SECTION IV

the first appearance of Christ in the circle of the apostles on the first Sunday evening

(Mar 16:14. Luk 24:36-44. Joh 20:19-23)

The two disciples who had hastened from Emmaus to tell the assembly of the apostles at Jerusalem that they had seen the risen Saviour, had not finished their account when Jesus suddenly stood in the midst of them, saying, Peace be unto you. This was the salutation which, shortly before His departure, He had promised His disciples on seeing them again. With this evening salutation the full light of the eternal Easter morning first arose upon them. It brought them the real peace of His resurrection. It was He, the Lord; He had kept His promise by coming from the grave and the state of the dead to salute them.

But how had He returned into life? How had He come into their midst? The disciples well knew that He could not have entered by the door, since the doors were securely shut ‘for fear of the Jews.’ Thus they saw that somehow and somewhere He had in a wonderful manner found an entrance into their hall of assembly, notwithstanding the shut doors, if not by passing through them.¹ This circumstance served to increase the fear which His unexpected appearance from the other world caused them. Great terror seized the assembly, notwithstanding that it contained members who had already seen the Lord. Thus in the first instance the predominant feeling was that of those who were not yet able to believe His resurrection. The whole assembly was paralyzed with terror, through that fear of spirits which, as often as the other world presents itself, proclaims its existence as a characteristic feeling of the human mind, which has not yet become thoroughly reconciled with the other world and God’s rule in it. They thought the risen Saviour a spectre. What a moment was that in which the Lord and His disciples stood face to face—He in all the bliss of victory, they in all the unhappiness of dejection! His whole being was elevated with consciousness of life, with the joyful fruition of new and eternal life. He came to His disciples with cordial love and joy, with the full and happy consciousness of Comforter and Redeemer. They, on the contrary, felt dejection and doubt, fear of spirit and terror for spectres, in the presence of their Lord—the entire revulsion of their painful old-world feelings from the opening glory of the kingdom of heaven which now stood impersonated before them. It was that moment of awe and pleasure in which the elect children of the Old Covenant saw the new world entering into this world, and became children of the New Covenant by becoming reconciled to the new world. We might almost think that the sufferings of Christ began again immediately after His resurrection; and so they did in a certain sense: not in Himself, for in Him distress was swallowed up in solemn joy, but in the hearts of His assembled disciples, in so far as these were already believing hearts.

Christ could see, in the dread of spectres which they exhibited on His appearance, the measure of the bliss to which they were now to be at once raised. But it was He Himself who had to effect their recovery from terror, and convince them of the reality of His resurrection. This He did by first of all upbraiding them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them who had first seen Him after He was risen. Even the blessed can upbraid, but their upbraiding comes with the tones of heavenly gentleness and peace, showing its heavenly nature in its working by love, in its power to break not the courage but the discouragement of the men of little faith. Christ’s upbraiding was the reproving gleam of light which His very salutation of peace cast upon their hitherto dark state of mind and feeling. He then began to calm their fear of spirit, saying, ‘Why are ye troubled?’ It seemed strange and inappropriate to the Prince of blessed peace that His appearance should, instead of comforting them, spread terror in their midst. ‘And wherefore,’ continued He, ‘do thoughts arise in your mind?’

He sees springing up in their hearts the mean and base thoughts of the melancholy despondency which cannot think it possible that He can have really returned from death to life. And now He directly meets their doubts, and condescends to prove to them the reality of His resurrection and new life. He shows them the element from this world in it; He shows them that He has a true body, perceptible to the touch and vision of this world. They knew quite well from the beginning that He would continue to live and would rise again beyond the grave; they also believed that He now stood before them as a spirit. But it was just this belief which caused their alarm, because they thought He stood there as a mere spirit, surrounded by all the terrors of a supposed abstract existence as a spirit. But they could not comprehend and would not believe that He stood before them with a true body, and yet free as a spirit in His bodily movements; belonging to the other world, and yet endued with the powers and qualities of this world; belonging to this world, and yet possessing the attributes of the other, or rather as the perfected King of the great kingdom of God which exists in both. And so the risen Saviour condescended with the utmost lowliness to their faint-hearted condition. He asked them to behold His hands and feet, showing them that He was the very person who had been separated from them by the death of the cross. They ought to know Him by the prints of the nails on His hands and feet. He asked them even to handle Him, to examine closely, adding, ‘A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have.’ He could not express Himself more strongly as to the full reality of His corporeity. It appears that they now listened to His invitations, and He showed them His hands and His feet. According to John, He showed them at the same time the wound in His side.

He thus showed them the print or marks of the old wounds of the old life in the light and brilliancy of the new. They could not now fail to believe that He was the same whom they had seen as their Lord hanging on the cross, the man whose hands and feet were pierced. ‘And yet,’ says Luke, ‘they believed not for joy,’—a remarkable expression of the deeper psychology, which, with many similar expressions, we owe to the most profound psychologist among the Evangelists. As their belief in the resurrection of Jesus tended to develop itself, their joy at this revelation of the new life was also evolved with such over-quickness and strength, that it hindered the calm unfolding and completion of their belief itself. The glory of this new life seemed to them so superlative, that it always recurred to them as something beyond belief. The infinite greatness and heavenly glory of the Christian salvation always seem incredible to the poor, sinful, depressed child of man, whose Christian courage is hampered in a thousand ways. The best thing he can receive, he calls incredible; and the more unexpectedly God bestows His gifts upon him, the more they seem to him surpassing belief. In the midst of the reality of heaven, he could not at once recognize the truth of heaven; nay, the overpowering effect of this reality makes this blissful state seem a dream to him. In the very presence of the light of his salvation he still needs time to collect himself, in order to enter with assurance into the fulness of joy which it brings; the very sight of its magnitude may for a time increase this difficulty, as his eye is unable at once to sustain its brightness. In this respect the early Church has become a type of Christendom. It can still, in a certain sense, be said of Christ’s disciples, ‘They believe not for joy.’ The very pleasure which they feel in the heavenly blessings conferred by Christ often forms a hindrance to their appropriating the faith of the resurrection with deeper knowledge, firmer confidence, and purer devotedness. Thus the feelings of the disciples for a time rapidly alternated between the heavenly rapture at the resurrection, and the fear caused by deeming it incredible. Their feelings kept them, so to speak, suspended between heaven and hell. Above all things, they first need to have their feelings calmed; they must recover from their amazement; they must come to themselves. Jesus therefore gave them a second token of His appearance in the body which had no tendency to excite their feelings like the marks of the wounds on His hands and feet, but rather to calm them. He asked, saying, ‘Have ye any meat? And they gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And He took it, and did eat before them.’ This was a fresh proof that the new life of Christ was capable of performing the functions of life in this world.² And now He showed them how they might have been in two ways prepared for what they saw; namely, by what He had foretold them, and by the prophecies of the Scripture. ‘These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning Me.’ Here it is asserted in the most distinct manner possible, that the promises and types of Christ’s resurrection equally pervade every part of Scripture.

And now at last the Lord had filled His disciples with confidence in His new life. They were glad when they saw the Lord, says John. Their grief for His death, as well as their doubt of His resurrection, was overcome and removed. Christ’s first salutation of peace had become a reality. And because they had not until now known, seen, and heard Him with settled minds, He repeated to them the salutation: Peace be unto you. So friends who meet after separation often salute one another a second time, when the first excitement is over, and when they can with calm and collected minds rejoice in mutual recognition. But this second ‘Peace be unto you’ was accompanied with a rich and glorious gift. The first had elevated them above the world, sin, distress, and death; the second opened to them the whole inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. After the salutation, He continues: ‘As my Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.’ This saying strongly expresses their redemption and preservation, and also their calling; it shows the certainty of their salvation, the greatness of their vocation and dignity, the sublimity of their life, the blessedness of their earthly career, and the glorious goal set before them. He then breathed on them, saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

This breathing upon them was certainly, in the first instance, a symbol of the Holy Ghost which He intended to bestow upon them. Wind is a general type of spirit; the breath of life in man is the manifestation of spirit in him, and therefore the symbol of his life. But the breath of Christ is the symbol of the Holy Spirit which animates Him. When He as the Risen One, now breathes upon His disciples, this is not a mere emblem of His bestowing the Holy Ghost upon them. He lets them feel the warm breath of His new life, and thus gives them the last and liveliest proof of the corporeity of His new life. By breathing upon them, He completes in their hearts the certainty of His resurrection. But this is the completion of the preparation of their inner life for the reception of His Spirit, and consequently it is the beginning of the bestowal of the Spirit itself. As soon as the perfection of Christ’s life was present to their souls, it began to pass into them as spirit. We cannot doubt that the Lord here made a first gift of the Spirit to His disciples. It was not indeed the outpouring of His Spirit, not yet the endowment of the whole Church with all the fulness of the Spirit, but it was the real beginning of the promised sending of the Comforter-the pledge, precondition, and point of contact for the coming miracle of Pentecost. And this so much the more, as Christ’s breath of life from the very beginning bore the Spirit from whose working His incarnation proceeded, and as after His resurrection it had become the breath of His eternal life.³

With the glorious gift which He bestowed upon them, He announced again the glory of their calling. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. This saying, it is clear, is closely related to that with which Christ had formerly bestowed on Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Mat 16:19). There is possibly a reference to Peter’s fall in the fact, that Jesus now so expressly gave to all the disciples an authority which He had formerly committed to him in the first place. For although He had taken Peter into favour again, Peter was not yet restored to the apostleship. But in making this reference, we must not forget that even before His death Christ had given this jurisdiction to all the apostles together (Mat 18:18); nay, that even from the very first it was not given to Peter in an exclusive sense, but as representative of the circle of the apostles. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Peter here received in the general the hope of reinstatement, since Jesus conferred the great gift on the whole circle of the assembled disciples, which included more than the apostles.⁴

But there is still another distinction between the first bestowal of the power of the keys on the disciples and the present bestowal. Then it was chiefly promise, or the bestowal of a right which was only in future to be exercised; but now it is reality, spiritual ability, and heavenly power, in gradual development, which was completed at Pentecost. The apostles began to be a savour of life unto life for the receptive, and a savour of death unto death to the perverse and obdurate; for they began to live in Christ as children of His Spirit. His resurrection begins to be realized in their inward resurrection. How could He have announced that to them more strongly, and in a more comforting manner, than by the assurance that they would be manifest in all the world as the power of His resurrection?

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Notes

1. ‘Paul too speaks of this appearance. It is, according to him, the first which was vouchsafed to the Twelve. He calls them the Twelve, τοὺς δώδεκα, 1Co 15:5; as at Rome the college septem virorum, decem virorum, centum virorum was commonly called septem viros, decemviros, centumviros, although, through death or other cause, the number was not complete.’-Hug, 220. ‘Hence, as according to John only ten apostles were present, the ἕνδεκα of Luke must as little be pressed as the δώδεκα of Paul, as in either case Judas must be left out of the reckoning.’—Strauss, ii. 601.

2. Tholuck (415) brings yet another objection against the supposition, that in the transaction between Christ and the apostles, Joh 20:22, a real impartation of the Spirit took place, or that there was anything in it of essential importance for the apostles. He asks, Could Thomas, who was then absent, dispense with it without detriment? We may observe, in reply, that Thomas’ absence matters least when a work of Christ’s essential power, and not a symbolic act founding an outward legality, is in question. Thomas could by no means have been absent from an act of the latter kind. But if the Lord here performed a symbolic action, which was at the same time altogether a working of His power, an essential impartation of His Spirit, this impartation would redound to the benefit of the absent Thomas through the college of his companions; besides, he himself experienced the working of the same power, if not in precisely the same form, the first time that Jesus showed Himself to Him.

1) As many in ancient and in modern times have supposed. See Tholuck on John, 413. This author denies that a miraculous entrance of Jesus is here referred to ; and adds, but even if this were the case, we may still conceive of a miraculous opening of the door, &c. This hypothesis is a fresh proof of the powerful influence imperceptibly exercised on the exposition of this passage by the common notion that the entrance to the house is by the door. The Lord must enter the house by the door either by miraculously passing through it when shut, or by miraculously opening it. And yet Gospel history tells of a paralytic who came in by the roof ; and how much more must this and similar ways be free to Christ after His resurrection! See my treatise, Worte der Abwehr, 109. [Calvin says here, 'Sic igitur habendum est, Chris tum non sine miraculo ingressum esse, . . . interea tamen veruru esse rninirae coii- cedo . . . Christ! corpus peuetrasse per januas clausas.'—ED.]

2) Hase maintains, 271, But if Jesus took food in order to convince His disciples that He was no mere spirit, yet if this did not belong to the usual function of the state He was then in, it was a deception. This can be maintained only by putting the alternative : Either a spectre, or a usual human life needing daily bread. But this alternative is false. If Christ in His new corporeity had the power of eating, He might exercise it to establish familiarity with His disciples, who needed food, with out pledging Himself to the daily use of earthly food.

3) On the question, whether this breathing upon them is to be looked upon as a symbol of a future gift or one then imparted, see Tholuck, 415. Tholuck makes an unfounded objection against the supposition that the real imparting of the Spirit began here. He says the specific imparting of the Spirit is a consequence of His δοξασμός, and this begins with His sitting at the Father s right hand. Why should it not begin with His resurrection?

4) Tholuck says, 415: This spiritual judgment is not an indefinite feeling, but attached to the rule of Christian faith and life; so far the jus clavium in the Church is a right of the clergy. Should then the clergy alone have to decide upon the rule of Christian faith and life?