audacious falsehoods. 2. As to this glorified Jesus, who appeared spiritually to the apostles, did He or did He not mean to produce on them the impression that He was present bodily? If He did, this heavenly Being was an impostor. If not, He must have been very unskilful in His manifestations. In both cases, He is the author of the misunderstanding which gave rise to the false testimony given involuntarily by the apostles. 3. The empty tomb remains unexplained on this hypothesis, as well as on the preceding. Keim has added nothing to what his predecessors have advanced to solve this difficulty. In reality, there is but one sufficient account to be given of the empty tomb: the tomb was found empty, because He who had been laid there Himself rose from it.

To this opinion of Keim we may apply what holds of his explanation of miracles, and of his way of looking at the life of Jesus in general: it is too much or too little supernatural. It is not worth while combating the Biblical accounts, when such enormous concessions are made to them; to deny, for example, the miraculous birth, when we admit the absolute holiness of Christ, or the bodily resurrection, when we grant the reality of the appearances of the glorified Jesus. Keim for some time ascended the scale; now he descends again. He could not stop there.

II. The accounts of the resurrection.

These accounts are in reality only reports regarding the appearances of the Risen One. The most ancient and the most official, if one may so speak, is that of Paul, 1 Corinthians 15. It is the summary of the oral teaching received in the Church (Luk 24:2), of the tradition proceeding from all the apostles together (Luk 24:11-15). Paul enumerates the six appearances as follows: 1. to Cephas; 2. to the Twelve; 3. to the 500; 4. to James 5. to the Twelve; 6. to himself. We easily make out in Luke, Nos. 1, 2, 5 in his Gospel (Luk 24:34, Luk 24:36 et seq., Luk 24:50 et seq.); No. 6 in the Acts. The appearance to James became food for Judeo-Christian legends. It is elaborated in the apocryphal books. There remains No. 3, the appearance to the 500. A strange and instructive fact! No appearance of Jesus is better authenticated, more unassailable; none was more public, and none produced in the Church so decisive an effect...; and it is not mentioned, at least as such, in any of our four Gospel accounts! How should this fact put us on our guard against the argumentum è silentio, of which the criticism of the present day makes so unbridled a use! How it ought to show the complete ignorance in which we are still left, and probably shall ever be, of the circumstances which presided over the formation of that oral tradition which has exercised so decisive an influence over our gospel historiography! Luke could not be ignorant of this fact if he had read but once the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, conversed once on the subject with St. Paul...; and he has not mentioned, nor even dropped a hint of it! To bring down the composition of Luke by half a century to explain this omission, serves no end. For the further the time is brought down, the more impossible is it that the author of the Gospel should not have known the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians.

Matthew’s account mentions only the two following appearances: 1. to the women at Jerusalem; 2. to the Eleven, on a mountain of Galilee, where Jesus had appointed them to meet Him (οὗ ἐτάξατο πορεύεσθαι). We at once recognise in No. 1 the appearance to Mary Magdalene, Joh 20:1-17. The second is that gathering which Jesus had convoked, according to Matthew and Mark, before His death; then, immediately after the resurrection, either by the angel or by His own mouth (Matthew). But it is now only that Matthew tells us of the rendezvous appointed for the disciples on the mountain. This confirms the opinion which we had already reached, viz. that we have here to do with a call which was not addressed to the Eleven only, but to all believers, even to the women. Jesus wished again to see all His brethren, and to constitute His flock anew, which had been scattered by the death of the Shepherd. The choice of such a locality as that which Jesus had designated, confirms the conclusion that we have here to do with a numerous reunion. We cannot therefore doubt that it is the assembly of 500 spoken of by Paul, 1 Corinthians 15. If Matthew does not expressly mention more than the Eleven, it is because to them was addressed the commission given by Jesus, “to go and baptize all nations.” The expression: “but some doubted,” is also more easily explained, if the Eleven were not alone. Matthew did not intend to relate the first appearances by which the apostles, whether individually or together, were led to believe (this was the object of the appearances which took place at Jerusalem, and which are mentioned by Luke and John), but that which, in keeping with the spirit of his Gospel, he wished to set in relief as the climax of his history,—that, namely, to which he had made allusion from the beginning, and which may be called the Messiah’s taking possession of the whole world.

Mark’s account is original as far as Luk 24:8. At Luk 24:9 we find: 1. an entirely new beginning; 2. from Luk 24:8 a clearly marked dependence on Luke. After that, there occur from Luk 24:15, and especially in Luk 24:17, some very original sayings, which indicate an independent source. The composition of the work thus seems to have been interrupted at Luk 24:8, and the book to have remained unfinished. A sure proof of this is, that the appearance of Jesus announced to the women by the angel, Luk 24:7, is totally wanting, if, with the Sinaït., the Vatic., and other authorities, the Gospel is closed at Luk 24:8. From Luk 24:9, a conclusion has thus been added by means of our Gospel of Luke, which had appeared in the interval, and of some original materials previously collected with this view by the author (Luk 24:15-16, and especially 17, 18).

III. The accounts taken as a whole.

If, gathering those scattered accounts, we unite them in one, we find ten appearances. In the first three, Jesus comforts and raises, for He has to do with downcast hearts: He comforts Mary Magdalene, who seeks His lost body; He raises Peter after his fall; He reanimates the hope of the two going to Emmaus. Thereafter, in the following three, He establishes the faith of His future witnesses in the decisive fact of His resurrection; He fulfils this mission toward the apostles in general, and toward Thomas; and He reconstitutes the apostolate by returning to it its head. In the seventh and eighth appearances, He impresses on the apostolate that powerful missionary impulse which lasts still, and He adds James to the disciples, specially with a view to the mission for Israel. In the last two, finally, He completes the preceding commands by some special instructions (not to leave Jerusalem, to wait for the Spirit, etc.), and bids them His last farewell; then, shortly afterwards, He calls Paul specially with a view to the Gentiles. This unity, so profoundly psychological, so holily organic, is not the work of any of the evangelists, for its elements are scattered over the four accounts. The wisdom and love of Christ are its only authors.

IV. The importance of the resurrection.

This event is not merely intended to mark out Jesus as the Saviour; it is salvation itself, condemnation removed, death vanquished. We were perishing, condemned: Jesus dies. His death saves us; He is the first who enjoys salvation. He rises again; then in Him we are made to live again. Such an event is everything, includes everything, or it has no existence.

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.

Poor silly women, even beside their expectation are chosen to be the first witnesses of the resurrection, that there might be no suspicion either of deceit or violence.

Very early as Mark saith: or as John saith, while it was yet dark, that is, when it was yet scarce the dawning of the day.

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

CHAPTER XXIV.

The women coming early to the sepulchre on the first day of the

week, bringing their spices, find the stone rolled away, and

the tomb empty, 1-3.

They see a vision of angels, who announce Christ's resurrection,

4-8.

The women return and tell this to the eleven, 9, 10.

They believe not, but Peter goes and examines the tomb, 11, 12.

Christ, unknown, appears to two of the disciples who were going

to Emmaus, and converses with them, 13-29.

While they are eating together, he makes himself known, and

immediately disappears, 30, 31.

They return to Jerusalem, and announce his resurrection to the

rest of the disciples, 32-35.

Jesus himself appears to them, and gives them the fullest proof

of the reality of his resurrection, 36-43.

He preaches to them, and gives them the promise of the Holy

Spirit, 44-49.

He takes them to Bethany, and ascends to heaven in their sight,

50, 51.

They worship him, and return to Jerusalem, 52, 53.

NOTES ON CHAP. XXIV.

Verse 1. Bringing the spices] To embalm the body of our Lord: but Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had done this before the body was laid in the tomb. See Joh 19:39-40. But there was a second embalming found necessary: the first must have been hastily and imperfectly performed; the spices now brought by the women were intended to complete the preceding operation.

And certain others with them.] This clause is wanting in BCL, two others; Coptic, AEthiopic, Vulgate, and in all the Itala except two. Dionysius Alexandrinus, and Eusebius also omit it. The omission is approved by Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, Griesbach, and others. Bishop Pearce thinks it should be left out for the following reasons:

1. "They who came to the sepulchre, as is here said, being the same with those who, in Lu 23:55, are called the women which came with him from Galilee, there was no room for Luke (I think) to add as here, and some others came with them; because the words in Lu 23:55, to which these refer, include all that can be supposed to be designed by the words in question.

2. Luke has named no particular woman here, and therefore he could not add and some others, &c., these words necessarily requiring that the names of the women should have preceded, as is the case in Lu 24:10, where, when Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Joanna, had been named, it is very rightly added, and other women that were with them."

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

XXIV.

(1-8) Now upon the first day of the week.—See Notes on Mat_28:1-4; Mar_16:1-4.

Very early in the morning.—The original has a more poetic form “in the deep dawn,” agreeing with “while it was yet dark.” The last clause, “certain others with them,” is not found in the best MSS., and may have been inserted by transcribers to bring in the second group, who are named in the other Gospels, but not in this.

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

1. Now] Rather, But.

very early in the morning] Literally, at deep dawn, i.e. at the earliest morning twilight, ‘while it was yet dark’ (Joh_20:1), though the sun began to rise before they reached the tomb (Mar_16:2). St John mentions only Mary of Magdala (Joh_20:1); St Matthew adds Mary, mother of James (Mat_28:1); St Mark adds Salome (Mar_16:1); and St Luke Joanna, Luk_24:10. They may have gone singly or in small groups, the Marys being separate from the others. There is no discrepancy in the different narratives, although, as we might have expected, they are fragmentary and seem to reflect the varied and tumultuous emotions of those who were the first to see the Lord. The Easter music, as Lange says, is not ‘a monotonous chorale’ but an impassioned fugue.

and certain others with the?n] These words are probably spurious, not being in א, B, C, L.

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.

1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

Ver. 1. Very early in the morning]. About which time, probably, our Saviour rose.

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.

See the notes at Mat 28:1-11.

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

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were the two women that took up their seat right over against the sepulchre, to see where Christ was laid, Mat 27:61; Mar 15:47. They had bought spices some time of that day after they knew he must die, or else they bought them immediately after his burial, as they went home, for they rested on the sabbath day. They had now got some others into their society, and came very early upon the first day of the week,

(See Poole on "Mat 28:1", as to the particular time), intending to show their last act of love to their friend by embalming his body.

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

The Resurrection and the Ascension

1-11. Two angels appear to the women at the sepulchre (Mat_28:1-8; Mar_16:1-8 : cp. Joh_20:1-2). See on Mt and Jn.

12. Peter visits the sepulchre. See on Joh_20:3-10. This v. is wanting in some ancient authorities.

13-35 The journey to Emmaus (Mar_16:12-13). Though alluded to in Mk, this beautiful narrative is peculiar to Lk. The conjecture of Theophylact that one of the two disciples was St. Luke still finds supporters, but is unlikely.

13. Emmaus] Josephus speaks of an Emmaus 60 furlongs from Jerusalem, the habitation of a colony of Titus's soldiers. This may be the modern Kulênieh (lit. 'colony'), 7 m. W. of Jerusalem.

16. Their eyes were holden] Mk gives a slightly different explanation ('He appeared in another form'). St. Luke implies that our Lord prevented their recognition of Him by an act of will. But apart from this a certain change seems to have passed over His body at the Resurrection: cp. Joh_21:4.

17. As ye walk, and are sad] RV' And they stood still, looking sad,' but the 'Western' text is nearly as AV.

18. Cleopas] a person otherwise unknown. The obscurity of the persons concerned is a pledge of the authenticity of the narrative.

Art thou] RV 'Dost thou alone sojourn in Jerusalem and not know the things,' etc.

21. Redeemed Israel] perhaps they were only thinking of redemption from Roman rule (Act_1:6). Third day] Possibly they remembered Christ's prophecy (Luk_18:33).

26. Ought not Christ] More exactly, 'Ought not the Messiah' (in consequence of the prophecies) 'to have suffered these things and to have entered into His glory?' This passage supports the view that Jesus entered into glory not at the Ascension, but at the Resurrection. The Gk. implies that the entering into glory was already past, and the phrase 'His glory' implies that the glory was complete. Probably our Lord was in heaven during the Forty Days, descending to earth for occasional interviews.

30. Hetookbread] RV 'thebread.' Although so similar to the institution of the Holy Supper, this was probably not a celebration of it, but an act resembling the blessing and breaking of the bread at the feeding of the 5,000, at which probably the two disciples had been present.

31. He vanished] Our Lord's risen body was a perfect organ of spirit, and could manifest itself in whatever place, or under whatever sensible conditions He willed. After disappearing at Emmaus He seems to have transported Himself instantaneously to Jerusalem, and there to have appeared to Simon, Luk_24:34 : cp. our Lord's mysterious appearance when 'the doors were shut,' Joh_20:19.

34. The Lord is risen] Apparently inconsistent with Mar_16:13, q.v. To Simon] see 1Co_15:5.

36-43. Appearance on Easter Evening (Joh_20:19-25 : cp. Mar_16:14). See on Jn. At first sight there appears “to be no break in the narrative till the end of the Gospel, and the Ascension (Luk_24:51) seems to take place on he very day of the Resurrection. But since it is unlikely that so careful an historian as St. Luke would contradict himself on so important a point of chronology (see Act_1:3), it seems safer to hold that the conclusion of St. Luke from Luk_24:44 is a summary of the whole events of the 40 days, and not simply of those of Easter Day. It is, however, just possible that Luk_24:51 does not describe the Ascension. In this case there is no difficulty in assigning the whole of the events of this chapter to Easter Day.

39. And my feet] Probably the feet also were pierced. Handle me] A proof of a corporeal resurrection. Our Lord's body was now spiritual, but it was manifested by Him on this occasion under sensible conditions to show that it was the same body which was crucified. Flesh and bones] are mentioned as representing the solid and tangible framework of the body. Blood is not mentioned, but this is no proof that our Lord's body did not possess it: see 1Co_10:16.

42. And of an honeycomb] Some ancient authorities omit these words. Our Lord ate, not as needing food, but to afford a sign. The Apostles laid great stress on His eating and drinking with them as proof of the reality of the Resurrection, Act_10:41 : cp. Act_1:4; RM.

44-49. Summary of instructions given during the Forty Days.

44. The law.. the prophets.. the psalms stand for the three divisions of the OT. Canon recognised by the Jews. The 'Prophets' include the historical books except Chronicles and Ruth. 'Psalms' stand for' the Writings,' i.e. the third division of the Canon, of which it is the principal book.

47. Among all nations] RV 'unto all the nations'; a proof that Jesus contemplated a universal Church.

49. The promise] i.e. the Holy Spirit, Act_1:4 : cp. Joh_15:26.

50-53. The Ascension (Act_1:9; Mar_1:19). See on 51. And carried up into heaven] A few ancient authorities omit these words. If they are omitted, it is possible to regard this event, not as the Ascension, but as a miraculous disappearance of Jesus at the end of the interview begun in Luk_24:36.

52. And they worshipped him] A few ancient authorities omit these words.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Certain others with them - Who had not come from Galilee. Matt. xxviii, 1; Mark xvi, 1; John xx, 1.

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

upon the first

For order of events at the resurrection, (See Scofield "Mat 28:1").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Resurrection of Christ.

The women at the grave:

v. 1. Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

v. 2. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher.

v. 3. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

v. 4. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments;

v. 5. and as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

v. 6. He is not here, but is risen; remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee,

v. 7. saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

See Mat 28:1-10; Mar 16:1-8. On the first day of the week according to Christian reckoning, which Luke employs on account of his readers, very early in the morning, literally at deep dawn, when the dawn was just giving way to the brightness of the morning, at just about the time of sunrise, the women that were mentioned in the last chapter were on their way to the sepulcher. They brought the spices and ointments which they had prepared before and after the Jewish Sabbath, for their purpose was to anoint the body of Jesus. But in the meantime wonderful things had happened at the sepulcher. A great earthquake had shaken the garden and the surrounding country; an angel of the Lord had come down from heaven; he had rolled away the stone from the doorway tomb, where it fitted securely into a groove, and had sat down upon it. The women, therefore, who had been apprehensive about the stone, since they were unable to move it, could enter into the tomb. But as they did so, thy did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. The empty grave had been a surprise, the absence of the Lord’s body was a greater surprise. At the time of His burial they had noted expressly in just what way He had been laid into the tomb, and now He was not there. But while they were standing there in doubt and hesitation, all dazed by the unexpected turn of events, suddenly two men in shining, lightning-white raiment, two angels, came upon them, appeared to them. Stricken with overpowering fear in the presence of these beings from the realms of glory, they, the poor sinful human beings, could not lift up their eyes to look upon that glory, but bowed their faces to the ground. But the angels had a reassuring, a cheering message for them, destined to take away all fear out of their hearts. A wonderful Easter-message it is: Why seek ye the Living One among the dead? Jesus is the Living One; He is the source and incarnation of all life, Joh 1:4. And therefore this Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified, had arisen from the dead. He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened on the third day by the Spirit; He had entered also according to His body into a new, spiritual, divine life. Then He had gone and preached to the spirits in prison, He had shown Himself to the devil and all his angels, and also to the souls of the damned as the Conqueror of death and hell, 1Pe 1:18-19. That was the beginning of His exaltation. Now we know with the certainty of faith grounded in the Word of eternal truth that Christ, our Champion, has destroyed the power of hell and has taken away the might of the devil. He was no longer in the tomb; He had risen. And the angels remind the women how, in what words, Jesus had spoken to the disciples, probably in the presence of these women, that it was necessary for the Son of Man, that the obligation rested upon Him, according to the purpose of His incarnation, to be delivered into the hands of sinful men and to be crucified, but that He had also given them the glorious promise that He would arise on the third day. All these express prophecies, which at the time had not entered into their consciousness and understanding, had been fulfilled before their eyes. All this was irrefutable evidence for the resurrection of the Master.

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

Luk 24:5-6

I. The first thought that these words of the angel messenger, and the scene in which we find them, suggest, is this: The dead are the living. Language, which is more accustomed and adapted to express the appearances than the realities of things, leads us astray very much when we use the phrase "the dead" as if it expressed the continuance of the condition into which men pass in the act of dissolution. The dead are the living who have died. Whilst they were dying they lived, and after they were dead they lived more fully. All live unto God. How solemnly sometimes that thought comes up before us, that all those past generations which have stormed across this earth of ours, and then have fallen into still forgetfulness, live yet! Somewhere at this very instant, they now verily are! Death is no state; it is an act. It is not a condition; it is a transition.

II. This text—indeed, the whole incident—may set before us the other consideration: Since they have died, they live a better life than ours. In what particulars is their life now higher than ours? (1) They have close fellowship with Christ. (2) They are separated from the present body of weakness, of dishonour, of corruption. (3) They are withdrawn from all the trouble and toil and care of this present life. (4) They have death behind them, not having that awful figure standing on their horizon waiting for them to come up with it.

III. The better life which the dead are living now leads on to a still fuller life when they get back their glorified bodies. "Body, soul, and spirit"—the old combination which was on earth—is to be the perfect humanity of heaven. The spirits that are perfected, that are living in blessedness, that are dwelling in God, that are sleeping in Christ, at this moment are waiting, stretching out expectant hands of faith and hope; for that they would not be unclothed, but clothed upon with their house which is from heaven, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

A. Maclaren, Sermons preached in Manchester, 1st series, p. 97.

Christ, a Quickening Spirit.

I. Observe how Christ’s Resurrection harmonises with the history of His Birth. David had foretold that His soul should not be left in hell (that is, the unseen state) neither should the Holy One of God see corruption. In the angel’s announcement of His Birth His incorruptible and immortal nature is implied. Death might overpower, but it could not keep possession—it had no dominion over Him. He was, in the words of the text, "the Living among the dead. The grave could not detain Him who had life in Himself. He rose as a man awakes in the morning, when sleep flies from him as a thing of course.

II. Jesus Christ manifested Himself to His disciples in His exalted state, that they might be witnesses to the people; witnesses of those separate truths which man’s reason cannot combine, that He had a real human body, that it was partaker in the properties of His Soul, and that it was inhabited by the Eternal Word. They handled Him; they saw Him come and go, when the doors were shut; they felt what they could not see, but could witness even unto death—that He was their Lord and their God: a triple evidence, first, of His Atonement; next, of their own resurrection unto glory; lastly, of His Divine power to conduct them safely to it. Thus manifested, as perfect God and perfect man, in the fulness of His sovereignty, and the immortality of His holiness, He ascended up on high to take possession of His kingdom.

III. As Adam is the author of death to the whole race of men, so is Christ the origin of immortality. Adam spreads poison; Christ diffuses life eternal. Christ communicates life to us, one by one, by means of that holy and incorrupt nature which He assumed for our redemption: how, we know not; though by an unseen, still by a real, communication of Himself. How wonderful a work of grace! Strange it was that Adam should be our death: but stranger still and very gracious, that God Himself should be our life, by means of that human tabernacle which He has taken on Himself.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. ii., p. 139.

References: Luk 24:5, Luk 24:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1106; C. Kingsley, All Saints’ Day, p. 85; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 63; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 166; A. Maclaren, Sermons in Union Chapel, p. 113; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 9th series, p. 74. Luk 24:6.—W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 273; C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 128. Luk 24:8.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, No. x.

Luk 24:11

I. We can hardly conceive that, had the Cross and the sepulchre been the end of the course of Jesus, His followers would have held together many months. That such men should knit up again their ravelled and scattered expectations; that these disciples, being what we know them to have been, should have recovered heart, as the narrative tells us, and as the world’s history shows us they did; is simply inconceivable, supposing that nothing more happened after the deposition in the tomb. We cannot imagine them, crushed, disappointed, deceived men, standing up before the victorious enemies of their disgraced Master, and proclaiming Him a Prince and a Saviour. There is but one way of accounting for this change; and that way is, that the Resurrection really took place, as we are told it did.

II. There have been many strange days in this world’s history, but there was never a day so strange as this one of the Resurrection, because never one that resembled it in that which had happened. (1) As the loss had been, so was the gain; as the sorrow, so the joy. A new order of things was begun; a new life was sprung up. The harvest which seemed to have been but an heap in the day of desperate sorrow, is become precious seed, for another and an endless sowing. (2) And with joy comes responsibility: "They could not but speak of those things which they had seen and heard." This testimony of witnessed fact became a necessity of their lives, they went about invested with its responsibility. (3) And with joy and responsibility came also strength. In proportion to the greatness of the event, in proportion to the vastness of the change, in proportion to the working of the spirit, was their testimony given with power so that it bore down all opposition. Between Peter disclaiming Jesus, Peter weeping bitterly for his faithlessness, Peter returning from the sepulchre wondering in himself, and Peter standing before the council and proclaiming that there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved—there needs no link supplied, if this joy gave responsibility, and strength followed; but otherwise I see not how the weakness and the power are to belong to the same; how the same man is to utter in a few short days some of the weakest and basest, and also some of the boldest and grandest, words in this world’s history.

H. Alford, Eastertide Sermons, p. 1.

Luk 24:13-15

The Journey to Emmaus.

I. We see in this appearance something very characteristic of our Lord’s habits and ways. During His lifetime His disciples and followers were always craving for publicity and display. He was always retiring from too much of that, carrying on His work as quietly as possible. How entirely consonant with His whole habit of life are these appearings after the Resurrection.

II. We may see how easily still, in that risen life, He enters into communication with men, how little difficulty He has in joining any company, or any two or three with whom He wishes to be. Thus He consecrates for us our saddest walks, our hardest roads, our longest journeys.

III. This appearance of Christ is like a message of fraternity and Divine regard, especially to plain, simple, ordinary men—to what we may call common men, who wear no distinction and possess no advantage whatever, over their fellows. For who were these two men? No one knows anything about them. In all probability there was not much to know, except that they were disciples, that they loved Him. Who may despair of a visit? Who shall dare say, "The Lord has forgotten me"?

IV. We have an instance here of the attractive power of sorrow to Him. They walked and talked and were sad; and then He drew near and went with them. He is now in the painless, passionless, glorious life; and yet with the quickness of an immortal instinct, with the certainty belonging to an established affinity He seeks the society of struggling spirits, He gives His presence to sorrowing souls.

V. This, however, we must observe—that it is not to every kind of trouble and sadness that He grants immediate assuagement.

A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 394.

References: Luk 24:13-15.—H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1870, p. 324; C. Stanford, From Calvary to Olivet, p. 192. Luk 24:13-22.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 463. Luk 24:13-32.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 165; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 232, Luk 24:13-35.— Homiletic Quarterly, vol. xii., p. 210; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 214. Luk 24:15.—A. A. Ramsay, Christian World Pulpit; vol. vi., p. 284. Luk 24:16.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1180, Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 305.

Luk 24:17

The modern world contains not a few of the disciples of Christ in name, downcast and sad, who are leaving Jerusalem as if on the point of giving Him up; and He, as of old, joins them once and again, in another form, so that their eyes are holden and they do not see Him. He comes to them in His Church, which is in their eyes only a human institution; or in His Scriptures, which seem to them but a human literature; or in His Sacraments, in which they can discern nothing more than mere graceless forms: and yet He has a question to put to them and a word to address to them if they will but listen.

I. There is the sadness of mental perplexity. It is our risen Lord who offers the true solution of all mental perplexities. And that He can speak with authority on such subjects we know, for He has given the world a pledge of His right to speak by first of all dying publicly in the full daylight of history, and then raising Himself from the dead.

II. The sadness of the conscience. Our risen Lord reveals Himself to those who are weighed down by sin as pardoning it and blotting it out. But what is it that gives His Death, His Blood, this power? It is that the worth and merits of His Person are simply incalculable, since He is the everlasting Son of God. And what is the proof of this which He Himself proffered to His disciples and to all the world? It is His Resurrection from the dead.

III. There is the sadness of the soul which arises from the want of an object in life to be grasped by the affections, to be aimed at by the will. To persons who are thus living without an object, Christ our Lord appears, once, it may be, at least, to teach them that there is a something worth living for—the known will of the Eternal God; and He, in His resurrection glory, can speak on this too, with high authority, for He was declared the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 257,

References: Luk 24:17.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 257. Luk 24:17-22.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 493. Luk 24:17-29. —Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 264. Luk 24:21.—Ibid., vol. ii., p. 235. Parker, Christian Commonwealth, vol. vii., p. 39. Luk 24:22.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 252. Luk 24:24.—W. Scott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 124; E. Lewis, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 378. Luk 24:25, Luk 24:26.—J. M. Neale, Sermons in a Religious House, vol. ii., p. 488. Luk 24:26.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 157; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 12; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 238. Luk 24:27.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 18; T. T. Carter, Sermons, p. 198. Luk 24:28, Luk 24:29.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1655; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 297; J. R. Macduff, Communion Memories, p. 199.

Luk 24:29

The Evening Prayer of Christ’s Friends.

I. First, notice some of the feelings which must have been in the hearts of those who presented this prayer. (1) The first and most natural feeling was grateful interest in a spiritual benefactor. (2) The next feeling was a desire to have such conversation continued. (3) The last feeling we mention in the hearts of these friends of Christ was the presentiment of something more than they had yet seen or heard.

II. Consider some of the circumstances in which this request may be offered by us. (1) It may be said to be suitable to the whole earthly life of every Christian. (2) Another time suitable for presenting this request is in approaching the evening of life. (3) This request is suitable to those who live in an age of the world such as ours.

J. Ker, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 264.

References: Luk 24:29.—J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 40; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 420; Outline Sermons to Children, p. 178.

Luk 24:30-31

Christ Meeting with Doubters.

The story of the two disciples going to the village of Emmaus is the one which men in later ages have most connected with their own experiences; the one which has done most to bridge over the chasm between them and those who saw and handled the Word of Life. They have been sure that it was written to tell them that this Word of Life is not far from any one of them; that it is their fault and not His if they do not hear His voice and follow Him.

I. "While they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them." The Evangelist says nothing to heighten the effect of the meeting; not a word to make us feel that this was a new occurrence in the world’s history—an occurrence which would scarcely ever be repeated. And why not? Because, I apprehend, it did not strike St. Luke as a new occurrence, or one which would be rarely repeated. He accepted the coming of this Stranger to these disciples as a sign of that which had been continually taking place, when two men walking near Jerusalem, or walking anywhere else, had communed together and reasoned. "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."

II. "He took bread and blessed it," etc. If you ask whether His breaking of bread in that cottage was a sacramental act, I should answer that I conceive no act of Christ can be anything else. Was it not a pledge of His stooping to men, of His union with men, of His dominion over men? But if the question is, whether this breaking of bread was like that to which we are invited, who may communicate in a completed sacrifice, who may draw nigh to God through an ascended High Priest?—I answer, Christ Himself spoke of His departure to the Father as the beginning of all highest knowledge, as the opening of such a converse between earth and heaven as never could be possible whilst He was tarrying with them. It is therefore, I maintain, that we are guilty of strange faithlessness and ingratitude when we estimate our position as worse than that of those who saw Him before the Passion, or in the forty days’ after the Resurrection. It must be better and grander. Christ reveals Himself not to one here and there: He is proclaimed as the universal King, as the universal Sacrifice. As such we are permitted to receive Him. As such we are permitted to declare Him to the world.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 33.

References: Luk 24:30, Luk 24:31.—A. Maclaren, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 9; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, p. 229. Luk 24:31.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 681; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1st series, p. 396.

Luk 24:32

Christ stopping at Emmaus.

We have here:—

I. A striking illustration of our Lord’s method of teaching—which was, to give more when that already given had been duly received. He did not pretend to open truth after truth, just as though His whole business had been to furnish to the world a certain amount of revelation, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear; but He watched with great attentiveness the reception of truth, and He added or withheld according as that reception did or did not indicate love for truth and a readiness to obey its demands. And the importance to ourselves of observing the course which Christ pursued on earth lies mainly in this. We have no reason to suppose that such course was followed only in the days of His public ministry, but rather that it was universally characteristic of God’s spiritual dealings. Let there be a real anxiety for spiritual wisdom, an honest wish to ascertain, in order that you may obey the Divine will; and one lesson shall lead on to another, and you shall always be drawing from Scripture, and yet always feeling yourself to be farther off than ever from exhausting its stores. There is every now and then, with regard to ourselves, a stopping at Emmaus that it may be seen whether you are willing to part with your teacher.

II. A most emphatic warning as to the danger of losing golden opportunities, or of letting slip, through ignorance or procrastination, the means of acquiring great accessions of knowledge and grace. We cannot but think that Christians would escape many of those changes of which they so feelingly complain, and enjoy far more of unbroken fellowship with God, if they were watchful for such moments as those in the streets of Emmaus—moments at which desertion seems likely to succeed to presence, or darkness to light; but which are really moments at which the Redeemer, having vouchsafed some rich manifestation, only waits to be importuned that He may vouchsafe a yet richer. They whom privileges make languid in prayer may justly expect to find their privileges diminished; but they, on the contrary, who pray the more fervently as their privileges increase, will find in every spiritual blessing the germ of a brighter.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2,662.

References: Luk 24:32.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 281; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons, p. 305; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 607; Ibid., vol. iii., p. 234; H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 257; Ibid., Easter Sermons, vol. i., p. 256; J. R. Macduff, Communion Memories, p. 202. Luk 24:33-35.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 146.

Luk 24:34

I. The importance of Christ’s Resurrection is a thing which we must each learn for ourselves; it will not be felt by our being assured by others that it is important. But few persons of any education reach the age of manhood without having an opportunity to learn it, whether they choose to avail themselves of it, or to neglect it. Be the exciting cause what it may, the effect is almost sure to occur; we commune with our own hearts, and think of life and death, and ask ourselves what will be our condition when sixty years are over; whether, indeed, we shall then have died for ever, or whether we shall but have fallen asleep in Christ, to be awakened by Him when the number of His redeemed is full. It is then that the words of my text assume a very different character to our ears; then it seems no slight, no ordinary, blessing to be assured that the Lord is risen indeed.

II. The fact of our Lord’s Resurrection implies two things: (1) That He was actually dead; and (2) that He was alive again after having died. The latter point was the only one which was disputed in former times; it was the original account given of the matter by the Jews, that His disciples came and stole away His body. But it is a remarkable instance, both of the force of truth in the long run, and of the sounder spirit of criticism which prevails in modern times, that this objection is now generally given up. No one who pretends to be a judge of human character can doubt the perfect honesty of the narrative in the two last chapters of St. John’s Gospel; and admitting the honesty it is equally impossible to doubt the truth of it—as to the fact of our Lord’s showing Himself to His disciples after He had been crucified. But it is pretended now that He did not actually die under His Crucifixion; that the appearances were those of a living man, not of one risen from the dead. But where the death of the sufferer was so peculiarly important to those concerned in it, as in the case of our Lord; where He had Himself appealed to His rising again as the proof that He came from God; and where His enemies trusted to prove by His death that He had not come from Him—it becomes an improbability beyond all calculation, that an event, in itself so extraordinary, should happen in the very case where its occurrence could not fail to be considered as miraculous. Eight-and-forty hours after His burial, He was seen, not only alive, but in perfect strength and vigour, presenting Himself to Mary Magdalene, in the garden in the morning; to two of His disciples at Emmaus, six miles distant from Jerusalem, in the afternoon; and to His Apostles at Jerusalem in the evening: not as a man saved by miracle from dying of wounds, which must at any rate have left him in a state of the most helpless weakness, but as He was, in truth, the Son of God, who had overcome death, and who retained only so much of His earthly nature as might prove to His Apostles that it was He Himself—Jesus, who had been crucified, Jesus, who was now risen, to live for ever.

T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 94.

References: Luk 24:34.—T. Armitage, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 332; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons, p. 86. Luk 24:35.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 157; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 224. Luk 24:36.—Thursday Penny Pulpit, 4th series, p. 265; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts, p. 115. Luk 24:36-43.—B. F. Westcott, The Revelation of the Risen Lord, p. 61; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 463. Luk 24:38.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 297.

Luk 24:39

The Resurrection of the Body.

I. We may learn from this text, first, that the Resurrection will be the restoration of the whole man, in spirit and soul and body; a restoration of all in which consists the integrity of our nature and the identity of our person. And this is emphatically the hope of the Gospel. The light of nature could not show this mystery. The heathen reached only to the immortality of the soul, and even that they saw but dimly, and often doubted. It was seen, too, that even the elder Church saw this mystery in broken and uncertain lights. Without doubt, they saw, as it were, the refracted light of the coming mystery; but in some sense their eyes were holden, while they ministered to us greater things than they themselves conceived, for St. Paul declares that life and immortality are brought to light through the Gospel.

II. It is plain that, among those that are raised from the dead, there shall be a perfect recognition, and that not limited to the blessed, but, like the Resurrection itself, comprehending the wicked also. It follows, inseparably from the law of personal identity, and the law of individual responsibility, that it should be so.

III. This doctrine throws a great light upon the true doctrine of what the Church is. It is not a form, or piece of mechanism, moulded by the human will, or put together for the uses and expedients of men and nations; but a mystery, partaking of a sacramental character, framed and ordained by God Himself. In a word, the Church is the root of the new creation which shall be raised in its fulness at the last day; it is in part earthly, in part heavenly; there is one body and one spirit. And it is ever putting off its mortal shroud, casting its sere leaves upon the earth, and withdrawing its vitality into its hidden source. The earth is sowing with holy dust, and the world unseen replenishing with the souls of the righteous. Even now already, in the clear foresight of the Everlasting, to whom all things are present in their fulness, the Church is complete in Christ. But to us who see only in part and by broken aspects, and on the outer surface, it is imperfect and to come; yet flowing on, and continually unfolding itself from age to age.

H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. i., p. 364.

References: Luk 24:39.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 224; H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 225; Ibid., Easter Sermons, vol. i., p. 103; W. Page Roberts, Liberalism in Religion, pp. 51, 64.

Luk 24:40

Note:—

I. The doubts of the disciples. There were some things respecting their Master which these disciples strangely doubted; and there were other things, which they as strangely, as it seems to us, did not doubt at all. They doubted whether He were risen, as some had reported; but they had no doubt that, if He were risen, all was well with them. They doubted whether those who said that they had seen Him were correct in their statement; but they had no doubt that, if these witnesses were correct in their report, they had no further ground for sorrow or doubt or fear. They doubted whether this person, who now stood in the midst of them, was really their old Master, Jesus of Nazareth; but they had no doubt that, if this were really He, they had abundant cause of rejoicing.

II. The Lord’s way of meeting the doubts of His disciples. "He showed them His hands and His feet." His object in doing this was not only to convince them that He was no spectre, no shadow; but that He was the very Christ who had been crucified. The nail-prints were the proof, not only that He had died, but that He had triumphed over death; that, though "crucified through weakness, He lived again by the power of God." Strange as this kind of recognition, this way of fixing the doubted identity, may seem, it was satisfactory. The mother in the story knew her long-lost child by the scar on the shoulder received in infancy; so was the Son of God recognised by the nail-prints and the bruises of the Cross. He who raised Him from the dead, left these scars still visible, these marks of death and weakness, these memorials of the Cross and its nails, in order, by means of them, to speak to us, to give demonstration of His true death and true resurrection, that thereby we might be comforted exceedingly: nay, made like those of whom it is written: "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord."

H. Bonar, Short Sermons, p. 249.

References: Luk 24:40.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 254; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 24. Luk 24:41.—Ibid., Sermons, vol. vii., No. 425. Luk 24:44-46.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 582. Luk 24:45.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 19.

Luk 24:46-47

Our Lord’s Last Words.

I. The last command of a friend who has left us is commonly regarded with more than usual interest. Whatever else men forget they remember this. It is connected with a moment sacred in their recollections. The last glimpse of the familiar form receding from their view, the vessel long watched amidst the distant haze—these or similar remembrances are linked to those words. Nay, sometimes they were the last uttered on earth. The words of the dying—oh, how we treasure them; how full they are to us of seeds of action; how deep we lay them in our hearts! And our dear Friend has been taken from us; not the Friend of one family, but of all the families of the earth; the Friend of man—He who loved us and gave Himself for us. We have in the Gospels four distinct testimonies that our Lord’s parting words were a plain command to His Church to preach the Gospel among all nations, to make disciples of all nations, to preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations, to witness for Him unto the uttermost parts of the earth. This is the last sound of that Voice which spake as never man spake; this the utterance which yet vibrated in the air as He was borne upward, and which still speaks on in the ear of every one of His faithful followers: "Evangelise the world;" "Rest not till all know Him."

II. And what shall we say of the amount of this world’s means which God has put into our hands for aiding such work? Need any good work languish, because England cannot afford to support it? Let our vast schemes, undertaken for comfort or luxury, witness what we can afford to lay out on any object when it pleases us. God has bestowed on us all our wealth. He has placed us for religious exertion foremost among the nations of the earth. He has provided us with instruments whereby we may avail ourselves of these opportunities, and lavished on us abundance of wealth to make those instruments effective. It is clear then that we are, as a Christian nation, deeply responsible for carrying on the evangelisation of the earth.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. vii., p. 291.

References: Luk 24:46, Luk 24:47.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 261. Luk 24:47.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi., No. 329; Ibid., vol. xxix., No. 1729; T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates, p. 215; R. W. Dale, The Evangelical Revival, p. 149. Luk 24:47-53.—A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 536. Luk 24:45.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 280; J. Guinness Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 257; A. Mackennal, Ibid., vol. v., p. 385; G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 134; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 15.

Luk 24:50-51

The Ascension of our Saviour.

I. As we meditate upon the passage before us, taking it in connection with other passages in which the same writer has entered more minutely into detail, there are several attendant circumstances of the Ascension upon which we may profitably dwell. (1) As to the manner of it. In the first place, we must notice that it was visible—palpable to the senses of every beholder. You will see at once the fitness of this public triumph; it is true of the work of the Messiah, as it is true of the system which has been founded upon Messiah’s death, that these things were not done in a corner. His Crucifixion, His Burial, His Resurrection, His Ascension, were public. (2) We observe next, in reference to the event, that the place on which it happened is worthy of our notice. He led them out as far as Bethany. We can imagine the feelings of the disciples as they trod the familiar road, for they had often been to Bethany together. The inner signification of Bethany is the House of Sorrow; and it is a beautiful illustration, both of the tenderness and of the completeness of His triumph, that, on his way to His highest exaltation, He should pass the place of His deepest sorrow, and that thence He should ascend straight to the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." (3) Note the act during the performance of which He was lifted up on high: "He lifted up His hands and blessed them." This, indeed, was His daily work. For this He counselled in heaven and visited the earth; and for this He returned to His own glory after He had effectually proved the fulfilment of the design of His humiliation.

II. Consider, next, the purposes of the Ascension. (1) The personal results of the Ascension were the publicity of the scene and the triumph of His entrance into His primal glory. (2) Then there were representative results arising from the ascension of our Saviour. Christ is the federal head, the second great representative Adam. By His exaltation our own race derives surpassing honour. (3) And then there were mediatorial results in connection with the Ascension of the Saviour. "He received gifts for men." That is the purpose for which He has ascended on high. All that He could do on earth He did, and He said, "It is finished." Then He went up, that He might superintend its working, and He sits at the right hand of the Father, that He might make intercession for us.

W. Morley Punshon, Penny Pulpit, new series, No. 168.

Luk 24:50-53

The Ascension.

I. As far as the accompaniments of the Ascension were visible to men, they were the simplest and most unattractive that the case could admit. Even the Birth of the Saviour was far more honoured than His Ascension in supernatural accompaniments. On the Birth of Christ the heavenly host thronged the firmament; and in lofty accents heard by mortal ears, proclaimed the event. Not so upon the Ascension. There was nothing whatever of this angelic gratulation; Christ had trodden the winepress alone, and He ascended to His celestial kingdom alone, as though the attention of the beholders might not be distracted. And when the cloud had hidden Him, and the disciples were even straining their vision to catch another glimpse, two angels appear only to instruct these disciples, and not as attendants upon the ascending Redeemer. If the Saviour had gone away in terrible magnificence, there is many a timid Christian who would have feared that the Mediator in His unapproachable splendour and magnificence might have been forgetful of His followers. But those extended arms, and those parting words—the unbelief must indeed be strong which is proof against these.

II. There is a great mistake in imagining that when God withdraws Himself in His gifts, He must withdraw Himself in anger. It may be much nearer the truth to say that He withdraws Himself in love. It is like the going away of Christ only because it is expedient—a going away, of which it might be said that in departing He left His heart behind. Consider what may have been the attitude of your Heavenly Parent in removing what you have loved, and you may find cause to hope that the text has been true in regard to yourselves. "It came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them."

III. Note the effect wrought on the disciples by the Ascension of Christ—an effect, you observe, not of sorrow, but of joy. In place of being disheartened by the separation, they were mightily encouraged, and "returned to Jerusalem with great joy: And were continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God." Shall we grieve that the Visible Presence is withdrawn, and that there is no longer on earth the mighty and mysterious Personage who put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself and discomfited through dying the enemies of God and man? Not so! There is no reason for sorrow that He quits the earth on the wings of the wind. We could not detain Him below, we would have Him as our Mediator within the veil. This and this only, can secure to us those spiritual assistances through which we ourselves may climb the firmament.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1,519.

References: Luk 24:50.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii. p. 307, Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts, p. 118. Luk 24:50, Luk 24:51.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., pp. 167, 169; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 105; W. Bull, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 246; T. Jones, Ibid., vol. xxii., p. 122; J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children, 3rd series, p. 36. Luk 24:50-53.—B. F. Westcott, The Revelation of the Risen Lord, p. 175; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 265; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons, p. 88; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 358. Luk 24:51.—G. Gilfillan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 209; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 279; J. Vaughan, Children’s Sermons, 5th series, p. 26. Luk 24:51, Luk 24:52.—H. W. Beecher, Preacher’s Monthly, vol. xix., p. 154. Luk 24:52.—H. M. Butler, Ibid., p. 337; Ibid., vol. v., p. 266.

Luk 24:52-53

Warfare the Condition of Victory.

I. It will be well if we take to ourselves, and learn that great truth which the Apostles shrank from at first, but at length rejoiced in. Christ suffered and entered into joy, So did they, in their measure, after Him. And, in our measure, so do we. It is written that "through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God." At some time or other of the life of everyone there is pain, and sorrow, and trouble. So it is, and the sooner we can look upon it as a law of our Christian condition the better. One generation comes and then another. They issue forth, and succeed like leaves in spring; in all this law is observable. They are tried, and then they triumph; they are humbled, and then are exalted; they overcome the. world, and then they sit down on Christ’s throne. I suppose it is a long time before any one of us recognises and understands that his own state on earth is, in one shape or other, a state of trial and sorrow; and that, if he has intervals of external peace, this is all gain, and more than he has a right to expect. Let us try to accustom ourselves to this view of the subject. The Church, all elect souls, each in its turn, is called to this necessary work. Once it was the turn of others, and now it is our turn. It is as though all of us were allowed to stand around His throne at once, and He called on first this man, and then that, to take up the chant by himself, each in his turn having to repeat the melody which his brethren have before gone through; or as if it were some trial of strength or of agility, and while the ring of bystanders beheld and applauded we, in succession, one by one, were actors in the pageant. Such is our state—angels are looking on, Christ has gone before—Christ has given us an example that we may follow His steps. Whatever your trouble be, though you be lonely, O Children of a Heavenly Father, be not afraid! quit you like men in your day, and when it is over, Christ will receive you to Himself, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh, from you.

II. Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness—stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter, profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are but on pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vi., p. 221.

References: Luk 24:52, Luk 24:53.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 127. Luk 24:53.—F. Kelly, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 244.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Lord of life, who was put to death upon the Friday, was buried in the evening of the same day; and his holy body rested in the silent grave all the next day, being the Jewish sabbath, and some part of the morning following. Thus rose he again the third day, according to the scriptures, neither sooner nor later; not sooner, lest the truth of his death should have been questioned that he did not die at all; not later, lest the faith of his disciples should have failed.

Accordingly, when the sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene getting the other women together, she and they set out very early in the morning, to visit the holy sepulchre, and about sunrise they get to it, intending with their spices and odors farther to embalm the Lord’s body.

Observe here, 1. That although the hearts of these holy women did burn with an ardent zeal and affection to their crucified Lord; yet the commanded duties of the sabbath are not omitted by them; they keep close, and silently spend that holy day in a mixture of grief and hope. A good pattern of sabbath sanctification, and worthy of our imitation.

Observe, 2. These holy women go, but not empty handed: she that had bestowed a costly alabaster upon Christ while alive, prepares no less precious odors for him now dead; thereby paying their last homage to our Saviour’s corpse. But what need of odors to perfume a precious body, which could not see corruption? True, his holy body did not want them, but the love and affection of his friends could not withhold them.

Observe, 3. How great a tribute of respect and honor is due and payable to the memory of these holy women, for their great magnanimity and courage: they followed Christ when his cowardly disciples left him; they accompanied him to his cross, they attended his hearse to the grave, when his disciples did not, did not appear. And now very early in the morning they visit his sepulchre, fearing neither the darkness of the night, nor the presence of the watchmen, though a band of rude soldiers.

Learn hence, that courage and resolution is the special gift of God: if he gives it to the feeble sex, even to timorous and fearful women, it shall not be in the power of armed men to make them afraid. But to a close consideration of the several circumstances relating to the resurrection of our holy Lord.

Note, 1. With what pomp and triumph our holy Lord arises; two men, that is, two angels in the shape of men, verse 4, are sent from heaven to roll away the stone.

But could not Christ have risen then without the angels’ help?

Yes, doubtless he that raised himself could easily have rolled away the stone himself; but God thinks fit to send an officer from heaven to open the prison door of the grave; and by setting our Surety at liberty, proclaims our debt to the divine justice fully satisfied. Besides, it was fit that the angels who had been witnesses of our Saviour’s passion, should also be witnesses of his resurrection.

Note, 2. Our Lord’s resurrection declared, He is risen, he is not here. Almighty God never intended that the darling of his soul should be left in an obscure sepulchre. He is not here, said the angels, where you laid him, where you left him; death has lost its prey, and the grave has lost its prisoner.

Note, 3. It is not said, He is not here, for he is raised; but He is risen; verse 6. The original word imports the active power of Christ, or the self-quickening principle by which Christ raised himself from the dead, He showed himself alive after his passion. Act 1:3

Hence learn, that it was the divine nature or Godhead of Christ, which raised the human nature from death to life; others were raised from the grave by Christ’s power, but he raised himself by his own power.

Note, 4. The persons to whom our Lord’s resurrection was first declared and made known; to women, to the two Marys. But why to women? And why to these women? To women first, because God sometimes makes choice of weak means for producing great effects; knowing that the weakness of the instrument redounds to the greater honor of the agent.

In the whole dispensation of the gospel, God intermixes divine power with human weakness. Thus the conception of Christ was by the power of the Holy Ghost; but his mother, a poor woman, a carpenter’s spouse. So the crucifixion of Christ was in much meanness and outward baseness, being crucified between two thieves; but the powers of heaven and earth trembling, the rocks rending, the graves opening, showed a mixture of divine power. Thus here, God selects women to declare, that he will honor what instruments he pleases, for the accomplishment of his own purposes.

But why to these women, the two Marys, is the first discovery made of our Lord’s resurrection? Possibly it was a reward for their magnanimity and masculine courage. These women clave to Christ, when the apostles forsook him: they assisted at his cross, they attended at his funeral, they waited at this sepulchre; these women had more courage than the apostles, therefore God makes them apostles to the apostles. This is a tacit rebuke, a secret check given to the apostles, that they should be thus outdone by women; these holy women went before the apostles in the last services that were done for Christ, and therefore the apostles here come after them in their rewards and comforts.

Note, 5. The quick message which these holy women carry to the disconsolate disciples, of the joyful news of our Saviour’s resurrection; they returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things to the eleven, verse 9.

And the other evangelists say, that they were sent and bidden to go to the apostles with the notices of the resurrection, Go tell the disciples, says the angel, Mat 28:7

Go tell my brethren, says Christ, verse 10. A most endearing expression. Christ might have said, "Go tell my apostate apostles, my cowardly disciples, that left me in my danger, and did not own me in the high-priest’s hall, that did not come within the shadow of my cross, not within sight of my sepulchre." But not one word of all this by upbraiding them for their late shameful cowardice, but all words of divine indulgence, and endearing kindness; Go tell my brethren.

Where mark, that Christ calls them brethren after his resurrection and exaltation, thereby showing, that the change of his condition had wrought no change in his affection towards his poor disciples: but those that were his brethren before, in the time of his humiliation and abasement, are still so, after his exaltation and advancement: Go tell my brethren.

One thing more must be noted with reference to our Lord’s resurrection, and that is, why he did not first choose to appear to the Virgin Mary, his disconsolate mother, whose soul was pierced with a quick and lively sight and sense of her son’s sufferings; but to Mary Magdalene, who had been a grievous sinner? Doubtless this was for the comfort of all true penitents, and administers great consolation to them: as the angels in heaven rejoice, much more does Christ, in the recovery of one repenting sinner, than in multitudes of holy and just persons (such was the blessed Virgin) who need no repentance.

For the same reason did our Saviour particularly name Peter, Go tell my disciples, and Peter; he being for his denial of Christ swallowed up with sorrow, and standing in most need of consolation; therefore speak particularly to Peter: as if Christ had said, "Be sure that his sad heart be comforted with this joyful news, that I am risen; and let him know, that I am friends with him, notwithstanding his late cowardice."

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXXIV. Our Lord's Resurrection].

P A R T E I G H T H. OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION, APPEARANCES AND ASCENSION. JUDÆA AND GALILEE. TIME, FORTY DAYS. SPRING AD. 30.

CXXXIV. ANGELS ANNOUNCE THE RESURRECTION TO CERTAIN WOMEN. PETER AND JOHN ENTER THE EMPTY TOMB. (Joseph's Garden. Sunday, very early.) aMATT. XXVIII. 1-8; bMARK XVI. 1-8; cLUKE XXIV. 1-8, 12; dJOHN XX. 1-10.

c1 But a1 Now late on the sabbath day, b1 And when the sabbath was past, con the first day of the week, aas it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, cat early dawn, dwhile it was yet dark, cometh acame dMary Magdalene early aand the other Mary bthe mother of James, and Salome, cunto the tomb, bringing bbrought cthe spices which they had prepared. [ Luk_23:56.] ato see the sepulchre. bthat they might come and anoint him. a2 And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. 3 His appearance was as lightning, and his raiment white as snow: 4 and for fear of him the watchers [the Roman soldiers on guard] did quake, and became as dead men. [The angel sat upon the stone that the Roman guards might make no attempt to reclose the tomb.] b2 And very early on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb when the sun was risen. 3 And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb? c2 And they found the stone rolled away from [739] the tomb. b4 and looking up, they see d [Mary Magdalene] seeth} bthat the stone is rolled back: dtaken away from the tomb. for it was exceeding great. c3 And they bentering into the tomb, centered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. [John mentions Mary Magdalene alone, though she came with the rest of the women. As she was the one who reported to John and Peter, he describes her actions, and makes no mention of the others.] d2 She runneth therefore, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we know not where they have laid him. [Though Mary came with the other women, she departed at once, while the others tarried, as the sequel shows. The narrative proceeds to tell what happened to the other women after Mary had departed.] c4 And it came to pass, while they were perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel: bthey saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white robe; and they were amazed. c5 and as they were affrighted and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, bhe athe angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye; cBe not amazed: afor I know that ye seek Jesus, bthe Nazarene, who hath been crucified: cWhy seek ye the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but afor he is risen, even as he said. cremember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, 7 saying that the Son of man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 8 And they remembered his words [For the words referred to, see Mat_17:22, Mat_17:23. The angel continues his speech as follows], aCome, bbehold, the place where they laid him! asee the place where the Lord lay. [Here is a double wonder, that men should put the Son of God in a grave, and that he should consent to be put there.] b7 But a7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples, [740] band Peter, aHe is risen from the dead; and lo, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: bas he said unto you. alo, I have told you. [The women were told to hasten, for the disciples were not to endure their sorrow a moment longer than was needful. Peter was mentioned by name that he might know that he was not cast off for his denial. The Lord appeared to some chosen few in Judæa, but the large body of his disciples were to see him in Galilee; see Psa_16:10, Isa_53:10, and many other passages set forth the resurrection of our Lord; his own words, too, had plainly foretold it, yet among the disciples it was so much beyond all expectation that the prophecies had no meaning until made clear by the event itself. Yet these are the men whom the Jews accused of inventing the story of a resurrection!]

[FFG 739-742]

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.

Luke Chapter 24

But the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, had prepared everything for the burial of His Son, who had glorified Him by giving Himself up to death. He is with the rich in His death. Joseph, a just man, who had not consented to the sin of his people, lays the Lord’s body in a tomb that had never yet been used. It was the preparation before the sabbath; but the sabbath was near. At the time of His death the women-faithful (though ignorant) to their affection for Him while living-see where the body is laid, and go to prepare all that was needed for its embalming. Luke only speaks in general terms of these women: we shall therefore enter on the details elsewhere, following our Gospel as it presents itself. The women (chap. 24) come, find the stone rolled away, and the sepulchre no longer containing the body of Him whom they had loved. While perplexed at this, they see two angels near them, who ask why they came to seek the living among the dead, and remind them of the plain words which Jesus had spoken to them in Galilee. They go and tell these things to all the disciples, who cannot believe their account; but Peter runs to the sepulchre, sees everything in order, and departs, wondering at that which had come to pass. In all this there was no faith in the words of Jesus, nor in that which the scriptures had spoken. In the journey to Emmaus the Lord connects the scriptures with all that happened to Himself, shewing to their minds still lingering round the thought of an earthly kingdom, that according to these scriptures God’s revealed counsels, the Christ ought to suffer and enter into His glory, a rejected and heavenly Christ. He awakens that ardent attention which the heart feels whenever it is touched. He then reveals Himself in breaking bread-the sign of His death: not that this was the Eucharist, but this particular act was linked with that event. Then their eyes were opened, and He disappears. It was the true Jesus; but in resurrection. Here He Himself explained all that the scriptures had spoken, and presented Himself in life with the symbol of His death. The two disciples return to Jerusalem.

The Lord had already shewn Himself to Simon-an appearance, of which we have no details. Paul also mentions it as the first with reference to the apostles. While the two disciples related that which had happened to them, Jesus Himself stood in their midst. But their minds were not yet formed to this truth, and His presence alarms them. They cannot realise the idea of the resurrection of the body. The Lord uses their confusion (very natural, humanly speaking) for our blessing, by giving them the most sensible proofs that it was Himself risen; but Himself, body and soul, the same as before His death. He bids them touch Him, and He eats before their eyes. [45] It was indeed Himself.

An important thing remained-the basis of true faith: the words of Christ, and the testimony of scripture. This He sets before them. But two things were yet required. First, they needed capacity to understand the word. He opens their understanding therefore, that they might understand the scriptures, and establishes them as witnesses that were not only able to say, “Thus it is, for we have seen it”; but “Thus it must needs have been, for so hath God said in his word”; and the testimony of Christ Himself was fulfilled in His resurrection.

But now grace was to be preached-Jesus rejected by the Jews, slain and risen again for the salvation of souls, having made peace, and bestowing life according to the power of resurrection, the work which cleansed from sin being accomplished, and pardon already granted in thus bestowing it. Grace was to be preached among all nations, that is to say, repentance and pardon to sinners; beginning at that place, with which indeed the patient grace of God still owned a link, through the intercession of Jesus, but which could only be reached by sovereign grace, and in which sin the most aggravated rendered pardon the most necessary, by a testimony which, coming from heaven, must deal with Jerusalem as it dealt with all. They were to preach repentance and remission of sins to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The Jew, a child of wrath, even as others, must come in on the same ground The testimony had a higher source, although it was said “to the Jew first.”

But, secondly, something more therefore was needed for the accomplishment of this mission, that is, power. They were to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high. Jesus would send the Holy Ghost whom He had promised, of whom the prophets also had spoken.

While blessing His disciples, heaven and heavenly grace characterising His relationship with them, Jesus was parted from them, and carried up into heaven; and they returned to Jerusalem with joy.

It will have been remarked that the narrative of Luke is very general here, and contains the great principles on which the doctrines and proofs of the resurrection are founded; the unbelief of the natural heart so graphically painted in the most simple and touching accounts; the disciples’ attachment to their own hopes of the kingdom, and the difficulty with which the doctrine of the word took possession of their hearts, although, in proportion to their realisation, their hearts opened to it with joy; the Person of Jesus risen, still a man, the gracious One they knew; the doctrine of the word; the understanding of the word bestowed; the power of the Holy Ghost given-all that belonged to the truth and to the eternal order of things made manifest. Nevertheless, Jerusalem was still recognised as the first object of grace on earth according to God’s dispensations towards her; yet she was not, even as a place, the point of contact and connection between Jesus and His disciples. He does not bless them from Jerusalem, although, in the dealings of God with the earth, they were to tarry there for the gift of the Holy Ghost; for themselves and their relationship with Him He leads them out to Bethany. From thence He had set out to present Himself as King to Jerusalem. It was there that the resurrection of Lazarus took place; therethat the family, which present the character of the remnant-attached to His Person, now rejected, with better hopes-in the most striking manner received Jesus. It was thither He retired when His testimony to the Jews was ended, that His heart might rest for a few moments among those whom He loved, who, through grace, loved Him. It was there that He established the link (as to circumstances) between the remnant attached to His Person and heaven. From thence He ascends.

Jerusalem is but the public starting-point of their ministry, as it had been the last scene of His witness. For themselves it was Bethany and heaven which were connected in the Person of Jesus. From thence was the testimony to come for Jerusalem herself. This is the more striking when we compare it with Matthew. There He goes to Galilee, the place of association with the Jewish remnant, and there is no ascension, and the mission is exclusively to the nations. It is a carrying out to them, what was then confined to the Jews and forbidden to be carried further.

NOTE.-In the text I have strictly followed the passage; I add some developments here, connecting this Gospel with the others.

There are two distinct parts in the sufferings of Christ: 1st, that which He suffered from the efforts of Satan-as man in conflict with the power of the enemy who has dominion over death, but with the sense of what it was from God in view,-and this in communion with His Father, presenting His requests to Him; and 2ndly, that which He suffered to accomplish expiation for sin, when actually bearing our sins, made sin for us, drinking the cup which the will of His Father had given Him to drink.

When speaking on the Gospel of John, I shall enter more on the character of the temptations; but I would notice here, that at the commencement of His public life the tempter endeavoured to turn Jesus aside by setting before Him the attractiveness of all that which, as privilege, belonged to Him, all that might be agreeable to Christ as man, as to which His own will might work. He was defeated by the perfect obedience of Christ. He would have Christ, being Son, go out of the place He had taken as servant. Blessed be God he failed. Christ by simple obedience bound the strong man as to this life, and then returning in the power of the Spirit into Galilee spoiled his goods. Putting away sin and bearing our sins was another matter. Satan then departed from Him for a season. In Gethsemane he returns, using the fear of death to throw anguish into the heart of the Lord. And He must needs go through death; and death was not only Satan’s power but God’s judgment on man, if man was to be delivered from it, for it was man’s portion; and He alone, by going down into it, could break its chains. He had become man, that man might be delivered and even glorified. The distress of His soul was complete. “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” Thus His soul was that which the soul of a man ought to be in the presence of death, when Satan puts forth all his power in it, with the cup of God’s judgment as yet unemptied in it: only He was perfect in it; it was a part of His perfection put to the test in all that was possible to man. But with tears and supplications He makes His request to Him who had power to save Him from death. For the moment, His agony increases: presenting it to God makes it more acute. This is the case in our own little conflicts. But thus the thing is settled according to perfection before God. His soul enters into it with God; He prays more fervently. It is now evident that this cup-which He puts before His Father’s eyes when Satan presents it to Him as the power of death in His soul-must be drunk. As obedience to His Father, He takes it in peace. To drink it is but perfect obedience, instead of being the power of Satan. But it must be drunk in reality; and upon the cross Jesus, the Saviour of our souls, enters into the second phase of His sufferings. He goes under death as the judgment of God, the separation of the soul from the light of His countenance. All that a soul which enjoyed nothing except communion with God could suffer in being deprived of it, the Lord suffered according to the perfect measure of the communion which was interrupted. Yet He gave glory to God-”But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” The cup-for I pass over the outrages and insults of men: we may spare them-the cup was drunk. Who can tell the horrors of that suffering? The true pains of death, understood as God understands it, felt-according to the value of His presence-divinely, as by a man who depended on that presence as man. But all is accomplished; and that which God required in respect to sin is done-exhausted, and He is glorified as to it: so that He has only to bless whosoever comes to Him through a Christ who is alive and was dead, and who lives for ever a man, for ever before God.

The sufferings of Christ in His body (real as they were), the insults and upbraidings of men, were but the preface of His affliction, which, by depriving Him as man of all consolation, left Him wholly in the place of judgment as made sin, to His sufferings [46] in connection with the judgment of sin, when the God who would have been His full comfort was, as forsaking Him, the source of sorrow which left all the rest as unfelt and forgotten.

Footnotes for Luke Chapter 24

45: Nothing can be more touching than the way in which He cultivates their confidence as that One they had known, the man, still a true man (though with a spiritual body) as He had been before! Handle me and see that it is I myself. Blessed be God, for ever a man, the same who has been known in living love in the midst of our weakness.

46: Psa 22:1-31 is His appeal to God from the violence and wickedness of man to find Himself there forsaken and only sin in His sight, but perfect there. Christ suffered all from man-hostility, unrighteousness, desertion, denial, betrayal, and then, as trusting in god, forsaking. But what a spectacle, the one righteous Man who did put His trust in Him to have to declare, at the end of His life, openly to all, He was forsaken of God!

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–12. See notes on Matt. 28:1–10. Upon the first day of the week. The Lord's day, our Sunday. The women had “beheld the tomb and how his body was laid” on Friday, then “prepared spices and ointments” in accordance with Jewish burial customs, and “rested on the Sabbath day (Saturday) according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56), but early Sunday morning came to the tomb on their mission of love. They came. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Joses (Matt. 28:1), Salome (Mark 16:1), and Joanna (verse 10).

The stone rolled away. See notes on Mark 16:3. They knew nothing of the Roman guard that had been placed there.

Behold, two men. Angels (Matt. 28:5).

Remember how he spake … in Galilee. See Matt. 16:21; 17:22; Mark 8:31; 9:31; John 2:22. These women were of Galilee and had heard, or heard of, these words.

They remembered. They had not before comprehended his words.

Seemed to them as idle tales. To the apostles. They seemed to have not the slightest expectation of a resurrection.

Then arose Peter. John was with him (John 20:1–10). At the tomb John believed.

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:

The women return to the tomb with spices to put on Jesus' body.

Very early on the first day of the week

"Before dawn on Sunday" (See: Ordinal Numbers)

they came to the tomb

"the women arrived at the tomb"

the tomb

This tomb was cut in the rock of a cliff.

bringing the spices

These were the same spices they prepared in Luke 23:56.

They found the stone

"They saw that the stone was"

the stone rolled away

This can be stated in active form. AT: "that someone had rolled the stone" (See: Active or Passive)

the stone

This was a large, cut, round stone big enough to completely block the doorway to the tomb. It required several men to roll it.

did not find the body of the Lord Jesus

You can state explicitly that they did not find it because it was not there. AT: "the body of the Lord Jesus was not there" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

grave

Jesus

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

1. βαθέως אABCD. It is not an adverb, but the Alexandrine form of βαθέος the gen. of βαθύς.

[καί τινες σὺν αὐταῖς.] Omitted in אBL, Copt. Aeth. Vulg[413] It[414] &c.

[413] Vulg. Vulgate.

[414] It. Old Latin Version (Itala).

1. ὄρθρου βαθέως. Literally, ‘at deep dawn,’ i.e. at the earliest morning twilight, ‘while it was yet dark’ (Joh 20:1), though the sun began to rise before they reached the tomb (Mar 16:2). St John mentions only Mary of Magdala (Luk 20:1); St Matthew adds Mary, mother of James (Mat 28:1); St Mark adds Salome (Mar 16:1); and St Luke Joanna, Luk 24:10. They may have gone singly or in small groups, the Marys being separate from the others. There is no discrepancy in the different narratives, although, as we might have expected, they are fragmentary and seem to reflect the varied and tumultuous emotions of those who were the first to see the Lord. The Easter music, as Lange says, is not ‘a monotonous chorale’ but an impassioned fugue. Godet suggests that the narrative of each Evangelist is in accordance with the object and design of each Gospel. St Luke, desiring to describe the growth of Christianity, prepares for his future history of the founding of the Church. St Matthew crowns his demonstration of the Messianic glory of Jesus. St Mark displays His active power. St John illustrates the triumph of faith over incredulity.

1. To Mary of Magdala. Joh 20:11-17 (‘Noli me tangere’); Mar 16:9.

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.

1. Resurrection itself is not described. Like all beginnings, whether in nature or in history, it is hidden from view. (Contrast the attempt at description in the Gospel of Peter.)

1-11. The Visit of the Women to the Tomb and the Vision of Angels. Comp, Mat 28:1-10; Mar 16:1-8; Joh 20:1-10. Lk. and Jn. mention two Angels; Mt. and Mk. mention only one: but we know too little about the manner of Angel appearances to be sure that Lk. and Jn. mention the same two Angels, or that Mt. and Mk. mention the same one. In the other two cases of similar difference (the Gerasene demoniacs and the blind men at Jericho) it is Mt. who mentions two, while Lk. gives only one. In all three cases Mk. mentions only one. Where, out of two or more, only one is spokesman, he is necessarily remembered. The other or others may easily be ignored or forgotten. It is an exaggeration to call such differences absolute discrepancies. Lk. records only those appearances of the risen Lord which took place in Judæa.

1. τῇ δὲ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων. “But on the first day of the week.” The δέ corresponds to the previous μέν: they rested on the sabbath, but the next day they did not. Jn. has the same expression (20:1), which literally means “but on day one of the week,” una antem sabbati (Vulg.). Cov. here translates “upon one of the Sabbathes,” and in Jn. “upon one daye of the Sabbath.” But here with Cran. he rightly has “But” (RV.) and not “And” (Rhem.) or “Now” (AV.).

Comp. Act 20:7; Mat 28:1; Mar 16:2; Joh 20:19; Rev 9:12. This use of the cardinal for the ordinal is Hebraistic: Gen 1:5; Est 3:6; Psa_23. tit. In class. Grk. it occurs only in combination with an ordinal: τῷ ἐνὶ καὶ τριηκοστῷ (Hdt. v. 89, 2).

ὅρθρου βαθέως. It is doubtful whether βαθέως is the Attic form of the gen. of βαθύς (De W. Nösg. Alf.) or an adv. (Mey. Weiss). The former is probable; for ὅρθρος βαθύς occurs (Aristoph Vesp.216; Plat. Crit. 43 A; see esp. Prot. 310 A; Philo, De Vita Mosis, i. 32), and 2Co 11:23 does not favour the latter. For ὅρθρου comp. [Jn.] 8:2, Jer 25:4, Jer 26:5.

τὸ μνῆμα. With the exception of Mar 5:3, Mar 5:5, Mar 5:15:46; Rev 11:9, the word is peculiar to Lk. in N.T. (8:27, 23:53; Act 2:29, Act 7:16). The common word is μνημεῖον (11:44, 47, 23:55, 24:2, 9, 12, 22, 24, etc.); but Mt sometimes has τάφος (23:27, 29, 27:61, 64. 66, 28:1; comp. Rom 3:13). RV. “tomb” for μνῆμα and μνημεῖον and “sepulchre” for τάφος.

A C2 D X Λ etc. d f q Syrr. (Cur. Sin. Pesh. Harcl. Hier.) Sah. Arm. Aeth. (most MSS.) add καί τινες σὺν αὐταῖς, and D c d Sah. add from Mar 16:3 ἐλογίζοντο δὲ ἐν ἐανταῖς τίς ἅρα ἀποκυλίσει τὸν λίθον; א B C* L 33, 124 a b c e ff21 Vulg. Bob. Aeth. (some MSS.) omit. The insertion is a gloss from ver. 10 and Mar 16:1, Mar 16:3.

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

Very early in the morning [ορθρου βαθεως] . Lit., at deep dawn, or the dawn being deep. It is not uncommon in Greek to find baquv, deep, used of time; as deep or late evening. Plutarch says of Alexander, that he supped "at deep evening;" i e., late at night. Philo says that the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea "about deep dawn (as here), while others were yet in bed." So Socrates, in prison, asks Crito the time of day. He replies, orqrov baquv, the dawn is deep, i e. breaking (Plato, "Crito," 43).

4 - 8. Compare Mt 28:5 - 7; Mr 16:5 - 7.

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