The God Who Dies and Lives Again (Matt. 27:27–51; John 20:24–28)

Listen or read the following transcript from The Gospel Coalition as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology from Matthew 27:27-51.

We have now reached the tenth session in a 14-part series called The God Who is There. My name is Don Carson. Somewhat hesitantly for reasons that will become clear in the address itself, I’ve called this session The God Who Dies and Lives Again. The stunning reality is the Bible ultimately brings to a focus everything else it says and refracts all its light down into Jesus’ death and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

If you rummage through the Bible to uncover whatever you can about economics and social justice or about bioethics and the nature of human beings or about personal and corporate ethics but fail to integrate whatever you find with the ways in which the Bible makes Jesus’ death and resurrection absolutely central to all faithful Christian understanding and teaching and life, you end up distorting the Bible.

If you want to understand what the Bible means by the words gospel or good news, you must grasp why Jesus’ death and resurrection constitute such spectacularly good news. These events are at the heart of the whole Bible. This one talk rightly absorbed into your life with repentance and faith will change you forever.

When you think of the biographies of important people, whether artists or football hunks or an Einstein or a political figure (it doesn’t matter), never is there any suggestion they were born in order to die. If the party is no longer living, then there is some mention of the person’s death, no doubt, which may be heroic or ordinary, prolonged or quick, accidental (it may be all kinds of things), but never do we speak of someone being born in order to die.

That’s true for Muhammad. It’s true for Gautama Buddha. There may be stories of their deaths, but no one suggests the purpose of their coming was to die, which is why the four Gospels, that is the four first books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), are so hard to classify. People have written learned tomes on what genre of literature it is.

Is it a tragedy? Well, Jesus rises from the dead. Is it, literarily speaking, a comedy? But it’s of a different species. It’s too serious for that, and the centrality of the cross and what’s achieved and the barbaric awfulness of it all amidst its splendor.… It can’t be reduced to one-word terms. Is it a biography? That’s as close as you can get. It’s somewhat akin to first-century Hellenistic biographies, I suppose, but there aren’t any other first-century Hellenistic biographies where the plotline says the reason the bloke came was to die. It feels different.

Have you been exposed to some of this literature that gets promoted roughly every Easter season? Around Easter the press loves to drag out the latest scholar who has written something on the gospel of Judas or the gospel of Thomas or any of these other Gospels, and various people are trying to say, “These are as authoritative as the Gospels in the New Testament, and we should incorporate them again, too. Originally, Christianity was much broader and then it got narrow and orthodox and mean. Originally, it was much, much broader. There were a lot of gospels.”

Well, let’s get one or two things straight even there. The earliest of these other so-called “gospels” is about mid second century, and they drag on for another century and a half or two centuries. None of them are connected with the first generation of eyewitnesses the way the Canonical Gospels are. That is, the Gospels in our Bible. Not one of them.

But there’s more to it than that. Consider the so-called gospel of Thomas. It’s a short book of 114 sayings, ostensibly sayings of Jesus (they’re sayings ascribed to Jesus), and two tiny, tiny historical snippets. That’s it. In other words, it’s completely unlike what a Gospel is in the New Testament.

In fact, in the first century people didn’t speak of four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Do you know what they said in the first century? “There’s one gospel: the gospel of Jesus Christ. The one gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John. One gospel with various witnesses describing what this good news about Jesus Christ is really about, this spectacular, invasive news.”

Only later did people start referring to them rather loosely as the gospel of Matthew or the gospel of Mark, but even then it’s really important to see all four of these books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) say something about the forerunner, the one who announces Jesus (John the Baptist). They say something about his origins. They talk extensively about his ministry, what he did, what he said, how he preached, some of his miracles, his parables, his sayings, some of his sermons.

All along the story has been driving toward his death, and at the end he is crucified and he rises again. A huge part of the plotline in each book is how Jesus starts talking about how he is going to die. In Matthew 16, when Peter confesses Jesus really is the promised Messiah, the one who comes from David’s line, the one they were expecting, Jesus goes on to say, “Yes, and you know, I must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be crucified and, on the third day, rise again.”

The disciples said, “No way! That can’t be. The promised Davidic figure, the promised Messiah is so strong and someone like you can do miracles. How are they going to stop you? You can do miracles!” But Jesus keeps insisting again and again and again.… Part of the plotline of each of the Gospels is how he keeps insisting he is going to die.

Then he says some very strange things too. “I’m not going to die as a martyr,” he says. “No one can take my life from me. I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again.” He doesn’t classify himself as a martyr but as a sacrifice. He’s not simply the vicious victim of a nasty historical mistake; he’s a willing sacrifice.

That’s why these books sound so strange to anybody who reads a lot of biographies. There’s no one quite like him. Even when he is being arrested and dragged away, his disciples wonder if the place of courage now is to pull out a sword and slash at one of the attackers. Jesus’ response is, “Don’t you understand? I could, in theory, call 12 legions of angels. Do you really think a few Roman troops are going to stand up to 12 legions of angels?” But he didn’t come to be rescued. He came to be butchered. He came to die.

Moreover, in ordinary biographies, once you do have them safely in the ground they stay there, but Jesus comes to die and rise again. It is so central to everything the Bible says about Jesus and all the purpose of his coming that the apostle Paul, writing a couple of decades after Jesus rose from the dead, says, “Let me tell you the matters of first importance. Christ Jesus died. He died to save sinners.”

He spends much of the rest of the chapter, then, talking about the resurrection. These are matters of first importance. They are at the basis of everything in Christian belief and conduct and structure and power. We have to get this right or we have no part of Christianity right. There would be many ways to go about studying Jesus’ death and resurrection. We could go through all of the accounts of his death, for example, all the allusions to his death.

What I’m going to do is direct your attention rather quickly to one of the actual accounts of his death found in Matthew 27, the first book of the New Testament and the second to last chapter. Matthew 27. In a few minutes, I’ll switch to one passage in John that talks about his resurrection. Much more could be said about these passages and there are many other passages, but let me focus on these two so we have some focus to what we’re seeing.

Let me begin by saying the account we have here of Jesus’ death is carefully shaped by Matthew. Matthew is a God-inspired, skillful writer. Of the New Testament writers, the two who are most given to the use of irony to explain something are Matthew and John. In some sense, Matthew is simply describing what happens, but he relates it in such a way that what he shows you are the ironies of the cross.

By irony I mean words that convey in their context the exact opposite of what they formally say. That’s irony. What you’ll discover is in each of several paragraphs here Matthew lays out for us the ironies of the cross. He shows what happens when Jesus dies, but he does it with such a delicious dipping into irony that we begin to see what God is really doing in this death. Instead of reading the section right through, I’ll read it section by section as we go along. First, chapter 27:27 to 31.

“Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand as a scepter. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.”

Already, Jesus has been savagely beaten as part of the interrogation process. That was standard procedure. After sentence was passed, he was savagely beaten again. That, too, was standard procedure. Once you were condemned to be crucified, you were beaten again before you were taken out and crucified. He has already suffered all of that. What takes place here is not standard procedure. This is barracks-room humor.

They put some sort of robe on him as if he’s an emperor. They twist one of these vine spikes they have in the Middle East with long thorns. They twist it into some sort of crown and ram it down on his head. They put a stick in his hand as if it’s a scepter and pretend he’s a great monarch. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they say, bowing down and slapping his face, laughing, “Ha, ha, ha.” They take the stick that is supposed to be the symbol of his power and bash it against his head again and again and again. Great fun. Barracks-room humor.

But every time they say, “Hail, king of the Jews,” they mean the opposite. In the context, the words actually convey nothing but derision and scorn. They think their humor is deeply, deeply ironic and it’s very funny, but there is a deeper irony. Matthew knows and the readers know and God knows Jesus is the King.

1. The man who was mocked as king is the King.

That’s the first deep irony. After all, how does the book begin? We saw that already a couple of sessions back. The origins of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham the son of David. He’s in the Davidic line. He has the legal right to the throne, and all through the book there are allusions to Jesus being the king. He tells some parables in which, for those with eyes to see, the king in question is Jesus himself.

In fact, part of the procedures during the trial had Pilate the Roman governor asking, “Are you the king of the Jews?” From Pilate’s perspective, if Jesus says, “Yes,” then he could be condemned. It could be an act of treason, setting himself up against the Herod family or setting himself even against Caesar in Rome, a usurping king.

Jesus answers with a kind of affirmation. “It is as you say. You have said this.” But he doesn’t want simply to come flat out and say, “Yes,” because what Jesus means by king is not exactly what they mean by king. But he is the King of the Jews. In fact, when you read the whole New Testament, he’s not only the King of the Jews; he’s the King of you and me.

How does Matthew end his gospel? The last verses of Matthew, chapter 28, Jesus once risen from the dead says, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.” Quite frankly, he claims to be King of the universe. He’s certainly the King of these soldiers who are laughing at his kingly dominion. The man who is mocked as king is King.

What sort of a kingdom is it? It is bizarre. Most kings surely would want to go out and fight. Jesus refuses to do so. In fact, there’s one remarkable passage a few chapters back where Jesus actually talks about the nature of his kingdom just a wee bit. I made allusion to it before. Matthew 20:20: The mother of Zebedee’s sons James and John (two of Jesus’ disciples) come to Jesus and what they want is to sit one on the right and one on the left in Jesus’ kingdom. That’s what they want.

They want political power, but Jesus goes on to say, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus is not recommending you adopt the stance that makes you everybody’s carpet to wipe their feet on (that’s not the point) or that you lose any sort of authority when you’re put in a position of authority (that’s not the point). The problem is, in this world when we gain authority we start lording it over people. We start thinking it’s our due.

But Jesus is the sort of God.… He is the God who is there, and he loves because he’s that kind of God. His aim is to serve. He does not come to be fawned over but to serve, to serve finally by giving his life a ransom for many. That’s why he comes. That’s the kind of kingdom it is, and he expects his followers to exercise authority in exactly that way. There’s the first irony: the man who is mocked as king is King.

2. The man who was utterly powerless is powerful.

Verses 32 to 40: “As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there.

Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” More irony. “Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!’ ”

Here is a horrible picture of the most abject weakness possible. When sentence was passed, you were beaten again. Then you were forced to carry the cross, the horizontal member of the cross, on your shoulder out to the place of execution where the upright was already in the ground. There you were either nailed or tied to the cross member. It was hoisted up, and you were stripped, and you hung there, not with a convenient loincloth. When men and women were crucified, they were crucified naked. It was meant to be shameful as well as painful.

In former times, there had been occasions when the soldiers had left somebody hanging there, and friends had actually managed to come along and take the person down and they had survived. At this point in Roman history, that wasn’t possible because it was imperial policy now to leave the quaternion of soldiers there to guard the body until it was unambiguously dead.

You pulled with your arms and you pushed with your legs to open up your chest cavity so you could breathe, and the muscle spasms would start, so you’d collapse, and you couldn’t breathe. Then you’d pull with your arms and you’d push with your legs so you could breathe. Then the spasms would start, and you’d collapse. That could go on for hours and sometimes days, and the soldiers would keep watch.

That’s why, if they wanted to finish you off for any reason a little faster, what they would do is just come along and smash your shinbones. Then you couldn’t push with your legs anymore, and you’d suffocate in a few minutes. Listen. At this point, Jesus is as powerless as you can imagine. There is no way out. There is no hope. He’s so weak from his repeated beatings he isn’t even strong enough to hoist the cross member on his shoulder and take it out to the place of execution. Jesus, by trade a carpenter, can’t lift a piece of wood, so they have to Shanghai somebody else to do it for him.

Then the mockery begins. “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” Where does this charge come from? It seems strange in our ears, but it too showed up in the trial. Not the trial before Pilate, but in the previous chapter (chapter 26), the trial before the High Priest.

The reason it could be entered was the Roman Empire was a highly diverse place religiously speaking, so one of the things the Romans did to try to keep peace was to make it a capital crime to desecrate a temple, any temple. If you desecrate a temple, under Roman law you die, so if someone heard Jesus saying, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it again,” maybe that could be worked into conspiracy for a capital crime, that is destroying a temple.

But they couldn’t get their stories straight and it didn’t work out to be the crime they actually charged him with. They charged him, finally, with treason, being king over against Caesar, but now as some people heard this debate and charge at the trial, they look at Jesus in this most abject weakness without any strength at all, and they say, “Yeah, bigmouth. You’re so strong, aren’t you? Going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days? Look at you now!” Again, they’re being ironic.

If you work for Habitat for Humanity, with a decent foundation, a lot of planning, a good engineer, and 40 strong-backed volunteers, you can put up a house in a day, but you couldn’t put up one of the ancient temples in a day. You couldn’t put up one of the cathedrals of Europe in a lifetime. Not one of the original architects of the great cathedrals of Europe ever saw the finished product. It took more than one lifetime to do it.

The temple in Jerusalem, just this current beautification, had already been going on for 46 years. More, by Jewish law you were not allowed to hammer a stone within ear distance of the temple. All those stones had to be measured and cut and brought in without hydraulics and fit into place. No wonder the temple took a long time to build!

And Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll build it again.” What kind of power is that? So when they say, “You who destroy this temple and build it in three days,” what they really mean is, “This is a lovely piece of ironic humor. You’re actually just hopelessly weak, dying, and damned on a cross.” But Matthew knows, and God knows, and the readers know, by his death and the resurrection around the corner, Jesus is destroying the temple and rising again.

Jesus did use these words: “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it again.” He used them early on in his ministry. You can find them, if you want to look them up later, in John, chapter 2. At the time, the disciples didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Jesus is saying something deep again, very enigmatic.”

Then John comments after Jesus had risen from the dead, “Then they remembered his words and they believed the Scriptures.” The point is the temple in the Old Testament, as we have seen earlier, was the great meeting place between God and human beings. It was the place of sacrifice. Now Jesus comes along and, referring to his own body, says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it again.”

By the destruction of his own life and its resurrection again, he becomes the great meeting place between God and human beings. He becomes the great temple with all the power that is required in resurrection. The great meeting place between God and human beings is not some sacrificial system in Jerusalem or elsewhere; it is Jesus himself. Thus, while the mockers see some cheap irony, we cannot help but see an even deeper irony, for the man who was utterly powerless is, in fact, powerful. He’s the temple of the living God.

3. The man who can’t save himself saves others.

The mockery continues in 41 to 43. “In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, “I am the Son of God.” ’ ”

What do we mean when we say the verb to save? What does it mean on the streets of Minneapolis or the streets of Chicago or the streets of London, England? It depends who is saying it. If you’re a banker, saving is something you’re supposed to do if the market doesn’t wipe it all out to protect your investments, to prepare for retirement.

If you’re gifted in sports, saving is what the goalie does to stop a goal, whether in soccer or in ice hockey. If you’re a geek, saving is what you’re supposed to do so you don’t lose too much data before your hard-drive crashes. We use the verb to save in a variety of different contexts, don’t we?

What does Matthew mean? Again, we’ve already had a glimpse of this a couple of sessions back, haven’t we? When Joseph is told Mary is pregnant, he is told he must give the baby the name Jesus, Yahweh saves, for he will save his people from their sins. Saving, in Matthew’s gospel, means saving from sin, from its guilt, its consequences, its eternal effects, its effects and power in this life. That’s why Jesus came.

Now the mockers are saying, “He saved others.” That is, “He helped them, he cured them. He was such a good Savior, you know, but himself he can’t save. Look at him. He’s completely shackled. He’s completely tied down. There is no way he can save himself, which shows he’s not much of a Savior at all.”

So when they are saying, “He saved others”, again, they mean with cheap irony, “He’s no Savior to be respected at all.” But Matthew knows, and God knows, and the readers know it’s by staying on that cross that he saves others. Strictly speaking, he can’t save himself and save others. If he saves himself, he won’t be able to save others.

When they say, “He can’t save himself,” they mean he is so attached to the cross, so nailed to the cross, that physically he can’t get down, but Matthew knows he could get down. He could still call his 12 legions of angels, as Matthew puts it elsewhere, but he can’t save himself if he is to save others because the very function of his hanging on that cross is to bear my sin in his own body on the tree. If he does save himself, I’m damned. It’s only by not saving himself that he saves me.

There is this deep irony behind the cheap irony. Unlike what the critics thought, their words are truth: “He saved others; he can’t save himself.” I suspect part of the reason why we have initial trouble absorbing this is because we live at a time in Western culture when an awful lot of conduct is constrained by force of law or just by force. In other words, we don’t have much place left for a kind of internal, moral imperative.

Did you see the film Titanic when it came out a decade and a half ago? As the great ship is going down, people are scrambling for the lifeboats of which there are too few. There were a lot of fat cats on the boat, wealthy people, and they start scrambling there and shoving the women and children aside so they can reserve their own places. The sailors pull out handguns and fire in the air and say, “Women and children.… The boats are for women and children?” Do you remember the scene?

Historically, of course, that’s rubbish. All the survivors say it’s rubbish. There were a lot of fat cats on that boat. John Jacob Astor was there, the Bill Gates of 1912, the richest man. He got his wife to the boat, shoved her in, and when others said to him, “You get in too, sir,” he said, “No. This is for women and children,” and he stepped back and drowned.

Simon Guggenheim was there. He was pulled apart from his wife and yelled to someone between, “Tell my wife Guggenheim knows his duty,” and he stepped back and he was drowned. She was saved. There is not one single report of fat cats scrambling for the boats and leaving the women and children out. Isn’t that stunning?

When a writer called Zakaria reviewed the film for the New York Times, he asked the obvious question, “Why did the producer and director distort history and say what isn’t true? Why didn’t they tell the truth about what happened at this point?” Then he answered his own question. He said, “Because if they had told the truth today, nobody would have believed them,” because of the time.

It’s not there were so many more Christians around, but there was enough of a Christian heritage that drove a moral imperative that made people from within want to do something self-sacrificial for others. That’s what drove Jesus supremely doing his Father’s will, and that’s the way it is once you and I become a disciple of Jesus.

That is, it changes us from within so our moral categories change. It’s not that there’s a force of law upon us or a constraint or a big policeman with a stick waiting to bash us if we step aside somewhere. There’s a transformation of heart, a pale reflection of Jesus but in the same line wanting to sacrifice for the sake of others.

4. The man who cries out in despair actually trusts God.

The people are still mocking in verse 43. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” Then Jesus cries out in despair, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So is Jesus actually giving up at this point, caught up in the web of miserable circumstances, drowning in despair? Is that the message we are to learn? “Push me far enough and I, too, will collapse”?

Oh, it’s much deeper than that. Because of Jesus’ death, because of his willingness to stay there, in a nearby verse (verse 51) as Jesus dies the veil of the temple is torn aside. The veil of the temple that set off the very presence of God from the rest of the people in the Most Holy Place where only the High Priest could enter once a year …

Now the veil is torn aside as if to indicate you and I, ordinary human beings, can actually get into the presence of God because Jesus’ sacrifice really has paid the debt. It paid all the debt the blood of bulls and goats could never, ever pay for along the sacrificial lines we saw a few sessions back.

Now Jesus dies, and in his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he is crying in the bleakest and darkest most pitiable despair, not because he does not know he is doing his Father’s will but precisely because he does know he is doing his Father’s will. He is trusting God, and that Father’s will is to bear my sin in his own body on the tree absorbing the curse, discharging the debt, paying the guilt, tearing the veil so I can get into the Most Holy Place.

I titled this The God Who Dies. In some ways, that’s a bit slippery. By and large, the New Testament does not talk of God dying. It speaks of God, and of Jesus being the God-man, and of Jesus dying. Never, ever is there a hint that the Father dies. Of course not. But once in a while there are passages that come so close to this.

When the apostle Paul, for example, is giving a speech to some church elders who belonged to the church in Ephesus, he says in Acts, chapter 20, that they are to look after the flock of God, the church of God in Ephesus, which God has purchased with his own blood. Isn’t that remarkable? God with his own blood?

Of course, he could parch that. He could tease that out just a bit more. That is to say, he could say, “Of course, it’s not the heavenly Father, but it is the Son of God. It is Jesus who is himself God, and because he’s God and because he does give his life and shed his blood, therefore it is appropriate to say God sheds his life. If you have to unpack it, that’s what is meant.”

Nevertheless, don’t let the shock of the language stop you. This is God’s action in Christ Jesus in the God-man. This is not the death of one human individual and no more. It is a human individual who was also the living God who hangs on that cross, not because he’s forced to do so by circumstance but because he’s bringing in himself all of the strands of the Old Testament sacrificial system, that temple system, bringing them in himself. All the strands from the fall, the promise of the seed of the woman coming to crush the Serpent’s head by his own death.

Bearing sin and scoffing rude

In my place condemned he stood

Sealed my pardon with his blood

Hallelujah what a Savior

It is appropriate to speak of the God who dies. At the end of World War I, that bloodiest and most senseless and stupid of wars, several English poets, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brook and one or two others, wrote some very moving poetry about the sheer savagery of the war. One of the more minor pieces was called Jesus of the Scars. The poet ends up by saying, “The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak; they rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne. But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, and not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.”

When we face the ravages of uncertainty, when there is suffering and agony in our lives or in the world and we wonder what God is doing and we have no answers and we re-read the book of Job, that Wisdom Literature we saw three or four sessions back, and we hear God saying, “You don’t understand it all,” we can actually add something more now: “To our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, and not a god has wounds but Thou alone.”

You can trust a God who is not only sovereign but bleeding for you, and sometimes, when there are no other answers for your guilt or your fears or your uncertainties or your anguish, there is one immovable place on which to stand. It’s the ground right in front of the cross. Yet … and yet … as important as the cross is, this is not the end of the story, for all of the New Testament writers focus equivalently on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

The stories are told in many different ways. There is no way they can be reduced to mass hallucination. He appeared too many times over a period of 40 days or so. He appeared to ones and twos. He appeared to as many as 500 at a time. He appeared to the apostles more than once. He appeared in locked rooms. He appeared on the seashore and ate some fish he was cooking for them. The witnesses multiply. He shows up when they’re not expecting him. He shows up when they are.

He cannot be categorized or dismissed or domesticated. The resurrection appearances are simply too frequent, too diverse, and with too many witnesses. What do you do with them? The fact of the matter is if you think the early Christians made this up or were somehow hoodwinked or fell victims to mass psychology of some sort, it’s hard to explain why they were willing to die for their faith.

If the resurrection is the fairy story a bit like Hansel and Gretel, my question is how many have offered to die for Hansel and Gretel? But the early Christians were willing to die for their conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead. They had seen him, touched him, handled him, and they were transformed by him, and they were promised by him resurrection bodies of their own one day. They believed he was Lord.

One of the most moving scenes is describing what takes place on the second Sunday. The first Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, Jesus appeared to some women, to Peter and John. He appeared to a couple walking to the little town of Emmaus. He appeared to 10 of the apostles. Now on the second Sunday, we read these words. John, chapter 20. That’s the fourth gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Chapter 20 beginning at verse 24.

“Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ ”

This is the kind of doubt that springs from hurt. He did not want to be duped. He had believed Jesus was the Messiah, and then Jesus had died. It made no sense. He was lonely and scared. He was still a pious Jewish monotheist, but he had been snookered. He fell once, and now he wasn’t going to talk himself into believing Jesus was back after all. He was going to have to see for himself. He was not going to have an easy faith just believing somebody else’s account. He wasn’t going to do that.

In other words, he wanted in his own sights to distinguish between faith and gullibility, so he therefore laid out the most extreme test he could imagine. He wanted to be sure the body that went into the tomb was the same as the ostensible body that came out or had some sort of genuine organic connection, so he specifies, “Unless I can put my hands in the wounds …”

I chair the Gospel Coalition. Our executive director is a chap named Ben Peays. Ben is an identical twin, and when I say identical twin, I mean identical twin. They look alike, generally, but the same little smirks and smiles and so on. They are spitting images of each other. I’m sure if you knew them well enough you could tell them apart. I can’t.

Last year, when we had our council meeting, Ben was around, of course, but, of course, we didn’t tell anybody on the council that his brother was showing up, too, to help. At one point in the council meeting, I said, “Guys, I should tell you our executive director has been working so hard with so much work to do we decided to clone him and get two of him,” and I pointed to the other one.

“Well, maybe Jesus has a twin. Maybe he can come out of the tomb. Maybe he can be the new Jesus.” Then where are the wounds? Not only the wounds from the nails but the shaft that went up under his ribcage and in the pericardium and pierced the flesh such that blood and water flowed out. Where are the wounds? “Unless I put my hands in the wounds, I will not believe.” That was the test.

“A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ ”

On first reading, Thomas’ response is strange. It’s almost as if he’s saying too much. Why doesn’t he simply say, “You are alive,” or “Oops, I was wrong,” or something more modest? Why does he infer so much from the fact Jesus is now alive? “My Lord and my God!” After all, some chapters earlier Lazarus had been raised from the dead and nobody said to Lazarus after he came back from the dead, “My Lord and my God,” so why are they saying it to Jesus?

What you have to do is put yourself into the very account. Put yourself, so far as it’s possible, in Thomas’ place. You have a whole week between the first reports of Jesus’ resurrection and this second appearance. The fellow apostles are coming along and saying, “We did see him. Peter saw him on his own. Peter and John saw the empty tomb. The two on the road to Emmaus saw him. Together we saw him. Ten of us all at once. Then there are the reports of the women. We have all seen him!”

Now all week long he’s saying, “Cannot be. I just can’t believe it. I know the tomb is empty, but we.… Who knows? A grave robber or somebody might have come. Maybe we got the wrong tomb. It was dark when they put him in, but supposing he is alive, what would that mean? Oh, no. It can’t be.

It doesn’t really make any sense, but he did do some strange things in his life. After all, he said the very night he was going to the cross, ‘Have I been with you such a long time and have you not known me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.’ And there was that strange utterance from Jesus some time back.”

It’s recorded in John, chapter 8, where Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” That’s not just bad timing. Abraham had been dead by two millennia. Why didn’t he say, “Before Abraham was, I was,” which would be claiming some sort of preexistence maybe, hard enough to believe but still, that’s just preexistence? But “Before Abraham was, I am”? That’s taking the name of God. Do you recall how God discloses himself in Exodus 3? “What is your name?”

“Tell the people ‘I am’ has sent you. I am what I am.” Now Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” God is named. What do you do with passages like that? All during the years of Jesus’ ministry, I’m sure the disciples scratched their heads and smiled devotedly and thought, “More enigma. Maybe we’ll understand it someday.”

Then Jesus had insisted it was the Father’s determination that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. You don’t say that about a mere human being. All these indications. Then maybe he has thought through some of those Old Testament texts a bit more. Then, of course, historically speaking there are the events in which he’s a participant recorded in the other gospels. Let me mention just one, and I’ll close.

There’s a spectacular account in the other Gospels (it’s not in John) where Jesus is preaching in a packed house. No chairs down. People have just packed in. By this time, he has quite a reputation as a preacher, as a teacher, but also as a healer, and some friends bring along a paralyzed friend. He can’t even walk, so he’s on some sort of pallet, and the four helpers are carrying this thing.

They try to get into the house where Jesus is preaching, and they can’t get in. People are saying, “Hush! The master is preaching. Wait your turn. He’s busy. Don’t bother him.” But they won’t be stopped. They go up the outside stairs (so many houses had these outside stairs in those days because people would actually cool down in the evening on the flat roof with the breezes wafting over the city of Jerusalem). They went up on the flat roof and they listened carefully for where Jesus was speaking. They found the right area, and they started taking off the tiles.

They got some of the tiles off, and then they lowered this friend down on ropes in front of Jesus. If the crowd won’t make room for them through the doorway, they’ll make room for him because a bed is coming down on their heads. This bed is in front of Jesus, and Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” The theologians present are indignant. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

That’s a good observation, isn’t it? Supposing, God forbid, on your way home tonight you’re brutally attacked by a gang of thugs. You’re viciously beaten up, left half dead, and maybe gang raped. You get into the hospital and I go and visit you two days from now. You’re all bandaged up, your legs on pulleys, you can barely talk, and somehow events have taken place that I can share with you. “Be of good cheer. I found the thugs, and I have forgiven them.”

What would you say to me? Wouldn’t you be outraged? “Who do you think you are? You’re not the one who was gang raped. You’re not the one who is lying in a hospital! How can you possibly forgive them? The only person who can forgive is the offended party who only the offended party can forgive!”

At the end of World War II, there was a Jew by the name of Simon Wiesenthal in Auschwitz. All of his extended family was wiped out in the Holocaust. At this point, it was only weeks from the end of the fright and horror of Auschwitz. The Russians were moving in from the east. He was in a work party, and as he was on this party, suddenly he was pulled out by the German guards and shoved into a room.

There was a young German Nazi soldier there, maybe 19 years old. He had suffered grievous wounds and was clearly going to die. Before he died, he wanted to see a Jew. He wanted to talk with a Jew, and in God’s peculiar providence, the Jew who was pulled out of the line and shoved into that room was Simon Wiesenthal.

The young Nazi explained why he wanted to see him. Gasping for breath, not long to live, he acknowledged the Nazis had treated the Jews horribly, that he himself had been engaged in horrible things. Now he wanted the Jew’s forgiveness. Wiesenthal reasons in his mind. He later writes it up in a little book called The Sunflower.

About 60 pages of that 85-page book (give or take) are devoted to what flashes through Wiesenthal’s mind. The reasoning is who can forgive but those who have been offended? The most offended parties of the Holocaust are dead. In Auschwitz they’ve already been burned in the ovens. How can a survivor like Wiesenthal pronounce forgiveness? He has not suffered what the others have suffered.

How can he speak for the dead? If the most brutalized victims of the Nazi’s are dead, then there is no one qualified to pronounce forgiveness, so there is no forgiveness to the Nazis. Without saying a single word, Wiesenthal listened to the young man, then turned and walked out of the room.

After the war was over, eventually he wrote this up as I’ve said in this little book called The Sunflower, and he sent it to ethicists all around the world, Christian and Jewish with various backgrounds, and asked them to read the manuscript and simply answer the question, “Did I do what was right?” He kicked off a furious exchange amongst ethicists all over the world. “Did I do what was right?”

You see, Wiesenthal almost got it right. He almost got it right. He was surely right to insist only the offended party can forgive. That’s right, but the most offended party is always God. That’s what we saw a couple of sessions back in the Psalms when David dares write, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

Now when this young man comes down before Jesus, a young man who has not offended Jesus in the flesh, not man-to-man or person-to-person, Jesus looks at him and says, “Your sins are forgiven you.” The theologians ask, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” “Just so,” and Thomas remembered that, too, and he bowed before the resurrected Jesus and said, “My Lord and my God!”

That’s what each of us must do, recognize what Jesus accomplished on the cross was suffering for the sake of his own people who put their faith in him, who recognized what he bore was their sin as the God-man only he could forgive. That’s what we must have to be reconciled to God. We must have it, and we bow before him and cry with joy and thankfulness and mystery and adoration and awe, “My Lord and my God!”