Verse 1. “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene.” It is deeply interesting to see that loving ones were near Him in His agony and death. The Marys stood by His cross; Joseph of Arimathaea placed His body in his own new tomb, wherein never yet man lay. Mary Magdalene and another Mary visited the sepulchre very early in the morning of the first day of the week; they had bought spices for the purpose of anointing the dead body of Jesus. Mary Magdalene is distinguished among these loving ones: she had stood by the cross when He was dying, and now she seeks His body in the sepulchre to anoint it with the precious spices. The hidden ones show themselves, the timid become brave. Peter is the first to enter the sepulchre.
One would seek in vain for proofs of intelligence and power in the saints at this period (the Holy Ghost was not yet there), but the divine nature was manifested in their attachment to Jesus. Even His dead body was more precious to Mary than all the world beside, and his new tomb is given up for its reception by Joseph. But all this time they were seeking the Living amongst the dead, for they knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God; they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.
But Mary Magdalene stood without, weeping, when the disciples had gone to their own home; as she wept, she stooped down into the tomb. She could not as yet talk of the excellency of Jesus Christ her Lord, nor was she thinking of “gaining Christ,” counting all “else but dross”. The time for such exercises and affections had not yet come; not the excellency of Jesus Christ her Lord was her object now, but only the dead body of the Lord.
“I know,” said Jehovah’s angel to the two, Marys, “that ye seek Jesus the crucified, fear ye not.” In knowledge poor indeed, her heart was divinely right, her tears were already in God’s bottle. “Woman, why dost thou weep?” say the heavenly messengers; “Woman, why dost thou weep?” says the risen Savior — did He not know? But the history of that heart’s sorrow was to be recorded by the Holy Ghost. Her answer was simple, and beautiful in its simplicity, “Sir, if Thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where Thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.”
The dead body of Jesus was her heart’s one treasure, and she had not found that; how great was her sorrow! But blessing beyond that heart’s imaginings was near. “Mary!”—“Rabboni!” Her sorrow is already turned into joy. She had sought the Living amongst the dead, she finds the Living from amongst the dead. Her heart had been true, how great its present reward, how beautiful her own name when pronounced by the lips of her living Lord!
And now the honor, lost by apostles, who went to their own homes, becomes the portion of the poor one, once Satan’s captive. Mary Magdalene becomes the apostle of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, sent by Him to announce the blessed new relationships. The God of the risen Man was now to be known as their God, they were, henceforth, brethren of the Son of the Father. Introduced by adoption into the blessed place of sonship, they would soon understand that word by the apostle, “Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
Verse 19. “Peace be unto you; and when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side.” Peace had now come unto them, made by the work of the cross; His hands and His side bore the tokens of His sufferings, as afterwards He was seen in the midst of the throne as a Lamb that had been slain. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus says, “Peace be unto you: as My Father,” and so on. “And having said this, He breathed into them, and saith to them, Receive the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.”
The first announced peace was the blessed fruit of His sufferings in the death of the cross, where God condemned sin in the flesh, that there might be no condemnation for the believer in Jesus, “to them which are in Christ Jesus.” But peace was equally needed for their mission from Himself (they were to announce peace made by the blood of the cross), and the Holy Ghost as power for the accomplishment of it.
And when He had pronounced, “Peace be unto you,” the second time, in connection with the mission, He breathed into them, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” It was not the Holy Ghost come down in person, as on the day of Pentecost, but the Spirit as the power of life, life in resurrection breathed into them by Jesus, Head of the new creation, as He breathed into Adam the breath of natural life in the garden of Eden. This present breathing was power for their present new position.
The baptism of the Holy Ghost introduced another order of things: the formation of the body of Christ, and union with Christ in heaven, the building of an habitation for God through the Spirit. The study of these dispensational changes is deeply interesting and instructive. So “the law and the prophets were until John,” and “from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of the heavens suffereth violence.”
Verse 23. “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” This is governmental or administrative, not the absolute forgiveness of sins (who can do that but God?) but administrative in the hands of man. “Arise,” said Ananias to Paul, “and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” That is an example of what is meant by administrative forgiveness. This is not sovereign grace giving eternal life, but founded on the profession made. If Paul really called on the name of the Lord (as no doubt he did), he had eternal forgiveness, if it were otherwise, it was administrative forgiveness, and nothing more.
According to Matthew 18, the assembly — even two or three gathered (together) unto His name — (His promised presence realized by faith) have the power of binding and loosing; this seems to include the power of remitting sins, as explained above. All that is needed to give validity to the loosing and binding by the two or three, is that they be really gathered (together) unto Christ’s name — the truth of what He is as revealed — not to man’s name or their own, to act for Him according to His will.
Three things characterized that first meeting on the first day of the week: peace brought to them by Jesus; the presence of Jesus in their midst; and, thirdly, the Holy Ghost breathed into them — the power of life in resurrection. He had promised them peace before, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you”; but here He brings it to them, fruit of His finished work. In Acts 2 we have the coming of the Holy Ghost personally. “Jesus, being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.”
This is, clearly, different from merely breathing into them the Spirit. In this second case, the sending the Holy Spirit, He first receives Him from the Father, as He receives all from Him. The Holy Ghost, the kingdom, the word, words, life, love, glory — sevenfold blessing, to be communicated to and shared with His saints.
Verse 24. But Thomas was not with them at that first meeting, when Jesus was in their midst, and gave them their mission. And thus he represents, not the church position, as presented to us in verses 19-23, but rather the Jewish remnant, who believe only when they see. How blessed all these last words of their divine Comforter, ere He left them for the Father’s house!
“Comfort My people,” found as perfect a response in His spirit, and latest ministry amongst them, as before the cross, and, as when in glory, He girds Himself to serve them, a servant indeed for ever. “Let not your heart be troubled,” He had said unto them, when the power of darkness was already at work, the enemy having entered into Judas (who went out, “and it was night”), and coming again as prince of this world, only to find nothing in Him. The cross too, with all its measureless depths, was all but reached, yet the whole of His ministry, as recorded in that chapter, is devoted to comforting and strengthening His people — not a word of His own sufferings. The Father’s house on high, and not the cross, is the goal there, and even Satan’s coming was to issue in his finding nothing in Him. Even on the cross, He comforts the soul of the poor thief — “Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise”; and cares for His mother, saying to John, “Behold thy mother.” Is all this “the manner of man, O Lord God”?
And even here, when it was but a moment, and glory with the Father would mark His triumphant place, we see the same character of service maintained to the last. Thus whether glory with His Father, or the forsaking of His God, were to be the next event in His wondrous course, He pursues His path of loving service without a pause or break, in the constancy of divine purpose and love. “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
See how He meets each troubled soul, His mother, and the dying thief; Mary, and Thomas, and Peter; and the two going to Emmaus, whose hearts He made to burn; and how, when He was separated from them and carried up into heaven, their sorrow was turned into joy. They “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.” In Acts we read, “These gave themselves all with one accord to continual prayer.”
It would seem that His service of love was continued even during the ascension, for it is written, “as they were gazing into heaven, as He was going, lo, also two men stood by them, clothed in white, who also said . . . This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld Him going into heaven.” He had just told them of the coming of the Holy Ghost, they would be clothed with power then; but they were not thinking of power as they gazed up into heaven after their beloved Lord, but of Him, so the angels are present in a moment to answer what He knew was passing in. their hearts. So, when they were, ignorantly but lovingly, seeking the precious body of Jesus, the angel of the Lord, whose clothing was white as snow, and His look as lightning, descends from heaven and rolls away the stone, saying to the women, “Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus the crucified.” Those who care for Jesus may confidently expect comfort from above, angelic ministry unseen but real, or a word through the Comforter, now present. These last expressions of His lovingkindness will not be forgotten by those who can say, “In the multitude of my thoughts within me, Thy comforts delight my soul.”
The word of admonition to Thomas is an important and precious word for us all, “Blessed they who have not seen and have believed.”
Verse 31. “But these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in His name.” In 1 John 5 he writes to those who believe on the name of the Son of God, that they may know, and happy are they who both believe and know! Faith, knowledge, and certainty were to characterize the saints henceforward. We walk by faith, renewed unto knowledge, and possess the certainty of the things revealed, in the presence of the Spirit of truth Himself.