10 Then the disciples went back to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to Him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” - and that He had said these things to her.
The apostle Paul, at the conclusion of 1 Corinthians 13, his great chapter on Christian love, writes, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)
John tells us in verse 10 that he and Peter went back to their homes, no doubt still very confused and unsure about what to make of the empty tomb. The full impact and reality of the resurrection of Jesus would only make sense to them later that evening.
Mary Magdalene though, grief stricken, remained at the tomb. For now, all she had left was her love for Jesus. Her hope and her faith lay in ruins. Her faith in Jesus, and the hope that went with that faith died on the cross on Friday afternoon. With her faith and hope gone, it was her love for Jesus that kept her at the tomb as she desperately tried to find out what had happened to His body, so that she could show her love by giving Him the burial He deserved, but now even that privilege had been taken away from her.
And it was because of her love that Mary would be the first to see the resurrected Christ. Not only that, but it would be through her rekindled faith that the glorious news of the resurrection of Jesus would begin to spread. A point which is easy to overlook is the fact that Jesus chose to reveal Himself to a woman first, instead of one of His remaining 11 disciples.
This is an important detail, remembering that women had little or no social standing in those days, so much so that they were not permitted as witnesses in civil courts, as their testimony was regarded as unreliable.
R. C. Sproul explains the significance of Mary being the first to see the risen Jesus like this: “A woman (whose testimony was considered unreliable in Jewish culture) is the first eyewitness to see the risen Lord. The Christ who humbled Himself reaches out and welcomes those whom others marginalise. This detail also demonstrates that the Gospels’ reports of Jesus’ resurrection appearances are sober history, not products of human imagination. No inventor of a fictional account would damage its credibility by basing its claims on the experiences and words of women if said women had not been witnesses to the event.”
As Mary looked into the tomb once more, she saw two angels sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one on either end. This was no coincidence, and for us to understand the significance of these two angels and how they were positioned, we need to go back to Exodus 25 where God gave Moses detailed instructions on how the Ark of the Covenant was to be made. “You shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.” (Exodus 25:18-22)
During the days of the exodus from Egypt and the 38 years the Israelites wandered in the desert before entering the Promised Land, the Ark of the Covenant represented the presence of God with His people. When the temple was built by King Solomon, the ark was placed in the Holy of Holies behind the curtain, which was torn as Jesus died, symbolising the end of the separation between God and sinful man.
Sproul again writes of the two angels Mary saw in the tomb, “This placement of the angels on either end of the stone platform on which Jesus’ body had lain visually suggests the two cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, their wings overshadowing the mercy seat. This is another expression that Jesus is God and has come out of the Holy of Holies to reveal Himself to the world.”
Still overcome with grief, it apparently didn’t occur to Mary just how unusual it was to see these angels. When they asked why she was weeping, her reply shows that the missing body was all she was concerned about. “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” (John 20:13)
Then we’re told that Mary turned around to see Jesus standing there, but she did not recognise Him. Firstly, Mary was at the tomb expecting to see a dead body, not the resurrected Christ, and secondly, she was not the only one who failed to immediately recognise Jesus that day. Later that afternoon, when Jesus joined Cleopas and his friend as they made their way to Emmaus, they didn’t recognise Him until Jesus revealed Himself to them. In their case, it was only after Jesus had pointed them to the Scriptures that they realised who the stranger was. We looked at this point last week - the way God reveals Himself to us today is primarily in the written Word, the pages of the Bible.
Mary’s case was slightly different. Most commentators agree that the reason she was prevented from recognising Jesus immediately was that she needed to realise she was looking in the wrong place. In Luke’s account he writes of the two angels saying to Mary and the other women whom he records were with her, “While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.’” (Luke 24:4-7)
Mary had been looking for the dead Jesus of the past rather than the living Jesus who was now standing in front of her in the garden. Kenneth Gangel, in his commentary, wrote, “John records that Mary saw Jesus. She noticed a person standing there, but she had no idea who it was. Many interpreters have wondered about this passage. How could she not recognise Jesus? Certainly there are many plausible explanations. She had experienced deep trauma; her eyes had filled with tears; it was still dark; she was very confused. But perhaps most important, she had not considered the resurrection a possibility. So the idea that she might be talking to a living Christ never occurred to her. She was looking for a body; she did not expect a resurrection.”
Jesus then asked Mary the same question the angels had asked: “Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus was not scolding Mary in her grief, but there was another aspect to His question. John Calvin called it a “reproof mingled with comfort.”
The problem for Mary was that in her mind, Jesus was still dead, and the probable answer was that the body had been stolen. She just did not expect to see Jesus alive, and in her unbelief, she didn’t recognise Him.
So when Jesus asked, “Woman, why are you weeping?” He was addressing not so much Mary’s grief as He was the unbelief that came from her grief. Jesus revealed His resurrection life as the answer to Mary’s fear and sorrow. The faith and hope she had lost would now be restored through His resurrection, so she would once again have faith, hope and love.
Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Now, of course, Christians mourn and grieve just as non-Christians do. We are not immune from the sorrows of life, but with the power of the resurrected Christ as the foundation of our hope, we have an inner joy and peace that bears a powerful witness to the victory Jesus gives us. So in our grieving, something which comes to us all, we should not forget the resurrected Jesus and the hope that He gives.
You’ll remember that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, He called him by name. “Lazarus, come out.” And here, He calls Mary by name, and it is at that instant that she recognises the risen Christ.
Vernon McGee writes, “When He called her by name, she recognised the voice as only He could speak. I am of the opinion that if the Lord should tarry and all of us go through the doorway of death, our bodies will be raised when He calls us by name someday, just as He called by name those whom He raised from the dead.”
Jesus draws His people to Himself personally and by name, the Good Shepherd calling His sheep so that they recognise His voice as He said in John 10:27. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
John Calvin said, “Thus in Mary we have a lively image of our calling; for the only way in which we are admitted to the true knowledge of Christ is by that voice with which He especially calls the sheep which the Father has given to Him.” Have you heard the voice of Jesus calling you through His Gospel, and will you respond to His voice?
Mary’s reaction when she recognised Jesus was to reach out to Him. Matthew, in his account, writes, “They came up and took hold of His feet and worshipped Him.” (Matthew 28:9)
Jesus’ reaction to Mary reaching out to Him has created much confusion over the years. “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (John 20:17) There are a couple of ways to try and understand Jesus’ words here.
Firstly, we can reject the notion that as some have taught, the Jesus Mary saw standing in front of her was some kind of ghostly apparition which had no real human form. Matthew 28:9 says the women took hold of His feet. They were able to physically touch Him. Another reason we can reject this false teaching is that just over a week later, Jesus invited Thomas to touch His wounds. As Jesus appeared to Mary, He appeared in a physical, human, yet glorified body.
So what did Jesus mean by telling Mary not to cling to Him because He had not yet ascended to the Father?
The first way of understanding Jesus’ words is to take them at face value. He was telling her quite simply that the time for His ascension and return to the Father was still many weeks in the future, so there was no need for her to hold onto Him or cling to Him as if she was about to lose Him again.
More importantly, Jesus was making the point that His death and resurrection had forever changed His relationship with Mary and the other disciples. Because she thought she had lost the physical closeness of Jesus when He died, she would quite naturally be overjoyed to see Him alive once more, but Jesus was teaching her to not hold onto the past and the relationship she had had with Him previously.
This is the position we are in today, on this side of the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are privileged to have a higher form of relationship with Jesus than even His disciples had with Him during His 3 years of ministry. This helps us to better understand what Jesus said to His disciples in the Upper Room before being arrested later that night. “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe.” (John 14:27-29)
“I am going away, and I will come to you.” He has gone away by His physical ascension into heaven, and He has come to us by His Spirit. We have spiritual communion with the living Saviour through the Spirit who indwells us. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, “Christ lives in me.”
It is easy for us, in our ongoing struggles with temptation and sin, as well as in the general struggles we face in our lives to think that God has somehow forgotten about us, and we feel that Jesus is distant and remote. We all go through times like this, but Jesus has not left us to work things out on our own. Moments before His ascension He said to His disciples, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
Having ascended into glory, Jesus is nearer to us all than we realise. Paul writes in Romans 10:6-8, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim).”
Jesus lives in us by the Holy Spirit’s inner and ongoing ministry of God’s living Word.
Not only did the resurrection signal a new kind of relationship with Jesus on earth, but He also sent Mary to deliver the good news of a new relationship with God in heaven. Jesus told Mary not to cling to Him but instead to “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’”. (John 20:17) Through His resurrection and victory over death, we are now, by faith, restored to our Heavenly Father.
This is the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has called His disciples “brothers.” John MacArthur wrote, “Disciples have been called ‘servants’ or ‘friends,’ but not ‘brothers,’ until here. Because of Jesus’ work on the cross in place of the sinner, this new relationship to Christ was made possible.”
This is the doctrine of adoption. Here, Jesus is declaring that through faith, believers are granted entrance into the family of God’s love. This is what John wrote about all the way back in 1:12. “To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
The doctrine of adoption explains what Jesus meant when He said to Mary in verse 17, “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
We are adopted into the family of God through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We know from Genesis 1:26 that we are made in the image of God, so in a very real sense, all people, both believers and nonbelievers alike are descended from God. Acts 17:26 says, “We are indeed His offspring,” but this does not mean, as some false teachers claim, that we are all children of God regardless of whether we believe in Jesus or not.
Paul, in fact, in Ephesians 2:3, says we are “by nature children of wrath.” Jesus, in John 8:44 said to the Jews who refused to believe in Him, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”
It is only those who are born again to faith in Christ who are children of God and adopted into His family. Jesus came into this world for the specific purpose of drawing sinners to Himself and to take them with Him into His eternal kingdom.
James Boice writes, “When He entered into glory through His death, resurrection, and ascension, He did not turn His back on His companions but rather ushered them into relationships that were uniquely His own. Now God becomes their Father as well as His, and they are given family privileges.”
The resurrection of Christ changed everything, and Mary Magdalene was given the privilege of hearing this wonderful news first. By rising from the dead, Jesus was not returning to the old relationship, but instead He now brings His friends and disciples with Him into the family of God.
The key Christian doctrines of justification and adoption belong together. Through saving faith in Jesus, God accepts guilty sinners as justified in His sight, acquitting them of their guilt because of the redeeming death of Jesus on the cross. Jesus has justified us by paying the debt of our sin and imputing His perfect righteousness to our account. Just as He bore our sins on the cross, we now bear His perfect righteousness before a holy God.
Justification is by grace alone. It is a free gift which God gives to His people, but that is not the end of the story. Because of His great love for us, we are not only justified in God’s sight, but we are adopted as His own.
Romans 8:15-17 says, “You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.”
God sent His Son to cleanse us in His blood, to bring us justified into His presence, and then to bring us into His own family with the status of dearly beloved sons. The concept of Biblical sonship is important, as it refers to the Old Testament teaching that it was always the sons, not daughters who inherited the estates of their fathers. There are some modern Bible translations which, in the interests of political correctness, have muddied the waters somewhat by using gender neutral terminology, which is a pity, because all Christians are brides of Christ, both men and women.
Biblical sonship by adoption has nothing to do with the male gender. It has everything to do with our spiritual adoption as heirs together with Christ into glory as children of God. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, as Paul writes in Romans 8:17.
Because we are justified and adopted into the family of God, Jesus gives us access to the presence of His Father. In a sense He says to us, “You may now speak to Him as I do, with the same right of access, with the same intimacy, and with the same assurance that He loves you.” This is the message Jesus gave to Mary at the tomb that morning to share with not only the 11 disciples, but with all believers through every generation. “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
This wonderful truth teaches us why Jesus urged Mary not to cling to Him and stay at the empty tomb. The lesson to us is that along with the privileges of sonship there is the ongoing work of sharing the Gospel with the lost. The church is God’s chosen instrument to take the message of the hope the world has because of Christ.
Sonship means we are to be salt and light in our decaying and darkening world. We have been given not only the privilege and honour of taking the Gospel message into the world. We have been given the obligation to do so.
God, through the indwelling power of His Holy Spirit, continues to use His church to call His people to Himself through His adopted family. Look at what Mary did immediately after being sent by Jesus to tell His disciples He was alive: “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’ - and that He had said these things to her.” (John 20:18)
Our task today is no different to Mary’s. If you “have seen the Lord,” if you have been saved by grace and been adopted into the family of God, take the good news of the risen Christ and tell it to the world. Tell them you have seen the Lord.
If you have yet to see the Lord - if you are still a child of wrath, still bearing the guilt and condemnation of your sins, hear the call of Jesus Christ and His Gospel. Turn to Him in repentance and faith, trusting in Christ to save you and in so doing, you will be forgiven, justified and adopted into the family of God.
Again, have you heard the voice of Jesus calling you through His Gospel, and will you respond to His voice?
Repent of your sins, turn to Christ, and the words of Galatians 4:4-7 will be true for you. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 20:10-18
Read also Exodus 25:18-22
Discuss the significance of the positioning of the two angels in the empty tomb.
What do you think are some of the reasons for Mary not immediately recognising Jesus?
How do we, in our everyday lives, go around “not recognising” that the risen Christ is with us?
What did Jesus mean by telling Mary to not hold onto or cling to Him?
What did He mean by saying to her, “my Father and your Father, my God and your God?”
Read Galatians 4:4-7
Not only are we justified in God’s sight through faith in Jesus, but we are adopted into His family, as Jesus implies in John 20:17.
What is your understanding of the doctrine of adoption?
Mary told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” What does this teach us?