Now on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing, and when the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” And they remembered His words, and when they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the rest of the women with them were there; they were telling these things to the apostles. But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they were not believing them. But Peter stood up and ran to the tomb; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen wrappings only. And he went away by himself, marveling at what had happened.
Luke 24:1-12
Introduction
He is risen!
This is the testimony wrought from Luke 24. The Lord Jesus Christ, on the third day, rose from the dead and vacated His tomb. The women who went to visit His body with burial spices were shocked and surprised to find this empty tomb, being told by angels not only that He has risen, but that they should have known this from the start, given Jesus’ teaching on the subject time and time again.
The women observed the truth and ran to tell it to the apostles. But the apostles did not believe them. It is certainly an unbelievable thing! Yes, they all witnessed Lazarus being raised from the dead, but that was the power of the living Christ at work. Here there was no other Christ to raise Him, and hope seemed lost.
The testimony of women
Why were the apostles, “not believing them”? Did they not travel with these women and witness their faithfulness? Were they not well acquainted with their reliable nature and trustworthiness?
Sure, perhaps, but it is important to remember that in those days and in that place, the witness of a woman was considered suspect at best. The Jewish/Roman historian Flavius Josephus wrote in his antiquities, “from women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex.” What a deeply sexist comment! But this attitude was not uncommon in the majority of human history. In fact, in Roman law women were excluded entirely from legal proceedings and their testimonies were entirely inadmissible in a court of law.
This along with the misguided expectations of what the Christ would do drove the apostles (apart from Peter) to distrust the claims brought by these women, making it an interesting inclusion to the words of scripture.
Confidence in the scriptures
Many will claim that scripture is unreliable as history because it is religious text. In fact, many of those would even say that because it is religious text, it is all made up. But if you were concocting a story of fantastical religious wonder, would you rather claim the first witness of said event was someone generally considered reliable or unreliable? To make it even more tangible, it would be absurd to invent a story and claim a homeless drug addict was the one who first relayed it to you. That is because the witness of a homeless drug addict holds very little to no credibility in our culture.
If the testimony of a woman was so suspect in that day that Josephus says it should never be accepted, and Roman law prohibited it from ever entering into evidence, why would theirs be the first recorded to claim the risen Lord? If this was all made up, certainly the gospel writers would say something like, “a Roman centurion came to inspect the tomb and…” Or maybe they would claim, “the scribes and chief priests went to the tomb to defile it when…”
Highly reliable and respected men who had previously opposed Jesus would be ideal candidates for testimony if they wished to deceive people into believing an invented story. But the fact that the gospel writers stayed true to the historic facts establishes something very important that every professing Christian ought to take comfort in: the account written in the gospels is the unadulterated and even uncomfortable truth. Nothing is embellished, invented, or deceitful. The Lord is risen, and He reigns on high.
May the Lord bless you and conform you into the image of His Son.
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