Mary had known Christ according to the flesh, and evidently thought that she was thus to know Him still. But it is not so. Henceforth we know none after this sort. Christ was dead and risen and about to take His place in heaven according to the counsels of God. The Christian is called to know Him as man in heaven, always the Son but now Man glorified on high. Hence the force of that which follows. Mary must learn to regard the Lord in an entirely new light, not in bodily presence here below, but for an object of faith as received up in glory. She is thus delivered from all her former associations, and is the given ensample of the Jewish remnant henceforward to become Christian.
“Jesus saith to her, Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended unto the [or, my] Father; but go unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God. Mary of Magdala cometh bringing word to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that he said these things to her.” (Vers. 17, 18.)
It is the more striking if we compare Matt. 28:99And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. (Matthew 28:9) with the Lord's prohibition of Mary in our Gospel. Both incidents happened very nearly about the same time. Yet the Lord permitted the other women to come and hold Him by the feet, and pay Him homage, whereas He forbade Mary of Magdala, only a very little while before, to touch Him. We know that He was divinely perfect on both occasions, as indeed always, that though man and the Son of man, it was not His to repent, for He is the truth; but we may be permitted, and I think ought to inquire why ways so different and so rapidly following one another could be each absolutely right in its own place. The difference of design in the two Gospels helps much to clear the matter. In Matthew the risen Lord resumes His relations with the Jewish remnant, and gives these women, as a sample of that remnant, to enjoy His presence on earth. For this reason too there is not only no ascension scene in the end of Matthew, but no allusion to the fact there; indeed it would mar the perfection of the picture, which shows us the Lord present with them until the consummation of the age. In John, on the other hand, Jewish feeling is immediately corrected; new relations are announced, and ascension to the Father takes the place of all expectations for the nations on the earth with the Jews as the Lord's center and witnesses. “Touch me not,” says Jesus to Mary,” for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Henceforth the Lord is to be known characteristically by the Christian as in heaven. The Jew had looked for Him on earth, and rightly so; as by-and-by the Jew will have Him reigning over the earth, when He comes again in power and great glory. Between the broken and restored hopes of Israel, we find our place as Christians. We are baptized unto His death, and we show forth His death until He come, remembering Him in the breaking of bread; but we know Him above, no longer dead, but risen and glorified. Yea, though we had known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know Him thus no more. Indeed without boasting, in sober truth but all surpassing grace, we can say and as believers are bound to say, that we are in Him. “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” And “that day” is this day, being already come, the day of grace to the world in the gospel; the day of grace to the saints in our union with Christ. “So if any one be in Christ, it is a new creation; the old things have passed away, behold, all things are become new; and all things are of the God who reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” Such is Christianity, and more than this was implied in our Lord's dealing and words with Mary of Magdala. “Touch me not” was a saying of eminent significance, and still more when interpreted by the words that accompany it. It is not as in Col. 2:2121(Touch not; taste not; handle not; (Colossians 2:21) μὴ ἅψη (a single transient action), but μή μου ἅπτου, Do not go on touching me; it is a general and continuous prohibition, and this to represent the remnant taken out of their associations as Jews and put into new relations, not only with Christ in heaven, but through Him with His Father and God, as contradistinguished from those who represent the remnant allowed to lay hold of Him as a sign of His return in bodily presence for the kingdom.
But there is more. “Go unto my brethren.” He is not ashamed to call the disciples His brethren. He had prepared the way for this; He had said on Israel's rebellious rejection of their Messiah, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Now on the accomplishment of His atoning work He acknowledges definitely this blessed fruit of it, not only sins forgiven to faith by virtue of His shed blood, but believers in the most intimate way related to Himself, the risen Man and Son of God. They are His brethren; to whom according to Psa. 22. He proceeds to make known the name, not merely of Jehovah, but of the Father. For now they were not quickened only, but quickened with Christ. They stood in Him risen from the dead, forgiven all trespasses. And they learn that thus related to Christ in His new place as in the condition of man according to divine counsels for eternity, all question of sin being closed triumphantly on the cross, not for Him who had no need, but for the believer, who had all possible need in guilt and an evil nature and an accusing enemy and a holy, righteous Judge, they enter into His own blessed and everlasting relationship with His Father and God. “And say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, my God and your God.”
It was a moment of unequaled depth: the Son risen again after having borne the judgment of our sins in His own body on the tree and glorified God in respect not of obedience in life only, but up to death for sin, on the resurrection morning, sending through one from whom He had formerly expelled seven demons to His disciples, desponding through unbelief, a message of the new and incomparable blessedness He had acquired for them by His death and resurrection. Doubtless He is the risen Messiah of the seed of David, and the mercies of David are made sure by His resurrection, as will be proved in the kingdom restored to Israel in due time. But this must be postponed in God's wisdom and yield to the far deeper purpose meanwhile coming into evidence, the calling out of God's children, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, into the knowledge and enjoyment and testimony of Himself and His Son by the Holy Ghost, which is usually styled Christianity. It could not be before, not only because He had relations after flesh and by promise with Israel until they had thoroughly despised and rejected deliberately, through unbelief but guiltily and inexcusably, their infinitely blessed King, but because only on the ground of redemption by His death could God be free to form and gather those children of His freed from their sins and quickened together with Him whether Jew or Genesis tile. Now having died He could bear much fruit; and here He announces the fact worthy of Himself and of the God who sent Him in love beyond all thought of man. “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, my God and your God.”
How poor and pale are the dreams of men even in their highest aspirations, compared with the simple truth spoken by the Lord and sent to His own! Yet nothing less could satisfy His love, which must demonstrate its power, first by going down with our sins to suffer for them from God, and next by ascending into glory and giving us as far as possible His own position as sons and saints with all evil and guilt forever gone before God, purged worshippers, having no more conscience of sins; and this, not merely a hope to be made good when He comes again to receive us to Himself, but the truth of a really existing relationship announced now on the resurrection day, sent to His disciples that they might know and enjoy it to the full, as pledged in His own ascension to the presence of the Father in heaven. It is for all saints till He come again: would that all knew it as their only true place in Him! Still grace has given the truth fresh power in our day, though by messengers who have no more reason to boast than Mary of Magdala, who came then with the tidings to the disciples (ver. 18), I have seen the Lord, or as it is more commonly read that she had seen the Lord and He had spoken these things to her. But we may and ought to glory in our risen Lord, and of such a place for the believer in Him. “Of such an one will I glory,” said a greater than any of us; “yet of myself I will not glory, but in, mine infirmities.” Of a man in Christ it is well to glory: only we cannot expect those to do so who do not even conceive what it means, and who are so depraved by a jargon of Jewish and Gentile notions, commonly called systematic divinity, that they are slow indeed to learn. If we know the truth, we may have grace not only to walk in it, but to wait on such as know it, if peradventure grace and truth may at length win their way and the saints learn their true blessedness in Christ.