So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day (Matthew 28:8–15).

The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the pivot point of all of history. Of all the miraculous acts in salvation history, the complex of events from Christ’s death until his resurrection and ascension are the greatest. Without reflection this claim might seem improbable. One’s mind races to the Great Flood in which the Lord destroyed “the world that then was” (2 Pet 3:6) or to the ten plagues by which the Lord redeemed the church from Pharaoh and Egypt (Exod 7:14–14:31) or entering the promised land (Josh 3–4).

Those were great acts of redemption, stupendous even. Who could not have been impressed by the crossing of the Red Sea, the flood, or even the crossing of the Jordan? Still, I stand by the claim. The cross, the tomb, the resurrection of Jesus, and his ascension are even greater than all those epochal events in salvation history. This is so for one reason: As great as those episodes were, they did not accomplish salvation from the wrath to come for all of God’s people once-for-all. Jesus’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension were the events to which all those earlier episodes pointed. The water of the Red Sea, by which the church was baptized (1 Cor 10:2), did not wash and cleanse us from sin but the blood of Christ did. In Belgic Confession article 34 we confess it is “the Son of God, who is our Red Sea, through which we must pass to escape the tyranny of Pharaoh, who is the devil, to enter the spiritual land of Canaan.”

As it is the day after Easter (which the early Christian fathers called pascha) it is well for us to consider two of the earliest responses to this the greatest of events in the history of redemption.

The Women (vv. 8–10)

The first reaction, beside that of the guards, was one of faith, love, and devotion. The clock had run out, the sun was setting, the inviolable Jewish Sabbath was beginning, and Jesus’s body was not yet completely ready for burial but buried he must be. So, they had put off completing the preparation of the body until the first day of the week—that is, Sunday (Mark 16;1; Luke 24:1).  Joseph of Arimathea had purchased a tomb for Jesus’s body (Matt 27:57–61). Early on Sunday morning, “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him” (Mark 16:1), and that on top of the weighty “mixture of myrrh and aloes” that Nicodemus had already provided (John 19:39). As the women approached, they had not resolved how they were going to gain access to his body. After all, the stone was very heavy (Mark 16:3).¹

As it happened, however, the Lord himself took care of both problems for them. There was an earthquake—the second associated with Jesus’s death and resurrection. An angel appeared (Matt 28:3), who so frightened the soldiers that they froze. The angel rolled away the stone and, when the women arrived, Jesus was not there (Matt 28:2). They had an angelic docent, who took them to the empty tomb (Matt 28:6), who told them, “Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you” (Matt 28:7).

The two Marys and Salome did as they were commanded. They “ran from the tomb with great fear and joy” to announce (ἀπαγγεῖλαι) to the disciples the very good news that Jesus had been raised from the dead (Matt 28:8). We can only imagine their confusion as they ran.

Their assignment, however, was interrupted. It was Jesus. He really was alive and he was right before them (Matt 28:9). They did what I suppose any of us would have done. They ran to him, threw themselves at his feet, and they worshiped him. What else was there to do at that moment? Their beloved teacher whom they had seen cruelly murdered, whose body they went to attend in the tomb, was now before them as alive as he had been before the cross.

Jesus gives them a somewhat altered assignment: Go to the disciples and tell them to meet me in Galilee (Matt 28:10). Perhaps the most important words he said to them in that moment were, “fear not.” The angel had said “fear not,” but now it was God the Son incarnate, the risen Savior, the one who holds worlds and governments in his hand, who was saying it.

The Authorities (vv. 11–15)

The response to Jesus’s resurrection by the Roman and Jewish authorities was markedly different from that of the women. After the women ran off to see the disciples, the guards came to their senses. Some of them, but apparently not all of them, decided to report to the chief priests.² Perhaps it was one of those who did not go to the high priests who related the story to Matthew? As the commentators explain, the guards went to the chief priests because they had been assigned to them by the Romans. They made their report because they knew they were in trouble with their Roman superiors. For them, to lose a prisoner meant certain death.³ The guards were in a difficult position. Leon Morris says, “It is true that the body had not been stolen, but it might have been difficult to convey the truth of what had happened to sceptical Roman officers.”⁴ It is interesting that Matthew uses the same verb for the guards’ announcement as he used for the women’s announcement. They were both announcing Jesus’s resurrection but to very different effects. The chief priests got the story. The guards were on duty. An angel descended, there was an earthquake, and Jesus emerged from the tomb. The women came, the angel announced Jesus’s resurrection and sent the women back to the disciples. The story was about to “go public,” as they say in the public relations business.

So the chief priests (Matt 28:12) assemble the elders and the council hatches a plan. Will they recognize that everything Jesus had said had come true? “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again” (John 2:19)? No, they decide to bribe the guards to keep them quiet. They know that the soldiers are at risk. Their first instinct had been to murder Jesus (Matt 26:3–4), but they cannot murder the guards because that would put them in jeopardy with Pilate and the Roman authorities (Matt 28:14). So, they offer the guards a large bribe to keep quiet and they promise to smooth over any difficulties with the Roman authorities (Matt 28:13). The soldiers had to say that they fell asleep. Now, falling asleep on guard duty overnight has been known to happen, but the Romans took a dim view of such things. Remember, the Romans were brutal. They crucified criminals. Their whole empire, to a considerable degree, depended on their ability to inspire fear in their subjects. As for persuading Pilate not to punish the guards, as long as Jesus was dead, and thus presumably no threat to the Roman order, he probably would not care what happened to his body

The soldiers took the money (Matt 28:15) and did “as they were taught” (ἐδιδάχθησαν). Matthew said that the story that the disciples stole Jesus’s body was still circulating at the time he wrote his gospel. Morris notes that the story was still in circulation in the middle of the second century.”⁵ The Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, defending the faith to Trypho the Jew, wrote,

But, as I stated, you chose certain men by vote and sent them throughout the whole civilized world, proclaiming that a godless and lawless sect has been started by a deceiver, one Jesus of Galilee, whom we nailed to the cross, but whose body, after it was taken from the cross, was stolen at night from the tomb by his disciples, who now try to deceive men by affirming that he has arisen from the dead and has ascended into heaven. ⁶

The very idea that the disciples, who were fishermen and tax collectors, came at night, moved a large stone, and stole Jesus’s body, all while highly trained and armed Roman guards slept, is ridiculous. Doubtless, the soldiers and the council also knew it was ridiculous, but the human capacity for deception, including self-deception, is enormous.

Indeed, it seems clear that Matthew’s narrative about Jesus’s death and resurrection is intended, in part, to expose and correct that lie. One reason why he includes the narrative about the believers emerging from their tombs at Jesus’s resurrection is to provide two or three witnesses to Jesus’s deity and resurrection (Matt 27:51–54). Matthew was saying, in effect, I can prove that the soliders were lying. Go ask the people who came out of the tombs. The chief priests knew the truth. The women knew the truth. The soldiers knew the truth. The disciples saw Jesus. In short, Matthew presents the resurrection as an objective fact, not a subjective experience or a symbol. He was offering eyewitness testimony that could be verified. He was exposing the soldiers and the officials.

The contrast between the response of the women and that of the authorities, both Roman and Jewish, is striking but it is not unique. We all must respond to Jesus’s resurrection. It is a giant fact in the middle of history. Jesus’s tomb was empty. Other tombs were emptied that day too. This is the turning point of history. In his resurrection Jesus was vindicated (1 Tim 3:16) and Christianity stands or falls on Jesus’s resurrection (1 Cor 15:12–19). Paul says, “But now Christ has been raised” (1 Cor 15:20). He is reigning now and putting all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor 15:25). The only reasonable response, the saving response, is that of the women. The response of the authorities remains diabolical (John 8:44). The choice is stark and clear and the consequences could not be greater.

notes

1. Leon Morris observes “Presumably Matthew omits the reference to the spices because he knows (as the women probably did not) that there was a guard at the tomb that would have prevented them from using their spices anyway.” Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1992), 734–35.
2. “What happened to the others? Matthew says nothing about them.” Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, 740.
3. Michael J. Wilkins, Zondervan Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton Arnold (Zondervan, 2002), 1.188. Wilkins, Ibid., n. 470, points to Acts 12:19 regarding the guards who were sentenced to death in connection with Peter’s miraculous escape from prison.
4. Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, 740–41.
5. Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, 743.
6. St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser and Thomas P. Halton, trans. Thomas B. Falls, vol. 3, Selections from the Fathers of the Church (The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 162.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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