He Is Risen

Read it: Luke 24; John 20–21

The Saturday after the crucifixion was the Sabbath, the day of rest, and the Bible says almost nothing about it. Jesus’ followers were hiding. Their hopes were in a tomb.

An empty tomb

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared” (Luke 24:1). They came to finish preparing a dead body. They weren’t expecting anything else. But the stone had been rolled away and the body was gone. Two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them and asked, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!” (Luke 24:5–6).

The women ran to tell the apostles, “But their words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women” (Luke 24:11). That detail matters. In that culture a woman’s testimony was often not taken seriously in court. If someone were inventing the story, they would hardly have made women the first witnesses, and the apostles the ones who refused to believe.

John tells how Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb, weeping. Someone asked why she was crying, and she, “Thinking He was the gardener” (John 20:15), begged him to tell her where the body was. Then He said one word: “Mary.” She turned and knew Him. The Bible’s story began with a garden where humanity lost its way. Now, in a garden, the risen Jesus called a grieving woman by name and sent her to tell the others. She ran to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).

A walk to Emmaus

That afternoon two of Jesus’ followers were walking home to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, talking sadly about everything. A stranger joined them and asked what they were discussing. They told Him about Jesus, how they had hoped He would set Israel free, and about the strange report of an empty tomb.

The stranger was Jesus, though they didn’t recognise Him. “O foolish ones,” He said, “how slow are your hearts to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?” (Luke 24:25–26). “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself” (Luke 24:27). Imagine that Bible study: everything this book has covered so far, explained by the One it was all about.

At the village, when He broke bread at their table, “their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus—and He disappeared from their sight” (Luke 24:31). They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). And they hurried the seven miles back to Jerusalem in the dark.

A locked room, and a doubter

That evening the disciples were together “with the doors locked for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19), meaning the leaders who had arranged the crucifixion. Suddenly Jesus stood among them. “Peace be with you!” They thought they were seeing a ghost. So He said, “Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). Then He asked for something to eat and ate a piece of fish in front of them. This was no vision. Jesus was bodily alive.

Thomas wasn’t there, and refused to believe without seeing and touching the wounds. A week later Jesus came again and offered him exactly that: “Put your finger here and look at My hands” (John 20:27). Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Jesus said, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). That includes you, if you trust Him.

Breakfast on the beach

John 21 takes us back to Galilee. Peter and some others went fishing all night and caught nothing. At dawn a figure on the shore told them to throw the net on the right side of the boat, and it filled so full they couldn’t haul it in. John said, “It is the Lord!” and Peter jumped into the water.

Jesus had breakfast cooking on a charcoal fire. The last time Peter stood by a charcoal fire, he had denied Jesus three times. Now Jesus asked him three times, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” (John 21:16). Peter was hurt by the third asking, but each time Jesus answered his “yes” with a job: “Feed My sheep” (John 21:17). Three denials, three restorations. Then, the same two words Jesus had said to Peter by the same lake years before: “Follow Me” (John 21:19).

Before He left them, Jesus gave His followers a mission: “repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47–48). And a promise: “I am sending the promise of My Father upon you” (Luke 24:49). That promise opens the next chapter.

Where Jesus is in this

The earliest summary of the Christian faith, which Paul passed on only a few years after these events, puts the resurrection at the centre: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve” (1 Corinthians 15:3–5). Paul adds that He appeared to more than five hundred people at once, most of them still alive when he wrote, as if to say: go and ask them.

Back in Genesis 3, God promised that the woman’s offspring would crush the serpent’s head. On Easter morning death itself was beaten. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Firstfruits are the first part of a harvest, the promise that the rest is coming. His resurrection is the first; ours will follow.

Think about it: Peter’s restoration came after his worst failure. Is there a failure you think disqualifies you from following Jesus, and how does this breakfast on the beach speak to it?

Go deeper: Hurlbut’s Life of Christ for Young and Old by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut — Hurlbut walks step by step through the road to Emmaus, from two sorrowful men who didn’t recognise the stranger beside them to the moment He showed them that Moses, the psalms and all the prophets had foretold His suffering. Start with chapter 101, “A Walk with the Risen Christ”.