The sabbath day had interrupted the loving labors of the women with their spices. “On the first day of the week, very early [at deep dawn] in the morning” they returned. (Ver. 1.) Love is usually quick-sighted; it might have the sense of coming danger where others were dull; it might have the presentiment of death where others saw triumph and the effects of burning zeal for God and His house. None but God could anticipate the resurrection. Their labor was bootless, as far as their own object was concerned, whatever might be the reckoning of grace. In these scenes of profoundest interest Jesus alone is perfection.
“And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher; and entering in they found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, in their perplexity about it, that behold two men stood by them in shining raiment; and as they were fearful and bending their faces to the ground, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living One among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spoke to you being yet in Galilee, saying, That the Son of man must be delivered up to the hands of sinners and be crucified and rise the third day.” (Ver. 2-7.) But men and even saints are dull to appreciate the resurrection; it brings God too near to them, for of all things none is more characteristic of Him than raising the dead, and most of all resurrection from among the dead must be learned by divine teaching as only He could reveal it of His grace. For this breaks in upon the whole course of the world and displays a power superior to nature, triumphant over Satan, which delivers even from divine judgment. Here it was the deliverer Himself: often had He told the disciples of it; He had named even the third day. Yet those who were most faithful, as they understood not at the time, so remembered not afterward till the fact had taken place and heavenly messengers recalled His words to them afresh. “And they remembered his words and returning from the sepulcher related all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the [mother] of James and the rest with them who told these things to the apostles; and these words appeared in their eyes as idle tales and they disbelieved them.”
The resurrection of the Savior is the foundation of the gospel; but it is the writers of the Gospels themselves who let us know both the ignorance and the obstinate unbelief of those who were afterward to be such devoted and honored witnesses of Jesus. Nor need the believer wonder. For if the gospel be the revelation of God's grace in Christ, it supposes the utter ruin and good-for-nothingness of man. Doubtless it is humbling, but this is wholesome and needed; no sinner can be too much humbled, no saint too humble; but no humiliation should weaken for a moment our sense of the perfect grace of God. The lesson must be learned by us in both ways; but of the two the sense of what we are as saints is far more profound than of sinners when just awakening to feel our real state before God. And this is one of the great differences between evangelicalism and the gospel of God. Evangelicalism owns the fallen and bad estate of man as well as the mercy of God in the Lord Jesus Christ; but it is altogether short when compared with God's standard, death and resurrection.
It owns that no power but that of Jesus can avail; but it is rather a remedy for the sick man than life in resurrection from the dead. It is the same reason which hinders saints now from appreciating themselves dead and risen with Jesus that made the disciples so slow to comprehend the words of Jesus beforehand and even to receive the fact of His own death and resurrection when accomplished.
We may observe too how little flesh could glory in what we have here before us. Out of weakness truly the women were made strong, while they who ought to have been pillars were weakness itself or worse. The words of the witnesses of the great truth seemed in their eyes a delirious dream, and they who were afterward to call men to the faith knew by their own experience, even as believers, what it is to disbelieve the resurrection. How this would enhance their estimate of divine grace! how call out patience no less than burning zeal in proclaiming the risen One to incredulous man! He who had so borne with them could bless any by Him who died for all.
“But Peter rising up ran to the sepulcher, and stooping down seeth the linen clothes lying alone, and went away home, wondering at what had happened.” (Ver. 12.) It is to John we are indebted for telling his part and God's analysis of his own inner man. “Then entered in therefore the other disciple also who came first to the tomb, and he saw and believed. For they had not yet known the scripture that he must rise from the dead.” “He saw and believed.” It was accepted on evidence: he no longer doubted that Jesus was risen; but it was founded upon his own sight of indisputable fact, not on God's word. “For as yet they knew not the scripture that he must rise from among the dead.” Still less was there any intelligent entrance into God's counsels about resurrection, any adequate understanding of its necessary and glorious place in the whole scope of the truth.
Next our evangelist gives us fully and with the most touching detail that appearing of the risen Lord which the Gospel of Mark sums up in a single verse, “After that he was manifested in another form to two of them as they walked going into the country.” (Chap. 16:12.)
Here I cannot doubt that it is a testimony to the walk of faith to which the Lord no longer known after the flesh would lead on His own. It is of no consequence who the unnamed one may have been. They were disciples staggered by the crucifixion of the Messiah, whom grace would comfort, founding their faith on the word and giving the saints to see Jesus unseen, whom they knew not while they looked on with natural eyes. One of the ancients, Epiphanius, conjectured the companion of Cleophas to be Nathaniel; among moderns the learned Lightfoot is confident that he was Peter. We may rest assured that both were mistaken, and that he could hot have been an apostle; for on returning to Jerusalem the two found “the eleven” among those gathered together. (Ver. 33.) The grand point of moment is the Lord's grace in leading them out of human thoughts to Himself as the object of all the scriptures, and this too as first suffering, then entering His glory.
“And behold, two of them were going on the same day unto a village, distant sixty stadia from Jerusalem, called Emmaus; and they conversed with one another about all these thing that had taken place. And it came to pass while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drawing nigh went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, “What words [are] these which ye interchange with one another as ye walk and are downcast? And one of them named Cleopas answering said unto him, Dost thou sojourn alone in Jerusalem and knowest not the things come to pass in it in these days? And he said to them, What things? And they said to him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to [the] judgment of death and crucified him. But we hoped that he was the one who should redeem Israel; but then also, with all these things, this is the third day since these things came to pass. Yea, and some women from among us astonished us, having been early at the sepulcher, and not having found his body they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels who say that he is alive. And some of these with us went to the sepulcher and found even as the women also said; but him they saw not.” (Ver. 13-24.)
How blessedly we see the way of the Lord Jesus drawing the hearts of men of God with the cords of a man! In resurrection He is still truly man, “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” and adapts Himself to the heart, even though, as Mark lets us know in the verse already cited, their eyes were holden so that they should not recognize their Master: He had appeared “in another form.” But He drew out their thoughts to lead them into the truth, in order that the very sorrows of His rejection which seemed so inexplicable to them and inconsistent with their expectations might be seen to be required by the divine word, and thus be a confirmation, not perilous, to their faith. They had looked for redemption by power; they now learn in His suffering to the uttermost, the Just for the unjust, redemption by blood; and not this only but a new life out of death, and superior to it, witnessed and established and given us in Him, Satan's power in sin and its consequences being vanquished forever, though for the present only a matter of testimony to the world and of enjoyment by the Holy Ghost to the believer.
“And he said unto them, Ο senseless and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Ver. 25-27.)
Such is the real secret of unbelief in believers. They fail because they do not believe all. Having but a partial view of divine truth they easily exaggerate here or there; and the rather as, not reading Christ throughout scripture, they are apt to shirk that rejection in the world now which disciples must accept or at least experience if they follow the Master, as surely as they will share His glory by and by. In the world, as it is, Christ could not but suffer: and every one that is perfected shall be as He. It is morally inevitable as due to the divine nature, as well as required by the word. It could not be otherwise, God being what He is, and man a sinner in thralldom to the enemy. But now He was dead and risen; and they must know Him thus, no longer according to their old and Jewish thoughts. We have Christ's own word for it, that He was in the mind of the Spirit in all the scriptures; and they are blind or blinded who see Him not in every part of the Bible. He is the truth, but it is only by the Holy Ghost we can find Him even there.