By Hanxiao
It’s recorded in the Bible, “And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said to them, Have you here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them” (Luke 24:41-43). Besides, John 20:19-20 say, “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the middle, and said to them, Peace be to you. And when he had so said, he showed to them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.” Whenever I read these verses, I thought, “After the Lord Jesus was crucified, His work had been completed, but why did He appear to those people? And why did He even appear to the disciples again and again in various ways over a period of forty days? What was God’s intention in appearing to them?”
It was not until later, when I read two passages of God’s words, that I came to understand the Lord Jesus’ kind and thoughtful intention in appearing to those people after His resurrection. God says: “The resurrected Lord Jesus is the Lord Jesus, who spent thirty-three and a half years working among mankind. Although He had been nailed to the cross and experienced the valley of the shadow of death, and though He had experienced resurrection, He had undergone no change in any aspect. Although He now had nail marks on His body, and although He had been resurrected and walked out from the grave, His disposition, His understanding of mankind, and His intentions toward mankind had not changed in the slightest. Also, He was telling people that He had come down from the cross, triumphed over sin, overcome hardships, and triumphed over death. The nail marks were just the evidence of His victory over Satan, evidence of being a sin offering to successfully redeem all of mankind. He was telling people that He had already taken on mankind’s sins and that He had completed His work of redemption. When He returned to see His disciples, He told them this message by means of His appearance: ‘I am still alive, I still exist; today I am truly standing in front of you so that you can see and touch Me. I will always be with you.’ ”
“After the Lord Jesus was resurrected, He appeared to the people He thought necessary, spoke with them, and made requirements of them, leaving behind His intentions for and expectations of people. That is to say, as God incarnate, His concern for mankind and requirements of people never changed; these remained the same when He was in the flesh and when He was in His spiritual body after being nailed to the cross and being resurrected. He was concerned about these disciples before He was up on the cross, and in His heart He was clear about the state of every single person and He understood every person’s deficiencies and, of course, His understanding of every person after He had died, been resurrected, and become a spiritual body was the same as it had been when He was in the flesh. He knew that people were not entirely certain of His identity as Christ, but during His time in the flesh He did not make strict demands of people. However, after He had been resurrected, He appeared to them, and He made them absolutely certain that the Lord Jesus had come from God and that He was God incarnate, and He used the fact of His appearance and His resurrection as the greatest vision and motivation for mankind’s lifelong pursuit. His resurrection from death not only strengthened all those who followed Him, but it also thoroughly implemented His work of the Age of Grace among mankind, and thus the gospel of the Lord Jesus’ salvation in the Age of Grace gradually spread to every corner of humanity. Would you say that the Lord Jesus’ appearance after His resurrection had any significance? If you were Thomas or Peter at that time, and you encountered this one thing in your life that was so meaningful, what kind of impact would it have had on you? Would you have seen this as the best and the greatest vision of your life of believing in God? Would you have seen this as a force driving you as you followed God, strived to satisfy Him, and sought to love God in your whole life? Would you have expended a lifetime of effort to spread this greatest of visions? Would you have accepted spreading the Lord Jesus’ salvation as a commission from God? … His appearance allowed people to once more experience and feel God’s concern and care while also powerfully proving that God is the One who launches an age, who unfurls an age, and who also ends an age. Through His appearance, He strengthened the faith of all people and proved to the world the fact that He is God Himself. This gave His followers eternal confirmation, and through His appearance He also launched a phase of His work in the new age.”
Through reading these words of God, I came to understand the Lord Jesus’ kind and thoughtful intention in His resurrection. The Lord Jesus prophesied His resurrection when He did His work, but the people in those days never believed that He could resurrect Himself. So, when He was arrested, even His disciples ran away in all directions in fear, and Peter even denied Him three times. Therefore, if the Lord Jesus had not been resurrected, His disciples and the Jewish people would never have acknowledged that He was God. Only if the Lord Jesus, after His resurrection, was manifested to people again and again, spoke with them, appeared among them at any time, and even ate food before them could they firmly believe that He was God Himself, was Messiah, the Redeemer of mankind prophesied in the Scriptures, and was the Son of the living God. From then on, the faith of the believers in Him was much strengthened. The disciples were weak in faith when the Lord Jesus was arrested, but after He appeared to them, they could have martyred themselves for the sake of preaching His gospel. From this we can see that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus not only allowed people to know that He had triumphed over death and Hades, but also brought hope to all His followers, strengthened their faith, and allowed them to know that He was God Himself and was the One who had come to save mankind and that God had completed the work of redemption and gained the glory. Moreover, it proved to all mankind that only God is capable of doing the work of opening up a new age and ending the old age and that only God can show man the hope of survival and raise man from the dead. Thanks to the Lord Jesus’ resurrection, God’s work in the Age of Grace began to expand spectacularly, and the disciples of the Lord Jesus and the other people who had once followed Him began to testify to His redemptive work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This shows that the Lord Jesus’ appearance to mankind after His resurrection is of profound significance.
