Mark 16¶
Overview:¶
v.2-3¶
Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to to the tomb 3and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"
v.6¶
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
There had to be a word from God to interpret the meaning of the empty tomb, and the angel was God's gracious provision. the explanation is Resurrection! Across the centuries many other explanations have been proposed: the body of Jesus was stolen; the women came to the wrong tomb; Jesus did not actually die on the cross but walked out of the tomb; etc. Some of them have had success with skeptics. But the only adequate explanation is still what the angel said to the women who were at the tomb on the first Easter morning: "He has risen!"
walterwessel¶
v.7¶
But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'"
Sin is mighty, but one thing sin cannot do, and that is to make Christ cease to love us. Sin is mighty, but one other thing sin cannot do, and that is to prevent Christ from manifesting His love to us sinners, that we may learn to love and so may cease to sin. 🔥Christ’s love is not at the beck and call of our fluctuating affections. It has its source deeper than in the springs in our hearts, namely in the depths of His own nature. It is not the echo or the answer to ours, but ours is the echo to His; and that being so, our changes do not reach to it, any more than earth’s seasons affect the sun. For ever and ever He loves. Whilst we forget Him, He remembers us.
If one was to be singled out from the little company to receive by name the summons of the Lord to meet Him in Galilee, we might have expected it to have been that faithful friend who stood beneath the Cross, till his Lord’s command sent him to his own home; or that weeping mother whom he then led away with him; or one of the two who had been turned from secret disciples into confessors by the might of their love, and had laid His body with reverent care in the grave in the garden. Strange reward for true love that they should be merged in the general message, and strange recompense for treason and cowardice that Peter’s name should be thus distinguished! Is sin, then, a passport to His deeper love? Is the murmur true after all, ‘Thou never gavest me a kid, but as soon as this thy son is come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf’? Yes, and no. No, inasmuch as the unbroken fellowship hath in it calm and deep joys which the returning prodigal does not know, and all sin lays waste and impoverishes the soul. Yes, inasmuch as He, who knows all our needs, knows that the denier needs a special treatment to bring him back to peace, and that the further a poor heart has strayed from Him, the mightier must be the forthputting of manifested love, if it is to be strong enough to travel across all the dreary wastes, and draw back again, to its orbit among its sister planets, the wandering star. The depth of our need determines the strength of the restorative power put forth. They who had not gone away would come at the call addressed to them all, but he who had sundered himself from them and from the Lord would remain in his sad isolation, unless some special means were used to bring him back. The more we have sinned, the less can we believe in Christ’s love; and so the more we have sinned, the more marvellous and convincing does He make the testimony and operations of His love to us. It is ever to the poor bewildered sheep, lying panting in the wilderness, that He comes. Among His creatures, the race which has sinned is that which receives the most stupendous proof of the seeking divine love. Among men, the publicans and the harlots, the denying Peters and the persecuting Pauls, are they to whom the most persuasive entreaties of His love are sent, and on whom the strongest powers of His grace are brought to bear. Our sin cannot check the flow of His love. More marvellous still, our sin occasions a mightier burst of the manifestation of His love, for eyes blinded by selfishness and carelessness, or by fear and despair, need to see a brightness beyond the noonday sun, ere they can behold the amazing truth of His love to them; and what they need, they get. ‘Go, tell Peter.’
It is very instructive to observe how deeply the experiences of his fall, and of Christ’s mercy then, had impressed themselves on Peter’s memory, and how constantly they were present with him all through his after-life. His Epistles are full of allusions which show this. For instance, to go a step further back in his life, he remembered that the Lord had said to him, ‘Thou art Peter,’ ‘a stone,’ and that his pride in that name had helped to his rash confidence, and so to his sin. Therefore, when he is cured of these, he takes pleasure in sharing his honour with his brethren, and writes, ‘Ye also, as living stones, are built up.’ He remembered the contempt for others and the trust in himself with which he had said, ‘Though all should forsake Thee, yet will not I’; and, taught what must come of that, he writes, ‘Be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.’ He remembered how hastily he had drawn his sword and struck at Malchus, and he writes, ‘If when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.’ He remembered how he had been surprised into denial by the questions of a sharp-tongued servant-maid, and he writes, ‘Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness.’ He remembered how the pardoning love of his Lord had honoured him unworthy, with the charge, ‘Feed My sheep,’ and he writes, ranking himself as one of the class to whom he speaks-’The elders I exhort, who am also an elder . . . feed the flock of God.’ He remembered that last command, which sounded ever in his spirit, ‘Follow thou Me,’ and discerning now, through all the years that lay between, the presumptuous folly and blind inversion of his own work and his Master’s which had lain in his earlier question, ‘Why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake’-he writes to all, ‘Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps,’
maclaren on Apostle Peter¶
v.8¶
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
Ancient writers often valued irony. Throughout Mark, people spread news that they were supposed to keep quiet; here, when commanded finally to spread the word, people keep quiet. If the original Gospel of Mark ends here, as is likely, it ends as suddenly as it began, and its final note is one of irony. Many other ancient works (including many treatises and dramas) also had sudden endings.
craigkeener¶
v.19¶
After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up to heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.
Both Jewish and Greek readers could relate to the idea of an ascension of a great hero to heaven (like Heracles or, in postbiblical Jewish tradition, Moses); the closest and best-known idea would likely be Elijah. For Jesus to sit at God’s right hand, however, goes beyond this idea—it means that Jesus reigns as God’s agent (Ps 110:1; cf. Mk 12:36).