SECTION I. TOO GOOD NEWS TO BE TRUE
Matt. 28:17; Mark 16:11-15; Luke 24:11; 13-22; 36-42; John 20:20; 24-29.
The black day of the crucifixion is past; the
succeeding day, the Jewish Sabbath, when the Weary One slept in His rock-hewn
tomb, is also past; the first day of a new week and of a new era has dawned,
and the Lord is risen from the dead. The Shepherd has returned to gather His
scattered sheep. Surely a happy day for hapless disciples! What rapturous joy
must have thrilled their hearts at the thought of a reunion with their beloved
Lord! with what ardent hope must they have looked forward to that resurrection
morn!
So one might think; but the real state of the
case was not so. Such ardent expectations had no place in the minds of the
disciples. The actual state of their minds at the resurrection of Christ rather
resembled that of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, when they heard that they were
to be restored to their native land. The first effect of the good news was that
they were as men that dreamed. The news seemed too good to be true. The
captives who had sat by the rivers of Babylon, and wept when they remembered
Zion, had ceased to hope for a return to their own country, and indeed to be
capable of hoping for any thing. "Grief was calm and hope was dead" within
them. Then, when the exiles had recovered from the stupor of surprise, the next
effect of the good tidings was a fit of over-joy. They burst into hysteric
laughter and irrepressible song.[28.]
Very similar was the experience of the disciples
in connection with the rising of Jesus from the dead. Their grief was not
indeed calm, but their hope was dead. The resurrection of their Master was
utterly unexpected by them, and they received the tidings with surprise and
incredulity. This appears from the statements of all the four evangelists.
Matthew states that on the occasion of Christ's meeting with His followers in
Galilee after He was risen, some doubted, while others worshipped.[28.2] Mark
relates that when the disciples heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus was alive,
and had been seen of her, "they believed not;"[28.3] and that when the two
disciples who journeyed toward Emmaus told their brethren of their meeting with
Jesus on the way, "neither believed they them."[28.4] He further relates how,
on a subsequent occasion, when Jesus Himself met with the whole eleven at once,
He "upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they
believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen."[28.5]
In full accordance with these statements of the
two first evangelists are those of Luke, whose representation of the mental
attitude of the disciples towards the resurrection of Jesus is very graphic and
animated. According to him, the reports of the women seemed to them "as idle
tales, and they believed them not."[28.6] The two brethren vaguely alluded to
by Mark as walking into the country when Jesus appeared to them, are
represented by Luke as sad in countenance, though aware of the rumors
concerning the resurrection; yea, as so depressed in spirits, that they did not
recognize Jesus when He joined their company and entered into conversation with
them.[28.7] The resurrection was not a fact for them: all they knew was that
their Master was dead, and that they had vainly trusted that it had been He who
should have redeemed Israel. The same evangelist also Informs us that on the
first occasion when Jesus presented Himself in the midst of His disciples, they
did recognize the resemblance of the apparition to their deceased Lord, but
thought it was only His ghost, and accordingly were terrified and affrighted;
insomuch that, in order to charm away their fear, Jesus showed them His hands
and feet, and besought them to handle His body, and so satisfy themselves that
He was no ghost, but a substantial human being, with flesh and bones like
another man.[28.8]
Instead of general statements, John gives an
example of the incredulity of the disciples concerning the resurrection, as
exhibited in its extreme form by Thomas. This disciple he represents as so
incredulous, that he refused to believe until he should have put his finger
into the prints of the nails, and thrust his hand into the wound made by the
spear in the Saviour's side. That the other disciples shared the incredulity of
Thomas, though in a less degree, is implied in the statement made by John in a
previous part of his narrative, that when Jesus met His disciples on the
evening of the day on which He rose, "He showed unto them His hands and His
side."[28.9]
The women who had believed in Christ had no more
expectation of His resurrection than the eleven. They set forth towards the
sepulchre on the morning of the first day of the week, with the intention of
embalming the dead body of Him whom they loved. They sought the living among
the dead. When the Magdalene, who was at the tomb before the rest, found the
grave empty, her idea was that some one had carried away the dead body of her
Lord.[28.10]
When the incredulity of the disciples did at
length give place to faith, they passed, like the Hebrew exiles, from extreme
depression to extravagant joy. When the doubt of Thomas was removed, he
exclaimed in rapture, "My Lord and my God!"[28.11] Luke relates that when they
recognized their risen Lord, the disciples "believed not for joy,"[28.12] as if
toying with doubt as a stimulus to joy. The two disciples with whom Jesus
conversed on the way to Emmaus, said to each other when He left them, "Did not
our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and while He
opened to us the Scriptures?"[28.13]
In yet another most important respect did the
eleven resemble the ancient Hebrew exiles at the time of their recall. While
their faith and hope were palsied during the interval between the death and the
resurrection of Jesus, their love remained in unabated vitality. The
expatriated Jew did not forget Jerusalem in the land of strangers. Absence only
made his heart grow fonder. As he sat by the rivers of Babylon, listless,
motionless, in abstracted dreamy mood, gazing with glassy eyes on the sluggish
waters, the big round tears stole quietly down his cheeks, because he had been
thinking of Zion. The exile of poetic soul did not forget what was due to
Jerusalem's honor. He was incapable of singing the Lord's songs in the hearing
of a heathen audience, who cared nothing for their meaning, but only for the
style of execution. He disdained to prostitute his talents for the
entertainment of the voluptuous oppressors of Israel, even though thereby he
might procure his restoration to the beloved country of his birth, as the
Athenian captives in Sicily are said to have done by reciting the strains of
their favorite poet Euripides in the hearing of their Sicilian
masters.[28.14]
The disciples were not less true to the memory of
their Lord. They were like a "widow indeed," who remains faithful to her
deceased husband, and dotes on his virtues, though his reputation be at zero in
the general esteem of the world. Call Him a deceiver who might, they could not
believe that Jesus had been a deceiver. Mistaken He as well as they might have
been, but an impostor--never! Therefore, though He is dead and their hope gone,
they still act as men who cherish the fondest attachment to their Master whom
they have lost. They keep together like a bereaved family, with blinds down, so
to speak, shutting and barring their doors for fear of the Jews, identifying
themselves with the Crucified, and as His friends dreading the ill-will of the
unbelieving world. Admirable example to all Christians how to behave themselves
in a day of trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy, when the cause of Christ seems
lost, and the powers of darkness for the moment have all things their own way.
Though faith be eclipsed and hope extinguished, let the heart ever be loyal to
its true Lord!
The state of mind in which the disciples were at
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, is of great moment in an
apologetic point of view. Their despair after their Lord's crucifixion gives
great weight to the testimony borne by them to the fact of His resurrection.
Men in such a mood were not likely to believe in the latter event except
because it could not reasonably be disbelieved. They would not be lightly
satisfied of its truth, as men are apt to be in the case of events both desired
and expected: they would skeptically exact superabundant evidence, as men do in
the case of events desirable but not expected. They would be slow to believe on
the testimony of others, and might even hesitate to believe their own eyes.
They would not be able, as M. Renan supposes, to get up a belief in the
resurrection of Jesus, from the simple fact that His grave was found empty on
the third day after His death, by the women who went to embalm His body. That
circumstance, on being reported, might make a Peter and a John run to the
sepulchre to see how matters stood; but, after they had found the report of the
women confirmed, it would still remain a question how the fact was to be
explained; and Mary Magdalene's theory, that some one had carried off the
corpse, would not appear at all improbable.
These inferences of ours, from what we know
concerning the mental condition of the disciples, are fully borne out by the
Gospel accounts of the reception they gave to the risen Jesus at His first
appearances to them. One and all of them regarded these appearances
skeptically, and took pains to satisfy themselves, or made it necessary that
Jesus should take pains to satisfy them, that the visible object was no ghostly
apparition, but a living man, and that man none other than He who had died on
the cross. The disciples doubted now the substantiality, now the identity, of
the person who appeared to them. They were therefore not content with seeing
Jesus, but at His own request handled Him. One of their number not only handled
the body to ascertain that it possessed the incompressibility of matter, but
insisted on examining with skeptical curiosity those parts which had been
injured by the nails and the spear. All perceived the resemblance between the
object in view and Jesus, but they could not be persuaded of the identity, so
utterly unprepared were they for seeing the Dead One alive again; and their
theory at first was just that of Strauss, that what they saw was a ghost or
spectra. And the very fact that they entertained that theory makes it
impossible for us to entertain it. We cannot, in the face of that fact, accept
the Straussian dogma, that "the faith in Jesus as the Messiah, which by His
violent death had received an apparently fatal shock, was subjectively restored
by the instrumentality of the mind, the power of imagination and nervous
excitement." The power of imagination and nervous excitement we know can do
much. It has often happened to men in an abnormal, excited state to see
projected into outward space the creations of a heated brain. but persons in a
crazy state like that--subject to hallucination--are not usually cool and
rational enough to doubt the reality of what they see; nor is it necessary in
their case to take pains to overcome such doubts. What they need rather, is to
be made aware that what they think they see is not a reality: the very reverse
of what Christ had to do for the disciples, and did, by solemn assertion that
He was no spirit, by inviting them to handle Him, and so satisfy themselves of
His material substantiality, and by partaking of food in their presence.
When we keep steadily before our eyes the mental
condition of the eleven at the time of Christ's resurrection, we see the
transparent falsehood and absurdity of the theft theory invented by the Jewish
priests. The disciples, according to this theory, came by night, while the
guards were asleep, and stole the dead body of Jesus, that they might be able
to circulate the belief that He was risen again. Matthew tells that even before
the resurrection the murderers of our Lord were afraid this might be done; and
then, to prevent any fraud of this kind, they applied to Pilate to have a guard
put upon the grave, who accordingly contemptuously granted them permission to
take what steps they pleased to prevent all resurrectionary proceedings on the
part either of the dead or of the living, scornfully replying, "Ye have a
watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can." This accordingly they did,
sealing the stone and setting a watch. Alas! their precautions prevented
neither the resurrection nor belief in it, but only supplied an illustration of
the folly of those who attempt to manage providence, and to control the course
of
the world's history. They gave themselves much to
do, and it all came to nothing. Not that we are disposed to deny the astuteness
of these ecclesiastical politicians. Their scheme for preventing the
resurrection was very prudent, and their mode of explaining it away after hand
very plausible. The story they invented was really a very respectable
fabrication, and was certain to satisfy all who wanted a decent theory to
justify a foregone conclusion, as in fact it seems to have done; for, according
to Matthew, it was commonly reported in after years.[28.15] It was not
improbable that soldiers should fall asleep by night on the watch, especially
when guarding a dead body, which was not likely to give them any trouble; and
in the eyes of the unbelieving world, the followers of the Nazarene were
capable of using any means for promoting their ends.
But granting all this, and even granting that the
Sanhedrists had been right in their opinion of the character of the disciples,
their theft theory is ridiculous. The disciples, even if capable of such a
theft, so far as scruples of conscience were concerned, were not in a state of
mind to think of it, or to attempt it. They had not spirit left for such a
daring action. Sorrow lay like a weight of lead on their hearts, and made them
almost as inanimate as the corpse they are supposed to have stolen. Then the
motive for the theft is one which could not have influenced them then. Steal
the body to propagate a belief in the resurrection! What interest had they in
propagating a belief which they did not entertain themselves? "As yet they knew
not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead;"[28.16] nor did they
remember aught that their Master had said on this subject before His decease.
To some this latter statement has appeared hard to believe; and to get over the
difficulty, it has been suggested that the predictions of our Lord respecting
His resurrection may not have been so definite as they appear in the Gospels,
but may have assumed this definite form after the event, when their meaning was
clearly understood.[28.17] We see no occasion for such a supposition. There can
be no doubt that Jesus spoke plainly enough about His death at least; and yet
His death, when it happened, took the disciples as much by surprise as did the
resurrection.[28.18] One explanation suffices in both cases. The disciples were
not clever, quick-witted, sentimental men such as Renan makes them. They were
stupid, slow-minded persons; very honest, but very unapt to take in new ideas.
They were like horses with blinders on, and could see only in one
direction,--that, namely, of their prejudices. It required the surgery of
events to insert a new truth into their minds. Nothing would change the current
of their thoughts but a damwork of undeniable fact. They could be convinced
that Christ must die only by His dying, that He would rise only by His rising,
that His kingdom was not to be of this world, only by the outpouring of the
Spirit at Pentecost and the vocation of the Gentiles. Let us be thankful for
the honest stupidity of these men. It gives great value to their testimony. We
know that nothing but facts could make such men believe that which nowadays
they get credit for inventing.
The apologetic use which we have made of the
doubts of the disciples concerning the resurrection of Christ is not only
legitimate, but manifestly that which was intended by their being recorded. The
evangelists have carefully chronicled these doubts that we might have no doubt.
These things were written that we might believe that Jesus really did rise from
the dead; for the apostles attached supreme importance to that fact, which they
had doubted in the days of their disciple hood. It was the foundation of their
doctrinal edifice, an essential part of their gospel. The Apostle Paul
correctly summed up the gospel preached by the men who had been with Jesus, as
well as by himself, in these three items: "that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He rose again the
third day, according to the Scriptures." All the eleven thoroughly agreed with
Paul's sentiment, that if Christ were not risen, their preaching was vain, and
the faith of Christians was also vain. There was no gospel at all, unless He
who died for men's sins rose again for their justification. With this
conviction in their minds, they constantly bore witness to the resurrection of
Jesus wherever they went. So important a part of their work did this
witness-bearing seem to them, that when Peter proposed the election of one to
fill the place of Judas he singled it out as the characteristic function of the
apostolic office. "Of these men," he said, "which have companied with us all
the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, . . . must one become a
witness with us of His resurrection."
With this supreme value attached to the fact of
Christ's rising again in apostolic preaching, it is our duty most heartily to
sympathize. Modern unbelievers, like some in the Corinthian church, would
persuade us that it does not matter whether Jesus rose or not, all that is
valuable in Christianity being quite independent of mere historical truth. With
these practically agree many believers addicted to an airy spiritualism, who
treat mere supernatural facts with contemptuous neglect, deeming the high
doctrines of the faith as alone worthy of their regard. To persons of this
temper such studies as those which have occupied us in this chapter seem a mere
waste of time; and if they spoke as they feel, they would say, "Let these
trifles alone, and give us the pure and simple gospel." Intelligent, sober, and
earnest Christians differ toto celo from both these classes of people. In their
view Christianity is in the first place a religion of supernatural facts. These
facts occupy the principal place in their creed. They know that if these facts
are honestly believed, all the great doctrines of the faith must sooner or
later be accepted; and, on the other hand, they clearly understand that a
religion which despises, not to say disbelieves, these facts, is but a
cloudland which must soon be dissipated, or a house built on sand which the
storm will sweep away. Therefore, while acknowledging the importance of all
revealed truth, they lay very special stress on revealed facts. Believing with
the heart the precious truth that Christ died for our sins, they are careful
with the apostles to include in their gospel these items of fact, that He was
buried, and that He rose again the third day.[28.19]
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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