Luke 24.36-49

The Cycle of the Christian Life

(Luke 24.36-49)

Jason Procopio

Today’s passage could arguably be called the climax of the gospel of Luke.

After everything Jesus’s disciples have experienced with him—after the wonder of being called, leaving everything behind to follow him for three years, being taught by him, seeing extraordinary miracle after miracle, seeing him transfigured on the mountain… After the intense fear of seeing Jesus betrayed by one of their number, seeing him arrested, and from a distance, seeing him crucified… And then, after the shock of hearing that the tomb is empty, and that he is alive after all… Today, the disciples finally see Jesus again as a group.

If you remember, last week we left the disciples in a frenzy. Apparently Peter has come back with a report saying Jesus has appeared to him, and then two other disciples (not two of the eleven) show up saying Jesus spent a long time with them on the road (though they didn’t know it was him), and Jesus explained to them how the Bible actually predicted everything that would happen to him. And then they ate together, and then he broke the bread and prayed, and they recognized him for the first time…and then he just disappeared.

V. 36 begins, As they were talking about these things, so there is literally no pause between that situation and the situation we find in our passage; they’re in the same place at the same time. And we’ll see, once again, what we’ve seen the last two weeks—we’ll see bewilderment, and rebuke, and teaching, and witness.

Bewilderment (v. 36-37)

36 As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!”

So pay close attention to what Luke says. He says, As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself STOOD AMONG THEM. The door was closed and locked (as we see in John’s gospel, John 20.19); the disciples are standing there talking, and as they’re talking, then look up, and there Jesus is, and he says, “Peace to you!” (SURPRISE!)

Now when I was a new Christian I didn’t really understand why Jesus said this, here and in the gospel of John. I’d have expected Jesus to give everyone a hug, a fist-bump: Yep, I know—I came back from the dead. Right? It IS impressive. I’m God, after all.

But that’s not where he goes.

He says, “Peace to you.”

The reason this seems strange to us is because the notion of “peace” in English (or in French) has a much lighter connotation than it would for Jews. The Hebrew word shalom is full of meaning—it conveys not only the absence of violence and conflict, but the positive presence of blessing. It communicates the idea that all is right between you and God, all is right between you and other people, all is right in your life.

So this is the perfect thing for Jesus to say. This fullness of peace and blessing is exactly what he has just won for these men (though they don’t know it yet). He has just secured for them eternal peace, eternal blessing with the Father, eternal life in him. 

But of course, for the moment, they can’t think about any of that, because they’re freaking out.

V. 37:  

37 But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.

These guys are so relatable. They’re celebrating and ecstatic over the best news of their lives—that their Messiah isn’t dead, but he’s risen—but when they finally see him face to face, they can’t take it. “No no no, this isn’t right, he can’t be here, he’s dead.” Believing something incredible in theory is one thing; seeing it with your own eyes is quite another.

Now of course we are quick to criticize; we read v. 37 and say, Come on, guys! When are you going to have enough proof to actually be HAPPY about these incredible things? 

But that’s not how Jesus reacts. He rebukes them, but he rebukes them kindly, because he knows they’re only men, and he knows how incredible this is.

Rebuke (v. 38-43)

38 And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 

So his rebuke isn’t meant to shame them, but to reassure them. 

Parents of small children will understand this. The kids discover a small creature in the yard—a frog or a harmless bug—and they’re terrified of it. So what do you do? You say, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to be afraid of—look,” and you pick it up, and let it walk on your hand, so the kids can see how harmless it really is.

That’s what he does. He tells them they’re wrong to be troubled, and they’re wrong to doubt; and then he proves it to them. He lets them touch him. He lets them see his hands and feet, still marked by the nails which had pierced them.

And he does it to reassure them that this thing which they had believed (but hadn’t yet BELIEVED) had indeed happened: he was dead, and now he was alive.

I think this is probably when the hugs came. This is when the tears came. This is when the wonder of what had happened finally sunk it.

And then Luke gives us another detail—a small one, but significant. V. 41-43:  

41 And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate before them. 

It was probably the final thing they needed to be fully reassured. 

This wasn’t a ghost, and it wasn’t a spirit. Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones. Ghosts can’t be touched. Ghosts don’t eat fish.

This was a real, physical, touchable human being—the same human being they had followed around for three years, the same human being they had laughed with and eaten with hundreds of times before, with one HUGE difference. This human being, they’d seen hanging on a cross just a few days ago. This human being had died, and now he was free from death, never to die again. 

Now I’d imagine that at this point, he would have sat down with them, like he had hundreds of times before, because he was going to teach them once again.

Teaching (v. 44-47)

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

This is a restatement of what we saw last week. This is what he explained to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The whole of the Old Testament (summarized here in “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms”) looks forward to and anticipates and builds toward the person and work of Christ.

But if you’ve read the Old Testament before, you’ll know—it’s not always easy to see how it all fits together. 

In my reading plan, last week we finished the book of Deuteronomy—the last book of the Law. I’ll be honest and say that every time I finish Deuteronomy in my reading plan, I breathe a tiny sigh of relief. All of the rules and rituals they had to perform; the sacrifices they had to offer (and remember to offer)… It’s hard, at first glance, to see what any of those things had to do with Jesus.

Same thing with the psalms—songs of worship to God which never say the name of Jesus, or explicitly mention the Messiah.

Same thing with the prophets—promises of judgment against corrupt kings and priests, promises of blessing for those who keep God’s commands… 

It’s not an easy thing to see Jesus in the Old Testament. Once you see him there, you can’t not see him there; but seeing him there is something which requires help.

And God knows that. He knows we can’t do the right kind of interpretive work, because connecting the dots between the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms requires eyes to see—eyes of faith, which allow you to understand things you’d skipped over the first time.

So that’s what Jesus does: he gives them eyes to see. V. 45:  

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures… 

It is fundamental that we see this. We often speak about God’s sovereignty over salvation, about how no one can come to Christ unless God does a work in us to wake us up from our spiritual stupor, to give us new hearts and new minds with which to see. 

Jesus criticized the religious leaders for not correctly interpreting the Scriptures (Luke 20.41-47), but what he was really criticizing was that they didn’t read the Scriptures with faith, but with pride. They read the Scriptures to know how better to control the people, how to use the Law to their advantage. Their hearts were hardened to the Word they knew. They needed help from God to understand the Scriptures rightly, but they weren’t interested in getting help from God. 

The disciples, on the other hand, wanted to know. They were convinced Jesus was the Messiah, and they wanted to understand what he was trying to tell them. They were humble, and sincere in their desire to serve him.

So he helped.

He performed the sovereign work in their hearts that we all need to rightly understand the Word of God. We saw this last week too, when we saw Jesus explaining the Scriptures to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. It wasn’t a visible, exterior miracle that convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah, but rather what happened in them when he explained the Scriptures.

This is the beginning of something Luke will bring back over, and over, and over again in the book of Acts. We see on multiple occasions, usually at the end of a section of the narrative, “And the Word of the Lord increased,” or “the Word of the Lord continued to go forward,” or “the Word of the Lord continued to multiply.” This kind of phrase only occurs a couple of times in the letters of the New Testament, but in the book of Acts, it shows up twenty-three times. 

In the hands of the Holy Spirit of Christ, the Word of God becomes a living and active agent in the story, capable of increasing and multiplying and going forward in our own hearts, and in others’.

He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…and then he explained it to them. And it is through the Scriptures, sovereignly illuminated by the Holy Spirit of Christ, that they understand.

V. 45 again:  

45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

So there are two parts to what Luke records of Jesus’s teaching—one is past and one is present. 

The past part is what we’ve been seeing for several weeks now: v. 46: Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead… He brought them back to the Old Testament, just like he did for the two disciples in last week’s passage, and he showed them how the Scriptures they knew spoke of him. He put the pieces in front of them, and showed them how the pieces fit together.

This is what was supposed to happen. But why? They could see now that this was the plan, but why was this the plan? 

This was the plan because in sending his Son to live our life and to die our death and to defeat death in his resurrection, God removed cleared the path for us to no longer be separated from him. He put our sin to death, once and for all. He made it possible to exercise his justice and to declare us righteous. Christ took our sin, and suffered our death; Christ gave us his perfect life, so we could live in a borrowed righteousness, and be declared perfect by a holy God.

God did this because he wanted to show the nature of his grace to his people in the deepest possible way, in order to receive the greatest possible glory.

In Ephesians 1.6 Paul tells us that in Christ, God predestined us and redeemed us and saved us and adopted us, all to the praise of his glorious grace. 

In the life, death and resurrection, we see God’s power; God’s goodness; God’s justice; God’s mercy; God’s wrath; God’s compassion; God’s righteousness, all wrapped up into one. Everything that makes him a God worth worshiping is on display in the person and work of Christ.

This is so mind-blowing that the theology of the first 4 centuries of the church was dedicated to figuring out how a just God could save sinners.

And now, the disciples were beginning to understand. Jesus’s death wasn’t political. He wasn’t trying to change society; he was changing the cosmos. His death wasn’t a problem to be fixed, but a victory to be proclaimed.

The question is, what does that proclamation look like?

That’s the present part of Jesus’s teaching. V. 46-47 again: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,  47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

In other words, now that all of this has happened, people need to know. They need to know what Christ has done for them. And they need to know how to respond to what he has done—they need to repent, for the forgiveness of their sins. Repenting means simply that if God has provided the means to take our sin away, we don’t want to stay in it any longer. We want to turn away from it. We want to live without it.

So we confess our sin (which God knows); we repent of that sin (we turn away from it); and when we do, we can have the iron-clad assurance that God has forgiven our sins. Not that it’s not a big deal, but that the big deal of sin has been taken away from us, placed on Christ, and put to death with him.

People need to know.

But which people? Jesus says repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations. 

The work of Christ—the work of the Jewish Messiah—wasn’t just for the Jews, but for everyone.

The apostles would take a little longer to understand and accept this (the Law of Moses was very strict about whom Jews could hang out with), and Jesus knows it’ll be a gradual progression. He knows they’ll get there eventually. So he tells them how it will happen: this message will be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem—spreading out from Jerusalem like the spokes on a wheel, like yeast in a lump of dough.

But then he tells them the really big news.

Witness (v. 48-49)

V. 48:  

48 YOU are witnesses of these things.

Things just got real. Before, Jesus was speaking in the abstract—this is written, and this should be proclaimed. So up to this point, they could get on board.

But now he turns and tells them that the people who are going to proclaim this… Yeah, it’s you guys. You’re the ones I’m sending out. You know me; you’ve seen me, living, dead, and alive again. You’ve heard me teach. You understand my message. This is your job now.

But you can’t do it yet, because you can’t do it alone.  V. 49: 

49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” 

Stay here and wait, he tells them—something is coming… (We’ll see that something next week.)

The Cycle of the Christian Life

Now obviously this is a major turning point in the history of salvation (which we’ll see in more detail next week). And we are not living in that turning point, but two thousand years after. So what are we to take from this text today?

Well, even if some things have changed between now and then (like, we no longer see Jesus suddenly appearing in bodily form in our community group meetings), God is still the same, and things still follow the same basic pattern, even if the details may vary.

What is the pattern—the cycle of the Christian life—which we’ve seen for three weeks now? Bewilderment, rebuke, teaching, witness. That’s still how it works today.

So let’s take it step by step: what do you do if you’re bewildered by all of this? Maybe you read something in the Bible that you don’t know what to do with, or you’re having a hard time reconciling the things you see here with your own intellect. Or maybe you’re an unbeliever, and you’re just having a hard time accepting any of this could be true.

Well, if you’re bewildered, let Christ rebuke you. 

Remember Jesus’s words to his disciples in v. 38-39:  

“Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

He calls us out on our doubts, which often persist even when we have the truth staring us right in the fact. He doesn’t rebuke us in anger, but in kindness, saying, I died for you—what more do you need? Let him rebuke you; let him make you humble; let him tell you that even if your doubts are understandable, they’re ultimately foolish. This is faith in God we’re talking about, not the scientific method—we can’t expect it to work the same way. 

He rebukes us to make us humble. To call us out of our lethargy, to call us out of our doubt.

So let him rebuke you.

And if you are rebuked, let him teach you.

Don’t pout over his rebuke; don’t stay at an arm’s length. Come close. Open the Bible, and read the Scriptures with the new eyes he gives you. Let him show you everything written about him in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, which were fulfilled in him. Let him convince you through his Word.

It may time—it’s a big book, and there’s a lot of material to cover, and sometimes seeing Christ in the Old Testament isn’t as easy as we’d like. (Like those dummies who see Rahab hanging the red thread out of her window before Jericho falls and say, “It’s the blood of Christ, who saves us from destruction!” No, that’s actually not what was happening there; red’s just an easy color to point out from far away against a rock wall.)

It’s going take work, and time, and lots of patience. 

But he will teach you. He will use his Word, and your brothers and sisters in Christ helping you walk through his Word, to teach you who he is.

If you are bewildered, let him rebuke you.

If you are rebuked, let him teach you.

And if he teaches you, let him send you.

The brazen intellectualism which has pervaded many Christian circles today—including our own—isn’t all bad, but one nasty side effect is that Christians spend all their time sitting in a room alone and pondering the mysteries of Scripture…and never feel the need to walk outside in the fresh air and share these mysteries with others.

But if we have been saved, and taught by Christ in his Word, that Word must go out. The apostles were witnesses of these things, and they have given us their testimonies, that we might share them in turn. We have received the same power, from the same Holy Spirit, which they had to share the gospel; and the gospel has the same power, through the same Spirit, to save.

So if you have been taught by Christ, don’t keep what you’ve learned to yourself.

I know this is going to feel particularly difficult at this particular point in time, when we’re all stuck at home. But we won’t be here forever. And even if we’re confined to our homes, we’re not cut off from everyone. Keep in contact with your unbelieving friends and neighbors, and let them see that the way we react to this situation is different than the way the world does…and then tell them why that is.

He rebukes us to humble us.

He humbles us to teach us.

He teaches us to send us.

And he sends us to be glorified as the One who came to save his people from their sins.

This is the glorious truth in which we live today, and in which we fulfill the mission he’s given us as his ambassadors on this earth.

We’ll look at this mission more closely next week, but for now, let’s pray.