Clough John Lesson 66
Resurrection and Appearance to Mary – John 20:1-17
These last two chapters are the summary of the Gospel, the resurrection of the Word and theme is just what this resurrection is and why people come to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The thing that one always has to be careful of with the resurrection is that we never treat the resurrection of Christ as a point event by itself. The reason is that, as Van Til pointed out, if you can prove to someone that He definitely physically, historically rose from the dead, you still haven’t done anything, because the person can then retort well, history is the arena of Chance and strange things do happen, send it in to Ripley’s Believe it or Not. So proving the historicity of the resurrection by itself doesn’t prove what the Scriptures are trying to prove. The Scriptures are interested in something else. And they relate the resurrection to the overall divine viewpoint framework; it’s not just the one fact, it’s the whole system of Christian truth together. And the resurrection always has to be placed in this.
A good example of this is the preaching you see in the book of Acts. During the book of Acts you have the Pharisees opposing the resurrection of Christ. That’s not strange because after all, the Pharisees did believe in resurrection; the Sadducees didn’t but the Pharisees did. Why then did the Pharisees object if they believed in the resurrection at the resurrection of Christ. It must be obvious that the resurrection of Christ is different than the resurrection they believed in; there was something more cosmic, more threatening about the resurrection of Christ. And so to provide some setting the setting infinite glory of God over against the details of the text and some of the personal things that happened in the text, we want to go back in history to view the place of the resurrection in all of history.
In Genesis 1 at the creation account we have it stated that the earth was in darkness and even when light was introduced there was the light and the darkness together. And so it is that down through history we have the period in which men are tested. It began in Eden; theologians have a word for that; they call it the probation, the probatory period in which the creature is tested as to whether or not he will bow to his Creator, whether or not he will come to the conclusion that the Creator is worthy of worship or whether the creature will rebel and conclude that God is not worth worshiping. Please notice that the primary issue during the period of probation is not one of salvation. It’s one of God’s glory because this happened before the fall; there was no sin and therefore no need of grace and therefore no need of salvation. Before the fall Adam and Eve had one issue, would they or would they not worship their Creator. That’s the issue. And even though salvation has been added to that theme we must always understand that below the issue of salvation is a more basic one: do I or do I not worship God.
Turn to the last part of history in Revelation 21-22, you’ll see that the end of history the light and the darkness of the probatory period are done away. Revelation 21:23, “The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did light it, and the Lamb is the light [lamp] thereof.” And so in future time, when the new universe is formed it will be like the present universe but it will be a new creation. There will be physical form to it, not like the Oriental religions and thinking in terms of some sort of spiritual thing. This is going to be physical. You’ll notice, verse 25 is talking about gates in the city, [And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there.”] This is where we will be for all eternity. Notice the walking in verse 24, it’s a physical act, [And the nations of them who are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it.” Revelation 22:2, “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, there was a tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” So even in eternity the creation remains dependent on the Creator. The dependency never ceases, so though we speak of resurrection and the final end of history we still are not speaking of an autonomous existence, separate, sustained, apart from God.
Resurrection of the human body is simply what happens to the human body that corresponds to what happens to the universe in Revelation 21-22. It’s the same thing; the physical universe is remade, its recreated, and no longer is there a period of probation but the sides have been chosen; the forces of good and the forces of evil both are resurrected. Notice in Revelation 21:27, “And there shall in no way enter into it anything that defiles, neither whatsoever works abomination, or makes a lie, but they who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” So the evil powers exist in eternity future, forever and ever and ever, but there is an airtight compartment of separation between the two. That’s what different from the probatory period of history. In our history evil and good commingle. In future evil and good are purified in their respective compartments.
For a very sobering truth or way of presenting this, turn to John 5:29 for a statement that the Lord Jesus Christ made about resurrection. Most people do not understand, and I didn’t until I studied Scripture for quite some time, that there are actually two resurrections, not just of the good but of good and evil. Notice verse 29, “And they shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” And so it says that even those who reject Christ in the new creation will exist but they will exist in a separate compartment. The reason is because the acquisition of a resurrection body by itself does not guarantee our presence with our Creator. The acquisition of the resurrection body does do this: it locks us into itself forever and ever and ever. No force can destroy, apart from God’s Word itself, no force can destroy the resurrection body. And thus, like today we can sin and at least we’re going to die and get out from under the tremendous pressures that exist to the time that we breathe our last breath. But that’s not so, for in eternity we will be locked to a resurrection body that goes on and on and on and on and on.
Oftentimes ridicule is heaped upon the fire and brimstone preaching of the fundamentalists and there is a wrong emphasis on fire and brimstone preaching, namely accept Christ and He’s a fire escape from hell, that’s never the way Christ is presented. But there is a very sobering fact that there is fire and brimstone and there is the issue of what you’re going to do for all eternity and that cannot be answered by the pastor, it cannot be answered by the Lord Himself; it has to be answered by you. We have the point of choice sometime between the time you drew your first breath and became God-conscious as a small child on up until the time you draw your last breath, you will have chosen by that time whether you will be resurrected with the good or resurrected with the evil. You have no choice and I don’t between being resurrected; all we’ve got is the choice of which resurrection are we going to join, those who are resurrected to live in God’s glory and those who are resurrected to live in the dark fire of the lake of fire forever and ever, a very horrifying importance is placed upon history. History, unlike the Marxist, is not just some sort of puppet fatalism that plays itself out. History is very sobering indeed from the Christian point of view because the decisions of all decisions is made in temporal history for eternity. And once we’re resurrected, whatever decision we’ve made, is irrevocable; it can never be changed, and we sit there with memories, forever and ever, remembering the decisions we could have made but didn’t. This is why all decisions that one makes in this life are responsible decisions and very sobering before God’s presence.
So the resurrection, then in the Bible background, the overall framework, is that resurrection is the beginning of the end; it is the end of history of probation; it is the end when men can, so to speak, do something about their eternal destiny. Once resurrection begins history is over. So now we come to the resurrection of Christ. Now it will become very apparent as we study the text in John 20 that the early Christians did not anticipate a resurrection; sort of like the incident in Acts, they did not expect Peter, even though they prayed for him. And even though the Lord Jesus Christ said He would rise from the dead they were not prepared at all for a resurrection. Even Mary who came to Christ was not looking for resurrection.
But the resurrection of Christ is important because it says that at least for Jesus history is now over, no more choices to be made as far as His personal obedience to God is concerned. He’s locked down to His eternal position so that history at least in one zone of the universe has played itself out to the end. Now because many of us come out of evolutionary backgrounds and you’re used to thinking in terms of millions of years, actually no one is used to thinking in terms of millions of years because most people don’t know what a million is, but we’re used to the word “million,” it sounds impressive. And so we’re used to thinking in terms that history will go on for millions of years, but you see the Bible says that history is very short, it’s just a myth that history has gone on for millions of years; it hasn’t, it’s gone on no longer than 10,000 years. And history is going to come to a conclusion. The startling facts of the resurrection of Christ is that history already stopped with one person 2000 years ago; that’s how close we are to the end of history. And this is why the Christian could preach now or the latter days. Why? What does the “latter days” mean? The latter days mean now we enter the time zone, the twilight zone of history when the finishing touches are being made; Christ is resurrected and He’s all through and the next item of business will be the resurrection of the Church, when the Church is all done. So it’s sort of mopping up operations now, the great struggles of history are over, Christ has secured victory and now the Father completes it.
So with this in the background we come to John 20 and the scene outside the tomb of Christ. It’s a scene that shows once again it is not due to who and what we are but due to what God is. The resurrection was not expected, notice in John 20:1. “The first day of the week came Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the Sepulcher, and sees the stone taken away from the sepulcher. [2] Then she runs, and comes to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and says unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the Sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid Him. [3] Peter, therefore, went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulcher. [4] So they ran both together; and the other disciple outran Peter, and came first to the sepulcher. [5] And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet he went not in. [6] Then come Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulcher, and sees the linen clothes lying there. [7] And the napkin [cloth], that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. [8] Then went in also the other disciple, who came first to the sepulcher, and he saw, and he believed. [9] For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.”
So quite obviously all parties to the tomb were not making it up because of their study of Old Testament prophecy. They were going to understand it but the important thing about the resurrection is that it blasted in upon the Christians as an event first, fulfilled prophecy second. The Christian church did not see the resurrection as fulfilled prophecy first; they saw the resurrection first, then they interpreted it in the light of Old Testament Scripture.
Let’s look a little bit closer because the
cosmic event, we’ve painted the background for it so far, the cosmic event of
history drawing to a close takes place, of all places, in a tomb. I showed you what these tombs look like. [He shows slides again] Here is Herod’s tomb
and this is what the rock looks like the size of the rock that’s rolled;
obviously Mary didn’t roll that rock all by herself; and obviously one man
didn’t roll it, those rocks are heavy.
Somebody very strong rolled that rock. Of course the skeptics now say
that Jesus swooned, fainted from loss of blood and in some miraculous way was
able to push the rock all by Himself.
Here’s the rock, there’s the door to the tomb. Again a tomb of the Sanhedrin, you’ll see
where the bodies are stuck down inside there, on a dark morning, the setting
for John 20 is much like the setting of Acts 12, it occurs in the wee hours of
the morning, the sun has not yet risen and you can obviously see it’s hard to
see in there anyway. This picture was
taken about
That’s the setting of the place, that’s what it looked like to Mary when she came there. Let’s look at the text and some of the details. Mary came “while it was yet dark,” that’s to show you that Mary did not see what the disciples later saw and therefore at this point did not believe. She did not have adequate data; it had not dawned on this woman’s mind what had really happened. But it also shows you something else; it’s of cosmic significance that the woman is always viewed in Scripture as the one through whom sin first came. It’s interesting that the woman is the one through whom the light first came and it’s interesting that the woman is the first one to glimpse the resurrected Christ. It is always the woman who is placed in first place in the plan of God; she is the life-giver and before this passage is finished the life-giving woman, Mary, is the one who announces eternal life has come, the age and end of history has begun in Christ. And she makes that announcement to the men. So Mary is the first one who comes to the tomb; it’s as though God has a special place for the woman all down through history, preserving a very special niche for the woman to do her thing. And so Mary comes, Mary is the one who is mentioned as having seven demons who are cast out of her by the Lord Jesus Christ and ever since that time she ministered to Him.
Turn to Luke 8:2, a little bit about this
Mary Magdalena; there’s Mary’s all over the Bible, it’s just a common
name. By the way, the real name, if you
had heard them and if we had been outside the tomb and heard Jesus say to her
you would not have heard the word “Mary.”
The word in the Aramaic and in
All right, it’s Mary who comes to the tomb in the wee hours of morning. It shows something about Mary’s determination; you’ll see that time and time again in this passage. Don’t think there’s anything more tenacious than a tenacious woman. When a woman decides that she is going to have her way and she is going to get to the bottom of it, woe be to the man who stands in her way. And here you have an example of Mary Magdalene, she is not going to what the disciples, in fact, do. She wants to know what happened to the body of Christ and she is going to find out what happened to the body of Christ. A little reflection will show you how this text is written and how it’s composed, it’ll show you her determination. In verse 1 she’s coming in the wee morning hours which means that she and the group of women that she was with, being Passover and there were a lot of people camped all over the city of Jerusalem, she ran the risk of being physically assaulted running around the streets at that hour of the morning. Just a little common background common sense shows you this woman’s determination to risk personal assault to get out there early and find out what is going on. Why she came initially to the sepulcher we don’t know, maybe it was to mourn, but she was going to get out there and before the text is over she’s going to find out what happened to Christ’s body.
So she looks in, in verse 1, and she sees the stone; that’s that rolling stone that you saw moved aside in the Herod family tomb; that’s what she saw, she came upon that scene, that kind of a thing and one look told her that somebody had been messing around because nobody moved those stones. [2] So “she ran, and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple,” obviously John, “and said, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher,” and it’s interesting that she draws this hasty conclusion. The importance for Christian truth is that Mary draws this conclusion in verse 2, proving that the Christians were not looking for a resurrection. Of all the woman who should have spotted it, it would have been those more spiritually sensitive women, Mary and her colleagues who ministered to Christ. And even they did not expect the resurrection of Christ, and this is why she comes up with the stolen hypothesis; that was the earliest explanation of the empty tomb, the body was stolen.
So [3] “Peter came forth, and that other disciple, and they were coming,” imperfect tense, “to the sepulcher.” They both are running together, and again this is a touch of a personal eyewitness to this narrative, an eyewitness that reports those things about these two men and their different personalities that fits with everything else that we get in Scripture. Notice what happens: [4] they both start running, “the other disciple outran Peter,” see John is a young teenager at this time, or a very young man in his early 20’s and Peter is an older man, and John apparently is in better shape, so he outruns first and he “came first to the sepulcher.” Notice the verb in verse 5, John “stoops down” this is why I showed you that slide of the Sanhedrin, remember how low it was, you have to stoop down to look in it. He stoops down and he stops. John has a more passive kind of personality and some of you who are always worried about your personality, I want to show you something in this passage that maybe will be of help. John has an utterly different kind of personality than Peter. In verse 5 he comes, he looks at the data, and he pauses, apparently he’s not a fast thinker but he’s that slow steady kind of person. He likes to kind of just sit there and thinks over, he’s not one to make hasty decisions. John is, what we would call slow, but he’s deep. And therefore God is going to use him to do a particular thing. But now verse 6, along comes Simon Peter, puff puffing away, as he finally catches up to John, and does he stop and stoop? Not at all, he goes on into the sepulcher, just huffs and puffs and charges right by John; that’s Peter, the aggressive type. Now please notice how God uses different people with different personalities. Every once in a while, particularly new Christians get this thing that they’re not spiritual unless they suppress their natural personality.
Now let’s look at personality for a moment; it has two parts Scripturally. It has what we’ll call a moral part, and that you’re responsible for in the Lord because you can be out of fellowship or you can be in fellowship and that does affect your personality. But then there is an amoral part that you can’t change, you have no business changing, you are to use as unto the Lord; if you are a John you can’t be a Peter so stop trying. If you are a Peter you’re not to be a John so stop trying. Be content with the kind of personality God has given you. God has given you a personality, Psalm 139 says that is fitted to His calling for you. John has the slow deep kind of personality, so guess which Gospel is written by John; the Gospel that gives us the depth of the understanding of Christ. John’s slow, so he’s the last one to write his Gospel. All the other men have dropped dead and gone to be with the Lord by the time John gets around to writing, he just takes a long time to do things. But that’s John’s nature and you can’t fuss, irritate, nag John into doing something. It’s just his pace. But now Peter; Peter is the quick one, got to do it yesterday, and God uses this because it’s Peter that goes into that thing and finally gets more data and God uses Peter and used him in the writing of the Gospel of Mark. So we have both kinds of personality used; don’t try to mimic the personality of the person who led you to the Lord or the person who’s been very beneficial in your life, that isn’t the point. You have your personality and God wants to use it. Don’t mimic others; be yourself!
Now as w watch these two men operate they see certain things. In verse 5 John looks at the linen clothes but immediately focuses attention on something because you see, those linen cloths, big long things that were wrapped around the body, were soaked in myrrh before they were wrapped around the body. Well, myrrh, when it dried it was like glue, so if the body indeed had been stolen the way Mary Magdalene said it was, the grave robbers wouldn’t have sat there and unwound and peeled off this linen; in the first place you couldn’t without tearing it all to pieces; the linen wouldn’t be there if someone stole the body. And this is what arrests John’s attention; interesting he said, Mary said they stole the body, that can’t be. Now Peter goes in and he sees something else. Verse 7, he sees “the napkin, that was about Christ’s head, not lying with the linen clothes, bur wrapped together in a place all by itself.” It’s all folded up neatly. Now what does that imply? A scene of grave robbers that went into the temple in violence and tore everything up? Not at all, the scene is tranquil, orderly, nothing is disturbed. It’s as though somehow Christ’s body came up out of the linen, He wore the napkin on His head, He peeled this off and laid it down, and that’s what John sees.
And when John sees this, verse 8 occurs and
this goes back to what we have said time and time again in this Gospel, please
be careful that you see how the word “believe” is used; it is not used exactly
as you would think it is being used. “Then
went in the other disciple, who came first to the sepulcher, and he saw,” and
the word “see” there is the word to stare, he gazed, and he studied, “and he
believed.” He believed what? That’s the point; the verb to believe in
John’s Gospel doesn’t mean just believe Scripture, oh I believe, say, Hosea 6:1
which is a prophecy of the resurrection, is a god; that’s not what believe
means here. The verb to believe in
John’s Gospel is more powerful; it means that I perceive something and then I
believe it; there’s perception, illumination that is involved in the verb to
believe. First there is illumination,
then there is faith. And that’s why John
concludes chapter 20, “These are written,” people of the 20th
century living in
So John believed, because in verse 9 he hadn’t believed up to that point because “he didn’t know the Scripture, that Christ must rise from the dead.” Christ had taught it, but it hadn’t dawned on John’s mind or the minds of the other disciples, it was an utterly astounding, unexpected event.
But now verse 10, [“Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.”] the men see it’s interesting, and they go home, got to think about that one. But not Mary, not Mary, the persistent woman, she’s going to find out where that body went, she doesn’t care if she has to be out in the garden in the wee hours, risking assault herself. But she has got it in her head that she’s got to find Jesus Christ.
And now in verse 11 on through 17 you have one of the most poignant
moments of history. Here you have an
appearance of Christ on the other side; He’s now in eternity, He’s now in His
glorified state, never again have to face death, never again have to face the
trial of evil, and you have Him talking and meeting with Mary. John
Now there’s a very, very rich point in these verses; this is the real living personal relationship between God and a believer. When we talk here about having a personal relationship with Christ, though now Christ is absent from history and so He doesn’t take quite this form because our relationship is mediated through the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, in eternity it will be of this sort. Now if you can’t see yourself having that kind of a personal relationship with God, question your salvation; make sure that you really are a Christian because that’s the whole point of Christianity, to have that kind of a personal relationship with Christ. Mary knew a lot of the facts but she knew more than the facts; she had this personal relationship with Christ. Now the relationship is portrayed in its correct order, not the inverted order that is often made today. We’ll look at these details as we go through verse by verse and word by word.
John 20:11, Mary stands outside the sepulcher and she is weeping, it’s the lament, and it’s not just a woman crying silently outside, she’s with some other women, and they’re doing what the women in Palestine do to this day at the funeral; they have this weird, creepy cry, it goes on, it is just… I don’t know, it’s a cross between a lullabies and a funeral dirge is the only thing I can think of but that’s the way it sounds. It is not a quiet woman just sitting here crying; there’s quite a noise going on. She, though John only points out Mary is there, the other Gospel writers assure us that other women are with her at this time and they’re going through this hullabaloo that was customary over the grave and at a funeral. But even this has significance.
Turn to John 16:20 Christ predicted that is precisely what they would do. Remember back in the days before He was crucified; He said to them that “You will weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be sorrowful, and your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” Now look at the context in the very next verse, “A woman, when she is in travail, has sorrow, because her hour has come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” And if you remember when we studied that passage I noted that that was one of John’s subtleties; John, in that passage is showing you an outline of history; he is showing you the age which we call the Church Age, the tribulation and the kingdom, and it’s that kingdom, the tribulation prior to the kingdom, prior to the dawning of this great kingdom in history, is known as the time of the woman bringing forth her child, the time of the tribulation of the woman. And so this is a literal historical event but it’s a type of something. When Jesus in verse 20 says, “You will weep and lament … but your sorrow shall eventually be turned to joy,” it’s a prediction of His kingdom coming; it’s a prediction that history will finally conclude and God’s program will reach its climax.
That’s the
background. So here John
John
So John 20:15, Jesus continues the approach, He tries to carry on from the angels; again, they’ve got an emotional woman who is crying and so they’ve got to move her to the position from where she’s crying to where she will relax in the Word of God. And so rather than clobber her and say you stupid woman, why don’t you believe… that wouldn’t do any good. So they have to use a different tactic and Christ picks up where the angels left off; notice He asks the same question the first time, “woman, why are you weeping,” same question, why are you weeping, Mary? You have no basis for weeping. But then, that she might adequately get the point, Jesus asked her a very leading questions, “Whom are you looking for, Mary?” Do you know why Christ asked her that question? He wants her to think, Mary you don’t look for the Lord of life among the dead. The Lord, your Lord, isn’t going to be in a grave some place or His body lying outside in the trees somewhere. Who is it, Mary, that you’re really looking for? Have you ever thought about it? It’s not a dead man you’re looking for; it’s not a dead man that you want for your Lord, is it?
“Who are you looking for?” So now she things He’s the gardener, and notice her determination, this woman who came out in the wee hours of the morning, risked physical assault to get out there, now she does something else which unfortunately she apparently doesn’t realize what she just said, “Sir, if you have borne him hence, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Now Mary might have been a strong woman but she’s not going to lift 180 pound body and drag it out of the garden all by herself. You see, the point is that she’s concerned that she’s going to get that body. For the moment she doesn’t know how, but she is going to get it. Now look at how the Lord rewards this tenacious persistence of this woman. She will not take no for an answer.
John
In the doctrine of the Trinity we have the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who have a personal relationship among each other for eternity. Now if we would look at the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and ask, what is it that characterizes their personal relationship, then we could take that characteristic and say here is the characteristic which is the sine quo non, that without which you cannot have a personal relationship and that which is the most important element in any personal relationship. What is it about the Trinity and its personal relationship. Well, obviously it’s not really a physical relationship, it’s certainly not a sexual relationship, those are things that compete for (quote) the “heart” of a personal relationship in our culture, but if you look back at Scripture it is based on verbal communication. That’s what the Trinity do; it’s not that that’s the only thing they do but there’s verbal communication, there’s discussion from one person to the other, there’s talk that goes from one person’s mind out through to the other person’s mind and locks up there. This is how you share your soul with someone. You share your soul through thoughts that are passed from one soul to the other.
So if we are to come up with a biblical definition of personal relationship, the core of any personal relationship scripturally is the verbal communication that is involved. Now this has some very, very simple and practical results for Christians, and that is I can measure the strength of my personal relationships with anyone else on the basis of examining the communication that I have with those other people. And if the communication is poor I have to confess that as a Christian I have a poor personal relationship with that person. If the relationship is healthy then the axiom will be that we know each other, we can get in each other’s head and understand one another. That’s the essence of a personal relationship.
Now this is what’s happening here; why it is possible for Jesus Christ simply to utter one word and the woman responds, the tears go away and everything stops because at last it links up; Christ and her had a personal relationship grounded on verbal communication. If the modern Orientalists and some of the modern charismatics were to rewrite this passage they would have Mary feeling a twang in her heart and that would be the source of the identification of a personal relationship, it would be her emotional response to Christ, not a verbal response to Christ. Please look at the difference. We are not denying emotions exist in personal relationships. Of course they do but you never in Scripture have emotions take precedence over verbal communication; remember that next time you hear some weirdo say well I don’t believe in Bible doctrine because you can’t have a relationship with Christ through doctrine. Oh yeah, well if you can’t then you suggest to me another way you can have a relationship with Christ. Sure doctrine isn’t all, no one ever said it was. But you’ve got to have God, and this is God speaking, the Scriptures, verbally talking to me before I can reciprocate. I can’t reciprocate to a God that plays emotional charades. I’ve got to reciprocate to a God who speaks to me and lets me on His mind and tells me what’s on His heart; then I have something to respond to. But don’t say it’s a god and he has a spooky feeling and when you get in His presence go like ying ying ying ying ying go like this or something, or I can sit and contemplate my navel and say Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare, Hare, and all the rest of it. Now that’s not having a personal relationship, that’s emotional gobbledygook and its repeated not only in the Oriental circles, in the existential circles, it’s repeated right in our own charismatic circles; it’s the same mistake and it’s worldliness, it’s a worldly conformity to the way the person in the street now thinks of a personal relationship. It’s like so many couples are bent out of shape on the sex issue; sex isn’t the issue, it’s a verbal communication that’s the issue. If that were there the sex would be there; it would be proper, but without the verbal communication that can’t be and trying to patch it up is like a lot of gimmicks and it won’t work.
So we go back in Scripture to verbal communication; there is passion and emotion in the relationship and that’s going to come but I want you to notice the emotions follow her recognition and her recognition was wholly dependent on a verbal exchange. That’s why He says to her one word, “Mariam,” and she says back to Him, “Rabboni,” and that’s the word which means “my teacher.” Now apparently that’s what she used to call Him, “my teacher.” She didn’t call Him Yeshua, she called Him Rabboni. That was her favorite word for Christ, Rabboni. And so in this touching scene when Christ reunites with her she doesn’t think Yeshua Christos, Jesus the Christ, she’s not that formal, she knows Him, she doesn’t have to talk to Him that way, she just says Rabboni, it’s a personal type of relationship.
Now there are several places in Scripture where this comes out and I want to trace this down. John 10:3, in our own generation, thanks to existential psychology and a whole lot of other things that are going on, personal relationships are getting bent out of shape all over the place. Let’s go back to some basics of Scripture. In John 10:3 Jesus Christ portrays Himself as the shepherd; one of the qualities of the shepherd, He says, is that “he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out.” There’s a personal response, individual [can’t understand word]. We don’t have time to turn there but if you want to follow it out in Revelation 2:17 it is stated that you, if you are a believer, will obtain some day in the future, when you are evaluated by Christ, He will give you a name; every individual will receive a name, a name that won’t make sense to anyone outside of you, but you’ll know it and it’ll be your Rabboni. When Christ speaks to you you’ll call Him back and He’ll call you, but it’ll be a name that it’s private to your soul. Husband and wife even may not recognize the name but when the name is given it’ll click with you that that name in some way depicts you and your calling in history. So Christ says that He’ll know us by this name.
Back to John 20, she calls Him Rabboni, her favorite name, by the way if you want to chase this down, further study, there’s a passage in Romans that talks about the Spirit cries Abba, Father; now that word means daddy, when the little Jewish boy was learning he couldn’t say “Ab,” which is the word for dad, he would say Abba, Abba, like we say daddy, daddy. And that baby word, the response of a child to his father, is exactly the believer’s response to God in the passages in the New Testament. You will call Him Daddy; that’s getting pretty intimate with God, to be able to call Him Daddy, but that’s how the ideal relationship is portrayed in Scripture, it’s that close a relationship. So when you see Mary here with Jesus, understand that this is not abnormal; this is a deep personal relationship that typifies the relationship every believer, if not now, will have with Christ.
But now in John 20:17, a very strange verse and one that’s been subject to many, many types of interpretation, “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not;” now that’s why this problem because the first word is mistranslated. In the Greek the word is not “touch” at all, it’s hapto and it means to embrace; Mary was so determined she was going to get Jesus, and when she finally found Him she just wrapped herself around Him, that’s what happened. Here Jesus in His resurrected body like this because she’s squeezing Him so hard. This is a full body embrace and if people would just translate the verb this way, this is why He says what He’s saying. The negative imperative “Touch Me not” means would you stop embracing Me, I haven’t ascended yet, I’m going to be around for a while, just relax. That’s the force of this passage. But some people make a big thing about how Christ didn’t ascend and He couldn’t be touched because He’d get contaminated and all the rest of it; it comes out of a wrong translation of the word “touch.” It’s much more mundane, much more common place than that; it’s just a picture this determined, persistent woman who’s been frustrated at point after point and finally she makes a breakthrough and by golly when she makes it she’s going to use every moment of it. So she recognizes that voice, “Mariam,” and here is your emotion. Now please notice which comes first. First in verse 16 you have the verbal communication, then in verse 17 you have the emotional response to it. No one’s knocking the emotional response. It’s just that that follows, it doesn’t lead. And Jesus had to play with her, so to speak, in this thing until He could get her to recognize Him first, and then she could respond.
But Jesus does more than that; not only does He say, “would you stop embracing Me, I haven’t ascended to My Father,” so He tells her just relax, there’ll be some time that we can talk together, I’m not going to ascend to My Father for 40 days yet, so just calm down, “but go to My brethren, and say unto them,” now there the woman is in her life-giving role, because it’s the woman who will make the grand announcement that she has met Jesus Christ raised from the dead, face to face. And the woman is given the privilege of sharing this with the men; they haven’t seen Him yet, she has. And then He concludes with the message that He wants her to tell them, a message that like any woman she would have known very well, because this is a message phrased in the language of the book of Ruth which was used in wedding services, and what does He say: “I will ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God.” You’ve been in weddings where they’ve said I will follow you, and your God shall be my God and so on; that’s a quotation out of Ruth and the idea is the fact that we’re in the family now, we’re all united on the basis of the Word of God. And so preserved in the statement that He tells her to tell them is the unity that He and believers now have that history is over as far as He’s concerned; “My Father and your Father, two separate relationships, not identical, but nevertheless like in the book of Ruth your God will be my God, meaning that we both worship, we both come under the same authority, the same commander, the same head, and Christ as the subordinate Son is under His Father and we are under the Father.
The closing scene
in John
We’re going to stop here because next week we have to go into a study on the word “faith,” and it’s inappropriate in the time that we’ve got left to go into that so we’ll stop here.