On the morrow of the sabbath, very early indeed in the morning, these Galilean women were there, and some others with them (ch. 24:1). And they found the stone rolled away, but not the body of Jesus. They were not alone; angels appeared. Two men in shining array stood by these perplexed saints. “And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, [what a rebuke to their unbelief!] Why seek ye the living (One) 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 must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words” (vss. 5-8).This last is ever a great point with Luke—the emphatic value always of any part of God’s word, but especially of the words of Jesus.
Accordingly, after this was duly reported to the apostles and the rest, one like another incredulous, we have the visit of Peter (accompanied, as John lets us know, by himself), who sees confirmation enough, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass (vss. 9-12).
Luke then ushers in another scene, still more precious, peculiar in its details at least to himself—the journey to Emmaus, where Jesus joins Himself to the two downcast disciples, who discoursed, as they went, on the irreparable loss they had sustained. Jesus hears this tale of sorrow from their lips, brings out the state of their hearts, and then opens the Scriptures, instead of merely appealing to the facts in the way of evidence. This employment of the Scriptures by our Lord is very significant. It is the word of God which is the truest, deepest, weightiest testimony, even though the risen Jesus Himself were there, and its living demonstration in person. But it is the written word which, as the apostle himself shows, is the sole adequate safeguard for the perilous times of the last days. Here, too, the loved companion of Paul proves, in the history of the resurrection, the value of the Scriptures. The word of God—here the Old Testament interpreted by Jesus—is the most valuable means for ascertaining the mind of God. Every Scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable—yea, able to make us “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:1515And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:15)). Hence our Lord expounds to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. What a sample that day was of the walk of faith! Henceforth it was not a question of a living Messiah on the earth, but of Him that was dead and risen, now seen by faith in the word of God. On the face of the account, this was the great living lesson that our Lord was teaching us through the two disciples (vss. 13-29).
But there was more. How is He to be known? There is but one way that can be trusted in which we can know Jesus. There are those in Christendom that descant upon Jesus as ignorant of His glory as a Jew or a Mahometan. Our own day has seen how men can speak and write eloquently of Jesus as a man here below, all the while serving Satan—denying His name, His person, His work, when they flatter themselves they are honoring Him, like the weeping women (ch. 23:27), without a grain of faith in His glory or His grace. Hence was it of all importance that we should learn wherein He is to be known. Thus Jesus sets forth the only way in which He can be rightly known, or that can be confided in. On this alone God can put His seal. The seal of the Holy Spirit is unknown until there is the submission of faith to the death of Jesus. And so our Lord breaks bread with the disciples. It was not the Lord’s Supper; but Jesus made use of that act of breaking the bread significantly, which the Lord’s Supper brings before us continually. In it, as we know, bread is broken—the sign of His death. Thus Jesus was pleased, Himself with them, that the truth of His death should flash upon the two souls at Emmaus. He was made known unto them in the breaking of bread—in that most simple but striking action which symbolizes His death. He had blessed, broken, and was giving the bread to them, when their eyes were opened, and they recognized their risen Lord (vs. 30).
There is a third supplemental point, which I only touch on—His instant disappearance after He was made known to them in the sign of His death. This is also characteristic of Christians. We walk by faith, not by sight (vs. 31).
Thus the great evangelist, who exhibits what is most real for man’s heart now, and what most of all maintains the glory of God in Christ, binds these things together for our instruction. Though Scripture was perfectly expounded by Jesus, and though hearts burned as they heard of these wondrous things, still it must be shown in concentrated form that the knowledge which alone can be commended by God or trusted by man is this—Jesus known in that which brings His death before the soul. The death of Jesus is the sole foundation of safety for a sinful man. This is the true way of knowing Jesus for a Christian. Anything short of this, anything other than this, whatever supplants it as fundamental truth, is false. Jesus is dead and risen, and so must be known, if He is to be known alight. “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.”
And so, that same hour, we see the disciples returning to Jerusalem, and finding the eleven there, who say, “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon” (vss. 32-34). Here we have nothing about Galilee. In Matthew, Galilee is the quarter especially noticed. A rejected Messiah, fitly and according to prophecy, finds Himself in Galilee, the despised place. It was so during His life and public ministry (and hence it figures in Mark so prominently). He takes the same place now after His death and resurrection, there resuming relations with His disciples. The godly remnant of the Jews must know the rejected Messiah there. His resurrection did not terminate their path of rejection. The Church knows Him yet more blessedly as ascended, and itself one with Him on high; and its rejection is even more decided. However, in Matthew, Galilee is the sign for a converted Jewish remnant till He come to reign in power and glory. The remnant of the let days will know what it is to be cast outside Jerusalem also, and it is as outcasts that they will find real deepening of faith and due preparation of heart for receiving the Lord when He appears in the clouds of heaven. This Galilean resort Luke does not give here. Substantially Mark gives Galilee for the active life of the Saviour like Matthew, because, as has been said, there His ministry was chiefly exercised, and only occasionally in Jerusalem or elsewhere. Therefore the evangelist of the ministry of Jesus draws attention to the place in which He had ministered most—Galilee; but even he does not speak of it exclusively. Luke, on the contrary, says nothing of Galilee at this point. The reason seems to me manifest. His theme is the moral state of the disciples, the way of Christ’s grace, the Christian path of faith, the place of the word of God, and the person of Christ, only known safely, according to God, in that which sets forth His death. This at least must be the basis.
There is another truth necessary to be known and proved, His real resurrection, who stood in the midst of them with a “Peace be unto you”; not without His death, but founded on it, and thus declared. So, in the next scene at Jerusalem, this finds its full display; for the Lord Jesus comes into their midst, and partakes of food before their eyes. There was His body; it was risen. Who could longer doubt that it was really the same Jesus who died, and will yet come in glory? “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.” As we know, the Lord deigns to go yet farther in John; but there it was to convict Thomas’s unbelief, as well as with a mysterious typical meaning behind. He would correct the previously absent and still doubting disciple; it is the sight that is the point there. This is not the question here, but rather the reality of the resurrection, and the identity of Jesus risen with Him they had known as their Master, and withal as still man, not a spirit, but having flesh and bones, and capable of eating with them (vss. 36-43).
After this our Lord speaks once more of what was written in Moses and prophets and psalms concerning Him (vs. 44). It is the word of God again brought out; not merely to two of them, but its unspeakable value for them all.
Further, He opens their understanding to understand the Scriptures, and gives them their great commission, but bids them remain in Jerusalem till endued with power from on high, when He sends them the promise of the Father (vss. 45-49). Here the Lord does not say, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” This most fitly has its place in Matthew 28:19-2019Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:19‑20), spite (yea, because of) His rejection. The suffering but now risen Son of man takes the universal field of the world, and sends His disciples among all the nations to make disciples, and baptize them into the name of the Trinity. It is not, therefore, the old limits of Israel and the lost sheep, but He extends the knowledge of His name and mission outside. Instead of bringing Gentiles to see the glory of Jehovah shining on Zion, they are to be baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as now revealed fully; and (instead of what Moses commanded) “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:2020Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:20)).
In Luke we have not the charge of the work committed to the workmen, as in Mark, with signatures of God’s gracious power accompanying; but here it is the message of a Saviour dead and risen, the Second Man, according to Scripture, and the moral need of man and the grace of God, who proclaims in His name repentance and remission to all the nations or Gentiles. Therefore, just as we have seen the resurrection of our Lord in connection with Jerusalem, where He had been crucified, so He would have the preaching begun there, not going away, as it were, from the guilty city—alas! the holy city, and only the more guilty, because such was its name and privilege. But here, on the contrary, by virtue of Christ’s death who put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, all disappears in the presence of the infinite grace of God—all blessing secured, if there be but the acceptance of Christ and His work. Hence He says, “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer.” No doubt man was guilty beyond measure, and without excuse. There were mighty purposes of God to be accomplished; and not only must He rise on the third day, but He enjoins that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name—repentance necessarily showing the great moral work in man, remission of sins being God’s great provision of grace through redemption to clear the conscience. Both were to be preached in His name. Who that believes and understands the cross could dream longer of man’s worthiness? Repentance, so far from allowing it, is the perception and confession that there is no good in man, in me; it is wrought by grace, and is inseparable from faith. It is man giving up himself as altogether bad, man resting upon God as altogether good to the bad, and both proved in the remission of sins by Jesus, whom man, Jew and Gentile, crucified and slew. Remission of sins therefore, with repentance, was to be preached in His name. This was the sole warrant and ground. They were to be preached to all the nations, beginning with Jerusalem.
In Matthew the point appears to be the rejection of Jerusalem, the rejecter, because of its Messiah, the discipular remnant starting from the mountain in Galilee; and the presence of the Lord being guaranteed till the end of the age, when other changes come. In Luke all disappears, except grace, in presence of sin and misery. Absolute grace begins, therefore, with the spot which needed it most, and Jerusalem is expressly named.
We have seen how this chapter settles, if I may so express it, the Christian system on its proper basis, bringing out its chief peculiarities with striking force and beauty. More remains of similar character, especially the very distinct privileges of the understanding opened to understand, and the power of the Holy Spirit; the one given then, the other not till Pentecost. “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day ... . And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:45-4945Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, 46And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: 47And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48And ye are witnesses of these things. 49And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (Luke 24:45‑49)). Thus the Holy Spirit was not given yet as an indwelling person, but rather a reiteration of the Father’s promise. Remaining in Jerusalem, they should be clothed with power—an essential thing for Christianity, and quite distinct from spiritual intelligence already conferred, as is apparent also in Peter’s word and way in Acts 1. In the Gospel of John, where the person of Jesus shines so conspicuously, the Holy Spirit is set forth personally, with equal distinctness at least, in chapers 14, 16. But here this is not the point, but His power, although He be, of course, a person. It is rather the promise of the Spirit’s power to act in man that is brought before us. They, like Christ, must be “anointed with the Holy Spirit, and with power;” they must wait for “power from on high” from the risen and ascended Man.
But even so, the Lord Himself would not terminate the Gospel thus. “And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them.” It was a spot that used to be most precious to Him, and, observe it well, was not less precious to Him after He rose from the dead. There is no greater mistake than to suppose, that an object of affection to Him before He died ceases to be such to Him when risen. Hence it would seem to give an open contradiction to those that deny the reality of the resurrection body, and of its proper affections. He was indeed a real man, albeit the Lord of glory. He led them out, then, as far as Bethany, the retreat of the Saviour, to which His heart turned in the days of His flesh. “And he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” He that filled with blessing the hearts devoted to Him in His life, was still blessing them when He was separated from them for heaven. “And they worshipped him.” Such was the fruit of His blessing, and of His great grace. “And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.” It was meet it should be so. He that blesses us not only communicates a blessing, but gives the power that returns to God a blessing—the power of real worship communicated to human hearts on the earth, by the Lord Jesus now risen from the dead. They “were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God;” but they were associated in life and love with One whose glory was far above them or any conceivable precincts of the earth, and were soon to be made one with Him, and to be the vessels of His power by the energy of the Holy Spirit, who would make this evident in due time.
May the Lord be pleased to bless His own word, and to grant that those who love Him and it may approach the Scripture with still more confidence! If aught which has been said here tends to remove somewhat of mist from any eyes, encourages, simplifies, or otherwise helps in reading God’s word, surely my little labor will not have been in vain, either now or for eternity. The Lord alone can make His own word sanctifying. But it is much to believe it to be what it really is, not (as unbelief thinks) a— field of darkness and uncertainty, requiring light upon it, but a light itself, which communicates light to the dark, through the power of the Holy Spirit revealing Christ. May we prove that it is indeed like Christ, of whom it speaks, needed, real, and unerring light to our souls; that it is also the sole, adequate, and irrefragable witness of divine wisdom and grace, but this only as revealed in and by Christ! I take it to be a token of great good that, as in early days, the person of Christ was not only the fiercest battle-ground and prime object, of the final struggle of the apostles on the earth, but was the means whereby the Spirit of God wrought to give a deeper and deepening enjoyment of the truth and grace of God (more profoundly searching, no doubt, but at the same time more invigorating for the saints), so no otherwise, unless I be greatly mistaken, is it now. I remember the time, though unable to boast of any very lengthened scene to look back on as a Christian, when at least almost all—for I will not say all—were more engaged in attacking ecclesiastical error, and spreading much of kindred and other truth (and, in its place and time, important truth). But it was truth that did not so directly build up the soul, nor did it so immediately concern’ the Lord Himself. And although not a few, who then seemed strong and courageous enough, are gone to the winds (and a similar sifting still goes on, and will to the end), yet sure am I that in the midst of all these troubles and humiliations God has been elevating the standard of Christ for those who are firm and faithful. God has shown that His name is, as ever, a stumbling-stone for unbelief; but for the simple and spiritual a sure foundation, and most precious. The Lord grant that even these our studies of the, Gospels, which have been necessarily curt and cursory, may nevertheless give an impulse not only to younger saints, but to those who may be ever so old; for assuredly there is no one, whatever may be his maturity, who will not be all the better for a fuller acquaintance with Him who is from the beginning.