Mark 16:6

Mar_16:6-7

He is risen; He is not here.

The words of an angel

Here we have the first gospel sermon preached after the gospel had been finished on the cross, and sealed by the fact of the resurrection. Not a sentence that dropped from the speakers lips by accident; nor are its words mere words that came uppermost, as though some other words might have done as well. They hold the germ of which the preaching of all true evangelists is but the expansion.

I. The first title under which Christ was proclaimed by a messenger from heaven after his crucifixion.

1. Jesus. The name given at the annunciation. Now it is fulfilled. He has saved His people from their sins. Henceforth this name shall be above every name. All through our life in time let us sing with Bernard, This name is sweetness in the mouth, music in the ear, joy in the heart; and all through our life in eternity let us expect to penetrate deeper and deeper into the soul of its beauty, and glory, and meaning.

2. Jesus of Nazareth. A lowly title, despised by men.

3. Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified. Words used among men to express contempt, an angel is proud to use; and the last phrase of degradation which His enemies flung at Him on earth was the first title under which He is proclaimed by a flaming prophet from heaven.

II. The first notice of Christs resurrection. Christs resurrection is-

1. A mystery.

2. A miracle.

3. A victory over death.

4. A fulfilment of His promise. (G. Stanford, D. D.)

The angels words

I. This message brings to us the glad tidings that he who once died for us now lives for us. For the salve of convenience in the presentation of thought, we may be permitted to speak of Christs death as having two aspects in its saving efficacy-a heavenward and an earthward aspect,-and we assert that its power in both directions depends upon the truth that He is risen.

1. The heavenward aspect. Our benefit, in this direction, from the death of Christ, depends on our trust in Him, and not on our ability to explain precisely what His death has done. We know, at any rate, that it has done all that was necessary, and that not only has He died, but also risen again. His resurrection, sanctioned by the seal of law and all the pomp of heaven, gave to His redeeming act the most public and solemn satisfaction.

2. The earthward aspect. He who is our Saviour must be our Saviour every day, and our Saviour in every place; our Saviour from Satan, from the world, and from ourselves. Not only must we, by the heavenward efficacy of His death, have the forgiveness of sins; but, by its earthward efficacy have Him with us as a living presence, ever at work by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Some time ago the agents of Anti-Christianity placed posters about London, on doors, on walls, and on wooden fences, advertising the question, Will faith in a dead man save you? If, as thus insinuated, the Christian faith is like this, then Christianity is a shock to common sense. Dead Hampden will not take a hand against tyranny; dead Milton will not sing; dead Wellington will not fight; dead Wilberforce will not work for the emancipation of slaves in the Soudan; a dead lawyer will not save you from legal complications; a dead doctor will not save you from the grasp of fever; and just as fantastic, and just as insane, is the conception of salvation by faith in a dead Saviour-a Saviour who is behind eighteen centuries, a Saviour who was crucified but of whom we have been told nothing more. Without the resurrection all the gospel would collapse, as an arch would collapse without the keystone.

II. The grave is the only place where the true seekers of Jesus may not find him.

1. He is not here: this will not apply to heaven.

2. He is not here: this will not apply to any earthly solitude.

3. He is not here: this will not apply to the walks of human life. A Christian may say of his place of business, Here I pass most of my life; this is my souls battlefield; and will Christ leave me to fight my battles alone? Never! Here, in my commercial life, one may say, Christ is with me, quickening my conscience, and holding my soul in life, while I seem to be only dealing with questions of material, colour, and shape; or with distinctions of weight and currency; or with tables of value, or calculations of outlay, or rates of exchange. It is an axiom of sanctified reason and a sovereign article of faith, that Christ most is-where Christ is most wanted; and that wherever I am, if I want Him, and seek Him, He is near to my heart as the sun is to that which it shines upon.

4. He is not here: this will not apply to the worshipping assembly.

5. He is not here: this will not apply to the place where the prodigal stands in his rags and tries to pray, but is speechless; it will not apply to the place where the backslider bemoans himself; it will not apply to the spot where some interceding soul, whose concern for some other soul has risen to the point of intolerable, bursts into the prayer, Lord help me!

6. He is not here: Christ is not in the grave. To think of Christ as among the dead would be to give up faith in Christ. Christ is the life; He cannot, therefore, be among the dead; He must, therefore, be everywhere except in the grave.

III. The seekers of Jesus have nothing to fear, even from that which may look most alarming. When we are overpowered with a sense of the awful other world, let us remember that angels and ministers of grace are all our friends. We and they are under the same Lord, at home in the same heaven, choristers in the same service.

IV. All who know the glad tidings are bound to tell them to others. (G. Stanford, D. D.)

The women at the sepulchre

Very signal and very beautiful was the devotedness of these women. They put to shame the stronger sex.

1. Their faith, it is true, was weak. They cherished no hope of finding Christ alive. They had forgotten His own express prediction.

2. Yet, if there be no faith to admire, there is great love to commend.

3. And then, what zeal was in their love. They well knew how carefully the grave had been closed; but they did not turn back at the prospect of a difficulty which they might justly have reasoned was too much for their strength. Theirs was the love which seems to itself able to break through rocks, though hope might have been perplexed had it been called upon for a reason.

4. And love had its reward. They came with the pious intent of anointing the dead, and themselves were anointed with the most fragrant tidings that ever fell on mortal ear.

I. The information given to the women.

1. Their fears are quieted. Be not affrighted. They had no need to be terrified at the glories of an angel, who had not been alarmed at the indignities heaped upon their Lord. They who could come seeking the crucified Nazarene in the grave were not unworthy to hold converse with celestial beings themselves.

2. But the women needed more than the quieting of those fears which the apparition of the angel had naturally excited. They wanted information as to the disappearance of Christs body, and this was quickly furnished. There is something remarkable in the reasoning of the angel. He calls upon the women to behold the place where their Lords body had lain, as though its mere desertion were evidence enough of the fact of a resurrection. And so, in real truth, it was; to all, at least, who like the women, knew and considered the characters and circumstances of the disciples of Christ. The body was gone. Either, therefore, it had been raised from the dead, or it had been removed for the purpose of deception. If removed, it could only be by some of his immediate followers and adherents. But could they have stolen the body? The supposition is absurd. In believing that Christ was raised from the dead, I believe a miracle for which there was adequate power; but in believing that Christs disciples stole away His body, I believe a miracle for which there was no power at all. Hence the simple fact, ascertainable by the senses, that Christs body had disappeared, was, and should be still, sufficient evidence of the resurrection.

3. It may not, however, have been only as proving the fact of a resurrection, that the angel directed attention to the deserted grave; but yet further, because there would be high topics of meditation and comfort suggested by the fact that it had been hallowed by the body of the Lord. Pause awhile, that you may gaze on the consecrated spot, and gather in the wonders with which it is haunted. So interwoven is the fact of Christs resurrection with the whole scheme of redemption-so dependent is the entire gospel, whether for its truth or its worth, upon its not being possible He should be holden of death,-that if we could but fix attention on that empty grave, we should give hope to the desponding, constancy to the wavering, warning to the careless, comfort to the sorrowing, courage to the dying. Oh, linger awhile at the tomb in holy meditation. Solemn thoughts may steal over you, and brilliant visions may pass before you. That empty vault is full of sublime, and stirring, and glorious things-things which escape the mere passer-by, but present themselves to the patient inspector.

II. The commission with which the women were entrusted.

1. The glad tidings were not for them alone; and the angel directs them to hasten at once to give intelligence of the glorious fact. Were not these women highly honoured? Were they not well recompensed for their zeal and love? They became apostles to the apostles themselves; they first preached the resurrection to those who were to preach it to the farthest ends of the earth. As the first news of death came by woman, by woman came the first news of resurrection.

2. What a breaking forth of long-suffering and forgiving love is there in the fact, that the tidings were first sent to the disciples of the Lord. It seems to have been the first object of the risen Redeemer to quiet the apprehensions of His followers to assure them that so far from feeling sternly towards them on account of their desertion, He had returned to life for their comfort and welfare. Christ did not think little of having been deserted; but He knew how His disciples sorrowed for their fault; that they loved Him sincerely, notwithstanding their having been overcome by fear; and He gave a proof of His readiness to forgive and welcome the backslider, whensoever there is compunction of heart, in sending the first tidings of His resurrection to the men who had all forsaken Him and fled.

3. And this were but little. The disciples as a body had indeed played the coward; yet they had rather avoided standing forth in His defence, than shrunk from Him in open apostacy. One only had done that-denied his Lord-denied Him thrice, with all that was vehement and blasphemous in expression. Alas for Peter! But oh! the gracious consideration of Christi for indeed it is His voice which must be recognized in the voice of the angel: Go your way; tell His disciples and Peter. Those two words-and Peter-thrown into the commission are, I might almost say, a gospel in themselves. To all repentant backsliders, Easter brings glad tidings of great joy.

III. The promise.

1. There was an appropriateness in the selection of Galilee for this meeting of our Lord with His apostles, forasmuch as he was likely to be known to numbers there, He having been brought up in Nazareth, a city of Galilee, having wrought His first miracle in Cana of Galilee, and having laboured most abundantly in Capernaum and the neighbouring coast.

2. Moreover, as Galilee was called Galilee of the Gentiles, from its proximity to the territories of the heathen, this fixing the place of meeting on the confines of Judea might be intended to mark that all men had an interest in the fact of the resurrection, or that the blessings of the new dispensation were not to be restricted as had been those of the old.

3. And if it were only to the then living disciples that the promise pertained, of meeting their risen Lord in Galilee, assuredly some place there is of which it may be said to the Church in every age-There shall ye see Him. He goeth before you is, and always will be, the message to the Church. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The holy womens Easter and ours

Ah! my brethren, let us see whether, in our annual pilgrimage to the grave of our Lord, we have anything of the love which shows so conspicuously in these zealous women. It is so easy for us to keep Easter with high pomp and gratulation, coming to a tomb which we know to be empty, because death has been vanquished in his own domain, that we may readily overlook the strength of that affection which glowed fervently towards Christ whilst supposed to be dead-dead, too, with every circumstance of indignity and shame. When now the Church marshals her children in solemn precession, and leads them up to the place where the Lord was laid, there is a thorough consciousness that mourning is about to be turned into joy, and all remembrance of Christs having died as a malefactor, is perhaps lost in the feeling of His having come forth as the resurrection and the life. What would it be, if as yet we only knew Him as Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified, and not as the Son of God who stripped the grave of all victory? Is it not too much the fact that (if such expressions may be used) we tolerate the humiliation of Christ, in consideration of His subsequent triumph, just as we can overlook the circumstance of a mans having been born a beggar, when we know him to have become a prince? We put up with, though we dislike, the cross, because we know that it conducted to a throne. And yet what ought so to endear to us the Redeemer, as the shame and the sorrow which He endured on our behalf? When ought He to seem so precious in our eyes as when, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gives His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that pluck off the hair? Oh! that heart has scarcely yet been touched with celestial fire, which is forced to turn from Christ in His humility to Christ in His glory, ere it can be kindled into admiration and devotedness. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The place where they laid the Lord

I. Consider the manner in which He was committed there.

1. He was committed there by persons of remarkably interesting character. Joseph of Arimathea: Nicodemus.

2. He was committed there with many tokens of regard and affection.

3. He was committed there with unostentatious quietness and privacy.

II. Consider the ends which, by his committal to it, were accomplished there.

1. His committal to that place confirmed the reality of His death.

2. His committal to that place fulfilled the declarations of ancient prophecies and types.

3. His committal there completed the abasement of His humiliation.

4. His committal has delightfully softened and mitigated the terrors of the grave for His people.

5. By His committal there He immediately and necessarily introduced His own mediatorial exaltation and empire. This was the last step towards His exaltation; it provided for and secured it.

III. Learn the lessons which are inculcated there.

1. The tenderness and devotedness of His love.

2. The duty of unreserved devotedness to His will.

3. The abounding consolations we possess, in reflecting on the departure of our Christian friends, and in anticipating our own. (James Parsons.)

The risen Christ

Eight hundred years after Edward I was buried, they brought up his body and they found that he still lay with a crown on his head. More than eighteen hundred years have passed, and I look into the grave of my dead King, and I see not only a crown, but on his head are many crowns. And what is more, He is rising. Yea, He has risen! Ye who came to the grave weeping, go away rejoicing. Let your dirges now change to anthems. He lives! Take off the blackness from the gates of the morning. He lives! Let earth and heaven keep jubilee. He lives! I know that my Redeemer lives. For whom that battle and that victory? For whom? not you. (Dr. Talmage.)

The lessons of the empty grave

I. It is full of consolations.

1. It proclaims that life reigneth. The sorrow of earth is the seeming supremacy of death. The worlds creed is a belief in death as the Lord God Almighty, the terror and destroyer of all things. But the empty grave of Christ teaches us that not death, but life, reigns.

2. It shows that love reigns. Death seems to suggest indifference on Gods part to human woe. The resurrection tells a very different tale.

3. It restores hope to man. What Christ wins for Himself He wins for all.

4. It tells of redemption being perfected. It is accepted by God; or the great Prisoner of Hope would not have been discharged. And, accepted, Christ rises to reign, from a higher vantage ground and with new sovereignty. We have a Saviour now on the throne of all things.

II. Lessons on life and duty.

1. Self-sacrifice is the secret of goodness, success, and joy. The way of the cross always leads to some heaven. No love is ever lost, nor any sacrifice ever fruitless.

2. Nothing can by any means harm the good. By doing wrong we inflict the only thing worth calling injury upon ourselves. (R. Glover.)

The empty tomb

He lies there no longer. He was not lying there when the angel addressed Mary Magdalene. With most tombs the interest consists in the fact that all that is mortal of the saint, or hero, or near relative, rests beneath the stone or the sod on which we gaze. Of our Lords sepulchre the ruling interest is that He no longer tenants it. It is not as the place in which He lies, it is not even chiefly as the place wherein He lay, it is as the place from which He rose-that the tomb of Jesus speaks to faith. (Canon Liddon.)

Importance of the resurrection to the Christian

Let us suppose-it is a terrible thing for a Christian even to suppose-but let us suppose that our Lord Jesus Christ had keen betrayed, tried, condemned to death, and crucified; that He had died on the cross, and had been buffed; and that, instead of rising the third day, He had lain on in His grave day after day, week after week, year after year, until corruption and the worm had done their work, and nothing was left of His bodily frame save perhaps a skull and a few bones and a little dust. Let us suppose that that was proved to have happened to Him which will happen to you and me, which does happen as a matter of course to the sons of men, to the wealthy and to the poor, to the wise and the thoughtless, to the young and the old,-that which certainly happened to all the other founders of religion and martyrs, to Socrates and Confucius and Mohammed and Marcus Aurelius; what would be the result on the claims and works of the Christian religion? If anything is certain about the teaching of our Lord, it is certain that He foretold His resurrection, and that He pointed to it as being a coming proof of His being what He claimed to be. If He had not risen, His authority would have been fatally discredited; He would have stood forth in human history-may He forgive me for saying it-as a bombastic pretender to supernatural sanctions which He could not command. If He had not risen, what would have been the meaning of His death? Even if it still retained the character of a martyrdom, it would have been only a martyrdom. It could not have been supposed to have any effect in the invisible world: to be in any sense a propitiation for human sin. The atoning virtue which, as we Christians believe, attaches to it, depends on the fact that He who died was more than man, and that He was more than man was made clear to the world by His resurrection. As St. Paul tells the Romans, He was powerfully declared to be the Son of God in respect of His holy and Divine nature by His resurrection from the dead. If He had rotted in His grave, what must we have thought of His character as a religious teacher? He said a great deal about Himself which is inconsistent with truthfulness and modesty in a mere man. He told us men to love Him, to trust Him, to believe in Him, to believe that He was the way, the truth, and the life, to believe that He was in God the Father, and the Father in Him, to believe that one day He would be seen sitting on the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven. What should we think of language of this kind in the mouth of the very best man whom we have ever known? What should we think of it in our Lord Himself, if He was, after all, not merely, as He was, one of ourselves, but also, nothing more? He proved that He had a right to use this language when, after dying on the cross, at His own appointed time He rose from the dead. But it is His resurrection which enables us to think that He could speak thus without being intolerably conceited or profane. Faith in the resurrection is the very keystone of the arch of Christian faith, and, when it is removed, all must inevitably crumble into ruin. The idea that the spiritual teaching, that the lofty moral character of our Lord, will survive faith in His resurrection, is one of those phantoms to which men cling when they are themselves, consciously or unconsciously, losing faith, and have not yet thought out the consequences of the loss. St. Paul knew what he was doing, when he made Christianity answer with its life for the truth of the resurrection (1Co_15:14). (Canon Liddon.)

Christs resurrection the Christians hope

Christ is risen. O how do those words change the whole aspect of human life! The sunlight that gleams forth after the world has been drenched, and dashed, and terrified with the black thunder drops, reawakening the song of birds and reilluminating the bloom of the folded flowers, does not more gloriously transfigure the landscape than these words transfigure the life of man. Nothing short of this could be our pledge and proof that we also shall arise. We are not left to dim intimations of it from the reminiscences of childhood; vague hopes of it in exalted moments; splendid guesses of it in ancient pages; faint analogies of it from the dawn of day, and the renovation of spring, and the quickened grain, and the butterfly shaking itself free of the enclosing chrysalis to wave its wings in the glories of summer light: all this might create a longing, the sense of some far-off possibility in a few chosen souls, but not for all the weary and suffering sons of humanity a permanent and ennobling conviction, a sure and certain hope. But Christ is risen, and we have it now; a thought to comfort us in the gloom of adversity, a belief to raise us into the high privilege of sons of God. They that are fallen asleep in Christ are not perished. Look into the Saviours empty and angel-haunted tomb; He hath burst for us the bonds of the prison house; He hath shattered at a touch the iron bars and brazen gates; He hath rifled the house of the spoiler, and torn away the serpents sting; He is risen; He is not here. They that sleep in all those narrow graves shall wake again, shall rise again. In innumerable myriads from the earth, and from the river, and from the rolling waves of the mighty sea, shall they start up at the sounding of that angel trumpet; from peaceful churchyards, from bloody battlefields, from the catacomb and from the pyramid, from the marble monument and the mountain cave, great and small, saint and prophet and apostle, and thronging multitudes of unknown martyrs and unrewarded heroes, in every age and every climate, on whose forehead was the Lambs seal-they shall come forth from the power of death and hell. This is the Christians hope, and thus we not only triumph over the enemy, but profit by him, wringing out of his curse a blessing, out of his prison a coronation and a home. (Archdeacon Farrar.)

Christs resurrection

Christ is the resurrection; therefore its source and spring, its author and finisher, in a sense in which no other can be. When He emerged from the tomb on the morning of the worlds great Sabbath, He brought life and immortality with Him, by which the pearls of the deep sea, before awaiting the plunge of the diver, the treasures, before lying in the dark mine, were by Him seized and brought up to the light of day. Life and immortality were brought to light by the gospel, and with this knowledge in our minds, we seem to stand by the Saviours broken sepulchre, just as a man stands upon the shelving brink of the precipice from which some friendly hand has snatched him, shuddering as he thinks of the awful death that he has only just escaped. Look, and see the place where the Lord lay, and tremble-but rejoice with trembling. Is the stone there yet? If it is, if the stone is not yet rolled away, if the grave clothes and spices yet shroud and embalm the corpse, then let the darkness come and blot out the sun, and bid a long, long good-night to all the worlds hopes of life, for existence is a feverish dream, and death shall be its ghastly but its welcome end. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. (W. M. Punshon, D. D.)

The triumph of good

As a noble sonata, whose melodies are broken with pathetic minors and clanging discords, ends in a burst of triumphant harmony, so the story of the life of Jesus, beset with sins and piteous with sorrows, is crowned at last with the glory of His exaltation. (C. M. Southgate.)

The absent corpse

When we wander through a graveyard and look at the tombstones, or go into the church and examine the old monuments, we see one heading to them all: Hic jacet, or Here lies. Then follows the name, with date of death, and perhaps some praise of the good qualities of the departed. But how totally different is the epitaph on the tomb of Jesus! It is not written in gold, nor cut in stone; it is spoken by the mouth of an angel, and it is the exact reverse of what is put on all other tombs: He is not here! (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)

The resurrection guarantees success to Christianity

During the years that followed the outbreak of the French revolution, and the revolt against Christianity which accompanied it, there was an extraordinary activity in some sections of French society directed to projecting a religion that might, it was hoped, take the place of Christianity. New philanthropic enthusiasms, new speculative enthusiasms, were quite the order of the day. On one occasion a projector of one of these schemes came to Talleyrand, who, you will remember, was a bishop who had turned sceptic, and so had devoted himself to polities; but whatever is to be said of him, he was possessed in a very remarkable degree of a keen perception of the proportion of things, and of what is and is not possible in this human world. Well, his visitor observed, by way of complaint to Talleyrand, how hard it was to start a new religion, even though its tenets and its efforts were obviously directed to promoting the social and personal improvement of mankind. Surely, said Talleyrand, with a fine smile, surely it cannot be so difficult as you think. How so? said his friend. Why, he replied, the matter is simple; you have only to get yourself crucified, or anyhow put to death, and then, at your own time to rise from the dead, and you will have no difficulty. (Canon Liddon.)

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

Mark

THE INCREDULOUS DISCIPLES

THE ANGEL IN THE TOMB

Mar 16:5 - Mar 16:6.

Each of the four Evangelists tells the story of the Resurrection from his own special point of view. None of them has any record of the actual fact, because no eye saw it. Before the earthquake and the angelic descent, before the stone was rolled away, while the guards perhaps slept, and before Love and Sorrow had awakened, Christ rose. And deep silence covers the event. But in treating of the subsequent portion of the narrative, each Evangelist stands at his own point of view. Mark has scarcely anything to say about our Lord’s appearance after the Resurrection. His object seems mainly to be to describe rather the manner in which the report of the Resurrection affected the disciples, and so he makes prominent the bewildered astonishment of the women. If the latter part of this chapter be his, he passes by the appearance of our Lord to Mary Magdalene and to the two travellers to Emmaus with just a word for each-contrasting singularly with the lovely narrative of the former in John’s Gospel and with the detailed account of the latter in Luke’s. He emphasises the incredulity of the Twelve after receiving the reports, and in like manner he lays stress upon the unbelief and hardness of heart which the Lord rebuked.

So, then, this incident, the appearance of the angel, the portion of his message to the women which we have read, and the way in which the first testimony to the Resurrection affected its hearers, may suggest to us some thoughts which, though subsidiary to the main teaching of the Resurrection, may yet be important in their place.

I. Note the first witness to the Resurrection.

There are singular diversities in the four Gospels in their accounts of the angelic appearances, the number, occupation, and attitude of these superhuman persons, and contradictions may be spun, if one is so disposed, out of these varieties. But it is wiser to take another view of them, and to see in the varying reports, sometimes of one angel, sometimes of two, sometimes of one sitting outside the sepulchre, sometimes one within, sometimes none, either different moments of time or differences produced by the different spiritual condition of the beholders. Who can count the glancing wings of the white-winged flock of sea-birds as they sail and turn in the sunshine? Who can count the numbers of these ‘bright-harnessed angels,’ sometimes more, sometimes less, flickering and fluttering into and out of sight, which shone upon the vision of the weeping onlookers? We know too little about the laws of angelic appearances; we know too little about the relation in that high region between the seeing eye and the objects beheld to venture to say that there is contradiction where the narratives present variety. Enough for us to draw the lessons that are suggested by that quiet figure sitting there in the inner vestibule of the grave, the stone rolled away and the work done, gazing on the tomb where the Lord of men and angels had lain.

He was a youth. ‘The oldest angels are the youngest,’ says a great mystic. The angels ‘excel in strength’ because they delight to do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word.’ The lapse of ages brings not age to them who ‘wait on the Lord’ in the higher ministries of heaven, and run unwearied, and walk unfainting, and when they are seen by men are radiant with immortal youth. He was ‘clothed in a long white garment,’ the sign at once of purity and of repose; and he was sitting in rapt contemplation and quiet adoration there, where the body of Jesus had lain.

But what had he to do with the joy of Resurrection? It delivered him from no fears, it brought to him no fresh assurance of a life which was always his. Wherefore was he there? Because that Cross strikes its power upwards as well as downwards; because He that had lain there is the Head of all creation, and the Lord of angels as well as of men; because that Resurrection following upon that Cross, ‘unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places,’ opened a new and wonderful door into the unsounded and unfathomed abyss of divine love; because into these things ‘angels desire to look,’ and, looking, are smitten with adoring wonder and flushed with the illumination of a new knowledge of what God is, and of what man is to God. The Resurrection of the Prince of Life was no mystery to the angel. To him the mystery was in His death. To us the death is not a mystery, but the Resurrection is. That gazing figure looks from the other side upon the grave which we contemplate from this side of the gulf of death; but the eyes of both orders of Being fix upon the same hallowed spot-they in adoring wonder that there a God should have lain; we in lowly thankfulness that thence a man should have risen.

Further, we see in that angel presence not only the indication that Christ is his King as well as ours, but also the mark of his and all his fellows’ sympathetic participation in whatsoever is of so deep interest to humanity. There is a certain tone of friendship and oneness in his words. The trembling women were smitten into an ecstasy of bewildered fear {as one of the words, ‘affrighted’ might more accurately be rendered}, and his consolation to them, ‘Be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus,’ suggests that, in all the great sweep of the unseen universe, whatsoever beings may people that to us apparently waste and solitary space, howsoever many they may be, ‘thick as the autumn leaves in Vallambrosa’ or as the motes that dance in the sunshine, they are all friends and allies and elder brethren of those who seek for Jesus with a loving heart. No creature that owns His sway can touch or injure or need terrify the soul that follows after Christ. ‘All the servants of our King in heaven and earth are one,’ and He sends forth His brightest and loftiest to be brethren and ministers to them who shall be ‘heirs of salvation.’ So we may pass through the darkest spaces of the universe and the loneliest valleys of the shadow of death, sure that whosoever may be there will be our friend if we are the friends of Christ.

II. So much, then, for the first point that I would suggest here. Note, secondly, the triumphant light cast upon the cradle and the Cross.

There is something very remarkable, because for purposes of identification plainly unnecessary, in the minute particularity of the designation which the angel lips give to Jesus Christ. ‘Jesus, the Nazarene, who was crucified.’ Do you not catch a tone of wonder and a tone of triumph in this threefold particularising of the humanity, the lowly residence, and the Ignominious death? All that lowliness, suffering, and shame are brought into comparison with the rising from the dead. That is to say, when we grasp the fact of a risen Christ, we look back upon all the story of His birth, His lowly life, His death of shame, and see a new meaning in it, and new reasons for triumph and for wonder. The cradle is illuminated by the grave, the Cross by the empty sepulchre. As at the beginning there is a supernatural entrance into life, so at the end there is a supernatural resumption of it. The birth corresponds with the resurrection, and both witness to the divinity. The lowly life culminates in the conquest over death; the Nazarene despised, rejected, dwelling in a place that was a byword, sharing all the modest lowliness and self-respecting poverty of the Galilean peasants, has conquered death. The Man that was crucified has conquered death. And the fact that He has risen explains and illuminates the fact that He died.

Brethren, let us lay this to heart, that unless we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the saying ‘He was crucified’ is the saddest word that can be spoken about any of the great ones of the past. If Jesus Christ be lying in some nameless grave, then all the power of His death is gone, and He and it are nothing to me, or to you, or to any of our fellow-men, more than a thousand deaths of the mighty ones of old. But Easter day transfigures the gloom of the day of the Crucifixion, and the rising sun of its morning gilds and explains the Cross. Now it stands forth as the great redeeming power of the world, where my sins and yours and the whole world’s have been expiated and done away. And now, instead of being ignominy, it is glory, and instead of being defeat it is victory, and instead of looking upon that death as the lowest point of the Master’s humiliation, we may look upon it as He Himself did, as the highest point of His glorifying. For the Cross then becomes His great means of winning men to Himself, and the very throne of His power. On the historical fact of a Resurrection depend all the worth and meaning of the death of Christ. ‘If He be not risen our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain.’ ‘If Christ be not risen, ye are yet in your sins.’ But if what this day commemorates be true, then upon all His earthly life is thrown a new light; and we first understand the Cross when we look upon the empty grave.

III. Again, notice here the majestic announcement of the great fact, and its confirmation.

‘He is risen; He is not here.’ The first preacher of the Resurrection was an angel, a true ev-angel-ist. His message is conveyed in these brief sentences, unconnected with each other, in token, not of abruptness and haste, but of solemnity. ‘He is risen’ is one word in the original-a sentence of one word, which announces the mightiest miracle that ever was wrought upon earth, a miracle which opens the door wide enough for all supernatural events recorded of Jesus Christ to find an entrance to the understanding and the reason.

‘He is risen.’ The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is declared by angel lips to be His own act; not, indeed, as if He were acting separately from the Father, but still less as if in it He were merely passive. Think of that; a dead Christ raised Himself. That is the teaching of the Scripture. I do not dwell here, at this stage of my sermon, on the many issues that spring from such a conception, but this only I urge, Jesus Christ was the Lord of life; held life and death, His own and others’, at His beck and will. His death was voluntary; He was not passive in it, but He died because He chose. His resurrection was His act; He rose because He willed. ‘I have power to lay it down, I have power to take it again.’ No one said to Him, ‘I say unto Thee, arise!’ The divine power of the Father’s will did not work upon Him as from without to raise Him from the dead; but He, the embodiment of divinity, raised Himself, even though it is also true that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. These two statements are not contradictory, but the former of them can only be predicated of Him; and it sets Him on a pedestal immeasurably above, and infinitely apart from, all those to whom life is communicated by a divine act. He Himself is ‘the Life,’ and it was not possible that Life should be holden of Death; therefore He burst its bonds, and, like the ancient Jewish hero, though in far nobler fashion, our Samson enters into the city which is a prison, and on His strong shoulders bears away the gates, that none may ever there be prisoners without hope.

Now, then, note the confirmation of this stupendous fact. ‘He is risen; He is not here.’ The grave was empty, and the trembling women were called upon to look and see for themselves that the body was not there. One remark is all that I wish to make about this matter-viz. this, all theories, ancient or modern, which deny the Resurrection, are shattered by this one question, What became of Jesus Christ’s body? We take it as a plain historical fact, which the extremest scepticism has never ventured to deny, that the grave of Christ was empty. The trumped-up story of the guards sufficiently shows that. When the belief of a resurrection began to be spread abroad, what would have been easier for Pharisees and rulers than to have gone to the sepulchre and rolled back the stone, and said, ‘Look there! there is your risen Man, lying mouldering, like all the rest of us.’ They did not do it. Why? Because the grave was empty. Where was the body? They had it not, else they would have been glad to produce it. The disciples had it not, for if they had, you come back to the discredited and impossible theory that, having it, and knowing that they were telling lies, they got up the story of the Resurrection. Nobody believes that nowadays-nobody can believe it who looks at the results of the preaching of this, by hypothesis, falsehood. ‘Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.’ And whether the disciples were right or wrong, there can be no question in the mind of anybody who is not prepared to swallow impossibilities compared to which miracles are easy, that the first disciples heartily believed that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. As I say, one confirmation of the belief lies in the empty grave, and this question may be put to anybody that says ‘I do not believe in your Resurrection’:-’What became of the sacred body of Jesus Christ?’

Now, note the way in which the announcement of this tremendous fact was received. With blank bewilderment and terror on the part of these women, followed by incredulity on the part of the Apostles and of the other disciples. These things are on the surface of the narrative, and very important they are. They plainly tell us that the first hearers did not believe the testimony which they themselves call upon us to believe. And, that being the state of mind of the early disciples on the Resurrection day, what becomes of the modern theory, which seeks to explain the fact of the early belief in the Resurrection by saying, ‘Oh, they had worked themselves into such a fever of expectation that Jesus Christ would rise from the dead that the wish was father to the thought, and they said that He did because they expected that He would’? No! they did not expect that He would; it was the very last thing that they expected. They had not in their minds the soil out of which such imaginations would grow. They were perfectly unprepared to believe it, and, as a matter of fact, they did not believe until they had seen. So I think that that one fact disposes of a great deal of pestilent and shallow talk in these days that tries to deny the Resurrection and to save the character of the men that witnessed it.

IV. And now, lastly, note here the summons to grateful contemplation.

‘Behold the place where they laid Him.’ To these women the call was simply one to come and see what would confirm the witness. But we may, perhaps, permissibly turn it to a wider purpose, and say that it summons us all to thankful, lowly, believing, glad contemplation of that empty grave as the basis of all our hopes. Look upon it and upon the Resurrection which it confirms to us as an historical fact. It sets the seal of the divine approval on Christ’s work, and declares the divinity of His person and the all-sufficiency of His mighty sacrifice. Therefore let us, laden with our sins and seeking for reconciliation with God, and knowing how impossible it is for us to bring an atonement or a ransom for ourselves, look upon that grave and learn that Christ has offered the sacrifice which God has accepted, and with which He is well pleased.

‘Behold the place where they laid Him,’ and, looking upon it, let us think of that Resurrection as a prophecy, with a bearing upon us and upon all the dear ones that have trod the common road into the great darkness. Christ has died, therefore they live; Christ lives, therefore we shall never die. His grave was in a garden-a garden indeed. The yearly miracle of the returning ‘life re-orient out of dust,’ typifies the mightier miracle which He works for all that trust in Him, when out of death He leads them into life. The graveyard has become ‘God’s acre’; the garden in which the seed sown in weakness is to be raised in power, and sown corruptible is to be raised in incorruption.

‘Behold the place where they laid Him,’ and in the empty grave read the mystery of the Resurrection as the pattern and the symbol of our higher life; that, ‘like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.’ Oh to partake more and more of that power of His Resurrection!

In Christ’s empty grave is planted the true ‘tree of life, which is in the midst of the “true” Paradise of God.’ And we, if we truly trust and humbly love that Lord, shall partake of its fruits, and shall one day share the glories of His risen life in the heavens, even as we share the power of it here and now.

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

Mar 16:6 . μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε , “be not affrighted” (as they had been by the unexpected sight of a man , and wearing heavenly apparel ); no ὑμεῖς after the verb here, as in Mt. after φοβεῖσθε , where there is an implied contrast between the women and the guards ( vide on Mt.). Ἰησοῦν , etc., Jesus ye seek, the Nazarene, the crucified. Observe the objective, far-off style of description, befitting a visitor from another world. ἠγέρθη , etc.: note the abrupt disconnected style: risen, not here, see ( ἴδε ) the place (empty) where they laid Him. The empty grave, the visible fact; resurrection, the inference; when, how, a mystery ( ἄδηλον , Euthy.).

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

Verse 6. Jesus of Nazareth] The Jews had given this name to Christ by way of reproach, Mt 2:23; but as it was under this name that he was crucified, Joh 19:19, the angel here, and the apostles after, have given him the same name, Ac 4:10, c. Names which the world, in derision, fixes all the followers of God, often become the general appellatives of religious bodies: thus Quakers, Puritans, Pietists, and Methodists, have in their respective times been the nicknames, given in derision by the world, to those who separated themselves from its corruptions. Our Lord, by continuing to bear the name of the Nazarene, teaches us not to be too nice or scrupulous in fixing our own appellation. No matter what the name may be, as long as it implies no particular evil, and serves sufficiently to mark us out. Let us be contented to bear it, and thus carry about with us the reproach of Christ always taking care to keep our garments unspotted from the world.

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

(6) Be not affrighted.—The words agree substantially with those in Mat_28:5-8, but omit the fuller appeal to the women to remember the words which their Lord had spoken while He was yet with them in Galilee.

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

6. he is risen] When exactly He had risen no man knoweth, for no man saw. But that it was true did not admit of doubt. When the Apostles Peter and John visited the tomb an hour or so afterwards (Joh_20:3-10), they went in undismayed, but it was empty. The Holy Body was gone! There were no traces of violence. All was order and calm. The linen bandages lay carefully unrolled by themselves. The facecloth that had covered the Face lay not with them. It was folded up in a place in the empty niche by itself. But He was not there. He had risen even as He had said.

behold the place] where, indeed, He had been laid by kindly hands, but which did not contain Him now.

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.

And he saith unto them, be not affrighted,.... See Gill on Mat 28:5, Mat 28:6, where the same things, and almost in the same words, are said as here.

, where the same things, and almost in the same words, are said as here.

Mark 16:7

mar 16:7

mar 16:7

mar 16:7But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter,.... Peter is particularly mentioned, not as distinct from the apostles, or as if he was not one of them, having sinned in the manner he had done; much less because he was the chief of them; but to comfort him in his great sorrow, on account of his fall; and to encourage him to meet Christ with the rest of his disciples, who might be both afraid and ashamed, because he had so basely denied him: this is a kind intimation, in favour of Peter; none of the other evangelists observe it; but this Gospel being published, as is thought by some, under the direction and examination of Peter himself, he was careful to relate every thing, that either aggravated his own crime, or illustrated the grace of God, and love of Christ towards him. The Persic version puts Peter first, rendering it, "say to Cephas and the rest of the disciples"; all copies, and other versions, put him last:

that he goeth before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him; See Gill on Mat 28:7;

as he said unto you, as in Mar 14:28.

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

And he saith unto them, Be not amazed mh ekyambeisye , the same wordye seek Jesus, the Nazarene, which hath been crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold, the place where they laid him; that is, here is the place where they laid him (ide o topov). St. Matthew (Mat_28:6) says, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay" (Deute idete topon). This seems to imply that the women actually entered the inner chamber, and saw the very place where the Lord lay. Who does not see here how irrefragable is the evidence of his resurrection?

"He is not here.

I THE PLACE WHERE CHRIST HAS BEEN" IS NOT ALWAYS THE PLACE WHERE CHRIST IS.

II IT IS A LIVING AND NOT A DEAD CHRIST THAT CHRISTIANS ARE TO SEEK.

III THEY THAT TRULY SEEK CHRIST WILL, EVEN THROUGH DISAPPOINTMENT, LEARN WHERE TO FIND HIM.

IV THE DUTIES OF SORROWING LOVE ARE DISPLACED BY THE DUTIES OF REJOICING FAITH. M.

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

Ye seek

Jesus ye seek -- the Nazarene, the crucified; He arose! He is not here! The tone is of triumph. Cf. Psa 2:4.

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

6. He is risen. Through woman death was first introduced into the world; to woman the first announcement was made of the resurrection.

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.

6. ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς. As on the Lake (Mar 6:49-50), the figure which they see shows by addressing them that he is no mere phantasm; and he addresses them in much the same way.

Μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε, Cease to be amazed, = θαρσεῖτε, “Be of good cheer.” What follows may be taken interrogatively, “Is it Jesus that ye are seeking? That is useless labour.”

τὸν Ναζαρηνόν. Mk alone has this touch; it would appeal to Christ’s friends from Galilee. See on Mar 1:24.

τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον. Cf. 1Co 1:23; 1Co 2:2; Gal 3:1; He is now permanently “the Crucified.”

ἠγέρθη. “You are too late; He is already risen.” Hence the aor. rather than the perf. That He remains raised is not here the main point. One might have expected οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε to have come first, as in Mt. and Lk., but Mk puts the supreme fact first and then gives the evidence for its truth. “He is risen. Do you doubt that? The tomb is empty; look at the place where the Body was laid.” As we know from Jn, the gravecloths were lying there, but the Body had gone from within them. The Angel speaks with marvellous simplicity and directness. The short sentences, without connecting particles, are very impressive, and his calmness is in marked contrast to the women’s excitement.

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.

6.] From the δεῦτε of Matt. I should be inclined to think that his is the strictly accurate account. This word implies that the angel accompanied the women into the tomb; and if so, an imperfect narrative like that in the text might easily describe his whole appearance as taking place within.

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

6. Ἰησοῦν … τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τ. ἐσταυρωμένον—Jesus the Nazarene, the crucified. Mt. omits τὸν Ναζαρηνόν.4 Lk. makes the angels ask, why seek the living among the dead?5 The exact language is not preserved in such cases. The statement common to all the narratives is, that the one whom they are seeking is not there, but is risen. ἴδε, ὁ τόπος—see, the place.6

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