Third section the judgment upon the church itself second picture of judgment

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Matthew 28:1. But about the end.—̓Ο ψὲδ ὲσαββάτων. The peculiar expression is explained by the context. It was the time of the dawn, or of breaking day (ἡμέρᾳ to be supplied in connection with ἐπιφωσκούσῃ), on the first day of the week, Sunday. Similar are the statements of Luke and John; while Mark says: about sunrise. But there are various explanations attached to this expression of Matthew.^[FN12] 1. De Wette and others explain: After the Sabbath had ended; 2. Grotius and others: After the week had closed; 3. Meyer: Late upon the Sabbath. So that it is not the accurate Jewish division of time, according to which the Sabbath ended at six on Saturday evening, but the ordinary reckoning of the day, which extends from sunrise to sunrise, and adds the night to the preceding day. Meyer’s assertion, that ὀψέ, with the genitive of the time, always points to a still continuing period as a late season, would support this view, if it were true, but it is doubtful^[FN13] Pape translates the ὀψέ τῶν Τρωϊκῶι found in Philostr.; “long after the Trojan war.” But the fact, that Matthew makes the first day of the week begin here with sunrise, is decisive in Meyer’s favor.—Μίασββάτων=אחד בשׁבת, Sunday. According to Matthew’s method of expression, which is always so full of meaning, we find a doctrinal emphasis in the words, late in the evening of the (old) Sabbath season, as it began to dawn toward the early morning of the (new) Sunday season.

Came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary.—John names only Mary Magdalene; Mark adds Salome; Luke ( Matthew 24:10), several others, namely, Johanna, the wife of Chusa, as we learn from Luke 8:3. These differences of the narrations arise from the intention of emphasizing different circumstances. We must begin with Mark. Three women go first to the grave—Magdalene, the other Mary, and Salome. Matthew omits Saiome, because he intends to continue his account of the two women, Magdalene and Mary ( Matthew 27:61). John keeps only Magdalene before his eye, because she is seized with excitement on finding the stone rolled away, and, hurrying away alone to the city, calls the two disciples; and because he wishes to relate this circumstance and Magdalene’s succeeding history. Luke’s attention was occupied chiefly with the women who were bringing the spices and ointments, and accordingly writes of the second body of females, who followed the first three. Meyer maintains that it is impossible to harmonize the different accounts. A judicious critic will, however, only oppose a forced harmony.

To see the sepulchre.—Luke and Mark: to anoint the corpse. We have already seen that the women went in two parties to the grave; and those who brought the ointments came second; the first came for information. This hurrying on before the others is explained by fear, unconscious hopes of a resurrection, longing and impatient desire.

Matthew 28:2. And, behold, there was (ἐγένετο) a great earthquake.—Meyer: “It is quite arbitrary to take the aorist in the sense of the pluperfect (Castalio, Kuinoel, Kern, Ebrard, etc.), or to make ἦλθε signify an unfinished action (de Wette).” But arbitrary, also, is the hypothesis, that the women must have seen all. The earthquake was felt by them as well as by all the disciples; the angel was beheld by Mary and Salome, sitting upon the stone rolled away, and perhaps also by the affrighted guard; but that which occurred between, the rolling away of the stone, etc, could have been supplied by the Apostle’s prophetic intuition. The resurrection of the Lord itself was not a matter of actual bodily vision. “The old and general view (see especially the Fathers, as quoted by Calovius) Isaiah, that Jesus rose while the grave was still closed, and that the tomb was opened merely to prove the resurrection.”^[FN14] Meyer. But this is rather an arbitrary and supernatural separation of the occurrences.^[FN15]

Matthew 28:5. Fear not ye, ὑμεῖς.—Opposed to the terror of the guard, whose fear might have caused them to be filled with wonder. Meyer gives these words their correct explanation, pointing out the false interpretation which had been made of ὑμεῖς.^[FN16]

[ Matthew 28:6.—Hilary: “Through woman death was first introduced into the world; to woman the first announcement was made of the resurrection. Chrysostom: Observe how our Lord elevates the weaker sex, which had fallen into dishonor through the transgression of Eve; and how He inspires it with hope, and heals its sorrows, and makes women the messengers of glad tidings to His disciples.]

For I know.—The reason why they need not fear.

Matthew 28:7. Tell His disciples.—The Galilean believers, who formed the great body of the disciples, are intended by this term. Though the Lord revealed Himself to a few women, to the disciples of Emmaus, and to the twelve in Judea, His grand self-manifestation took place in Galilee ( Matthew 28:16). Bengel: Verba discipulis dicenda se porrigunt usque ad; videbetis.—Lo, I have told you, Εῖπον, which marks the formal and important announcement. Corroborative: dixi.—Unnecessary subtilties in the explanation of these words are referred to by Meyer.

Matthew 28:8. With fear and great joy.—Mingled feelings. The transition from the dread felt by the women to the blessedness of belief in the resurrection, which they now began to experience, is expressed by this statement; also the final passage from the Old to the New Testament, from the horror of Sheol to the view of the opening heavens. “Corresponding cases of the union of fear and joy are mentioned by Wetstein (Virg. Æneid, 1, 544; 11, 807, etc.).” Meyer.

Matthew 28:9. Held Him by the feet.—This is not merely an expression of consternation, although the words μὴφοβεῖσθέ, Matthew 28:10, point to such a feeling of dread, but it describes rather the highest joy and their adoration. It is the climax of the feeling alluded to in Matthew 28:8. Bengel: “Jesum ante passionem alii potius alienores adorarunt, quam discipuli.” The special experience of Mary Magdalene is incorporated with the vision of the two other women. This account reminds us of the state of mind evidenced by Thomas, John 20.

Matthew 28:10. Be not afraid; go tell.—Asyndeton of lively conversation. A sign that the Lord shares in their joy.—My brethren.—A new designation of the disciples, which declares to them His consoling sympathy; makes known to them that Hebrews, as the Risen One, had not been alienated from them by their flight and treachery, but that rather they are summoned by Him to become partners in His resurrection. The command was, in the first instance, issued to raise the women from the ground, whom His divine majesty had prostrated.—Tell my brethren that they go.—This proclamation of the resurrection by the women is to lead the disciples, whom the fact of the Lord’s being buried in Jerusalem detained in that city, to make their preparations for an instant departure to their homes.

And there they shall see Me.—As before, in Matthew 28:7, the disciples as a body are meant, who, according to Matthew, had followed Him from Galilee. And therefore, when the eleven disciples are ( Matthew 28:16) specially mentioned, it can only be as the leaders, as the guides of the entire company. Meyer represents that a threefold tradition regarding the resurrection grew up among the disciples: 1.The purely Galilæan, which is found in Matthew’s account; 2. the purely Judæan, which is given by Luke and John, excluding the appendix, Matthew 21; Matthew 3. the mixed, which narrated both the Galilean and Judæan manifestations, and is found in John, when the appendix is added. Meyer is now willing to admit the historical sequence, that the appearances in Judæa preceded those in Galilee; but he holds still, that the account given by Matthew manifests an ignorance of what occurred in Galilee.^[FN17] From this he deduces the conclusion, that this portion of our Gospel must be the addition of a non-apostolic hand, because such ignorance on the part of Matthew is inconceivable. But against this critic’s assumption we may educe the following:—1. If this assumption be correct, we should expect even from Mark in his Gospel,^[FN18] which was written earlier, and fixed the middle point of the evangelical tradition, only Galilæan appearances, whereas he relates only manifestations in Judæa, 2. Matthew himself relates the Lord’s appearance in Judæa to the women, Matthew 28:9; Matthew 10:3. A post-apostolic writer would most certainly have resorted to the general tradition, and have related both the appearances which took place in Judæa and those which occurred in Galilee4. The assumption of Meyer rests altogether upon the antiquated hypothesis, that every Evangelist intended to narrate, all the facts he knew. On the contrary, we must repeat that the Evangelists arc not to be regarded as poor mechanical chroniclers, but as narrators of the facts of evangelical history, as they assumed in their own minds the form of an organic whole, as one continuous gospel sermon. And here we have an indication that Matthew keeps up throughout the plan of his gospel narrative as distinct from that of Luke. While Luke, the Evangelist of the Gentiles, brings out fully the true prerogatives of Judaism, and describes, therefore, the whole of Christ’s life of activity as a grand procession to Jerusalem, Matthew, the Evangelist of the Jews, endeavors in every instance to disprove the false prerogatives of Judaism, and tarries accordingly mostly in Galilee, describing the Lord’s activity in that district Hence it is that Luke gives, in the introduction to his Gospel, the adoration rendered to the new-born Saviour by Jewish Christians, and closes his history with an account of the Lord’s appearance in Judæa; while Matthew contrasts, in his opening chapters, the adoration on the part of the Gentiles with the persecution of the Jews, and concludes by laying the scene of the grandest manifestation of the Lord in Galilee, in opposition to the city Jerusalem. From this to conclude that Matthew knew nothing more of the resurrection, is a conceit which falls far below^[FN19] a lively appreciation of the free Christian spirit of the Gospels. Meyer himself acknowledges that it is evident, from 1 Corinthians 15:5 ff, that even if all the accounts in the Gospels be combined, we have not a full record of all Christ’s appearances after His resurrection. Meyer, however, is right in opposing the mythical view which Strauss takes of the history of the resurrection, as well as the conversion of the facts connected with resurrection, by Weisse, into magical effects of the departed spirit of Jesus. The actual existence of the Church, as well as the assurance of faith and joy at death’s approach evidenced by the Apostles, cannot be the effect of a myth or a mere ghostly apparition. (See below.)

[The denial of the historical character of the resurrection and the subsequent manifestations of Christ to the disciples, has assumed different forms: 1. The Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist (Reimarus), like the lying Jewish Sanhedrin ( Matthew 28:13), resolved them into downright impostures of the Apostles: this is a moral impossibility and monstrosity unworthy of consideration2. Paulus, of Heidelberg, the exegetical representative of the older commonsense rationalism, sees in the resurrection merely a reviving from an apparent death or trance. This is a physical impossibility in view of the preceding crucifixion and loss of blood3. Strauss: Subjective visions, or more fully in his own words (see his new work on the life of Jesus, published1864, p304): “Purely internal occurrences, which may have presented themselves to the disciples as external visible phenomena, but which we can only understand as facts of an ecstatic condition of mind, or visions.” Similarly the late Dr. Baur of Tübingen (the teacher of Strauss, and founder of the Tübingen school of destructive criticism). This visionary hypothesis is a psychological impossibility, in view of the many appearances, and the large number of persons who saw Christ; as the eleven disciples, and even five hundred brethren at once ( 1 Corinthians 15:6). 4. Weisse: Effects of the ever-living spirit of Christ upon the disciples6. Ewald: Spiritual visions in the ecstasies of desire and prayer (geistige Schauungen in der Entzückung der Sehnsucht und des Gebets). These two views are only modifications of the above theory of Strauss, and equally untenable. Ewald, however, is not clear, and makes an approach to the orthodox view when he remarks: “Christ was seen again by His disciples: nothing is more historical.” (Die drei ersten Evangelien, übersetzt und erklärt; p. Matthew 362: “Christus ward wiedergeschen von den Seinigen: nichts ist geschichtlicher als dies.”) Renan, in his life of Jesus, passes over this stumbling-block with characteristic French levity, promising to examine “the legends of the resurrection” hereafter in the history of the Apostles. All he says upon it at the close of Matthew 26 amounts to a confession of despair at a satisfactory solution. It is this: “The life of Jesus, to the historian, ends with his last sigh. But so deep was the trace which he had left in the hearts of his disciples and of a few devoted women, that, for weeks to come, he was to them living and consoling. Had his body been taken away, or did enthusiasm, always credulous, afterward generate the mass of accounts by which faith in the resurrection was sought to be established? This, for want of peremptory evidence, we shall never know. We may say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalene here enacted the principal part!” All these false views resolve the history of Christianity into an inexplicable riddle, and make it a stream without a fountain, an effect without a cause. Dr. Baur (Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, p40), indeed, thinks that the faith in the resurrection more than the fact of the resurrection was the motive power of the Apostles in their future activity. (So also Strauss, l. c. p289.) But it was the fact which gave to their faith a power that conquered the world and the devil. Faith in mere visions or phantoms may produce phantoms, but not such a phenomenon as the Christian Church, the greatest fact and the mightiest institution in the history of the world. Compare also on this subject the remarks of Meyer, Com. on Matthew, 5 th ed, 1860, p614 (who is quite orthodox as regards the general fact of the resurrection); Guder: Die Thatsächlichkeit der Auferstehung Christi, 1862; an art of Prof. Beyschlag (against Baur) in the Studien und Kritiken, 1864, p197 sqq, and several able articles of Prof. Fisher, of Yale College, against Strauss and Baur, in the New Englander for1864.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. In the end of the (Jewish) Sabbath.—The Evangelist, without doubt, intended by the selection of this peculiar and significant expression to bring forward the fact, that the Christian Sunday had now caused the Jewish Sabbath to cease (and Christianity had now taken the place of Judaism). Sunday is the fulfilment of the Sabbath; but it is not thereby made to be the negation, the destruction of the Sabbath, but its realization in the form of spirit, life, and freedom. Sunday is a new creation, the institution of the Church’s holy day; marked out as such not only by the resurrection, but also by the Lord’s appearances upon that day. But if the external law of the Jewish Sabbath is abrogated for the Church, the Christian State is bound, by its duty to Christ, to see that the law of the day of holy rest is observed, as indeed all the laws of the decalogue, in the spirit of New Testament order and freedom. We see from Acts 20:7 : 1 Corinthians 16:1-2; Revelation 1:10, that Sunday was observed in the days of the Apostles.

2. Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?—This utterance of the three anxious women has become the great symbol of all the sighs of humanity, in its longing for the revelation of the resurrection.

3. The earthquake.—A presage of the resurrection according to that parallel course of development through which the earth is passing along with the kingdom of God. See Matthew 24.

4. The visions of angels.—As the earth, on the one hand, in its grand moment of development, is shaken, and seems rushing to ruin; Song of Solomon, on the other, the heavens unfold. Therefore angels are ever present as ministering spirits at the critical periods in God’s kingdom. But although these angelic appearances are objective, real, and visible, the perception by the on-looking mortals of these heavenly spirits depends upon a state of soul resembling the angelic spirituality; and this disposition of soul depends, again, upon the position occupied in relation to heaven and earth. The more the earth is concealed and buried, like a midnight grave, to the beholders, so much the more clearly do they view the opening heavens. And hence it is that the female disciples were the first to see the angels; and they beheld first one, then two.

5. Fear and great joy.—Transition from the old into the new world, from the old to the new covenant.

6. Into Galilee.—See the Critical Notes.

7. The death and resurrection of Christ considered in and for itself (ontologically).—In the Lord’s death and resurrection a separation took place between the first æon of the natural human world, and the second æon of the eternal spirit-world of humanity ( 1 Corinthians 15:45). Christ’s death is the fulfilment and the completion of death, and therefore also its end, as was already determined in regard to Adam’s death. Where death began, there should it cease, i.e., there should be no death. Physical death is restricted to one zone. This district of death lies between the world of inorganic bodies on the one side, and the spirit-world on the other. The mineral, on the one side, is non-vital; the spirit is non-mortal. Death appears now to extend, between these limits, only over the vegetable, animal, and human worlds. But the death of the plant is well-nigh but allegorical, an appearance of dying: it lives still in the root, the branch, the seed. The dying of the animal, again, is no complete death; there is no full, individual life to resign; it lives only in the general life of nature, and hence it cannot die fully and with consciousness. Actual death begins with conscious Prayer of Manasseh, in order likewise to cease with him, and to be transformed into a new conscious life. Adam was formed, not to die, that Isaiah, was not to see corruption; he was to pass only through a death-like process of transformation, and to undergo a metamorphosis from the natural state of man into the spiritual (the tree of life; Enoch; Elijah; 2 Corinthians 5:4; 1 Corinthians 15:51). But this transformation became subject to the effects and the punishment of moral death, of sin, as God’s condemnation; and thus this transformation passed over into corruption. The “being clothed upon” (symbolized by the metamorphosis of the butterfly-chrysalis) became “the unclothing” (symbolized by the wheat-grain In the earth). Since then was death in the world; the consciousness and the experience of deserved sickness, dissolution, corruption, and imprisonment in the waste death-realm, Sheol. The entire weight of death pressed upon mankind, to their pain and anguish; and yet they were not fully conscious of it ( Hebrews 2:14-15). Christ became our partner in this common subjection to death. He tasted this death ( Hebrews 2:9); received it with full consciousness into His life. Hence death was fulfilled in His life, it was ended, and must again be transformed into the transformation, unto which men were originally destined. Christ’s dying was a death which passed over at once into metamorphosis. Christ’s condition in death was a collision with corruption, in which corruption was overcome; was an entrance into the realm of the dead, which unbound the fetters of that realm. His resurrection was at once resurrection and complete transformation. When the question is asked, Was Christ glorified between His death and resurrection, or during the forty days, or during the ascension? the conceptions of transformation and glorification are confused. The transformation, as the passage from the first into the second life, was decided at the resurrection. Glorification, as His entrance into the heavenly world, could appear in Him even before His death, in the transfiguration upon the mountain, and be viewed by others; and yet after the resurrection, in His first presentation to Mary Magdalene, she mistook Him for the gardener. His actual glorification, decided at His resurrection, became a complete fact upon His ascension; and hence Christ, as the Risen One, is life-principle as well for the resurrection as for the transformation ( 1 Corinthians 15:21; 1 Thessalonians 4:11).

If we would obtain a closer view and more accurate conception of the resurrection, the death of Christ must be contemplated as the ideal, dynamic, and essential end of the old world and humanity. The world continues to move chronologically according to its old existence, and is still expanding in its members (its periphery); but in its centre, the end has been reached in the death and resurrection of Christ. And this being the case, there is of necessity connected with this end the ideal, dynamic, and essential beginning of the new spiritual world, as the resurrection followed the death of Christ. And this event Isaiah, in accordance with its nature, at once an evolution of life (Christ rose), and at the same time an act of God’s righteousness (the Father raised Him). Christ rose from the grave, because He was holy, possessing the Spirit of glory, susceptible of resurrection, and must accordingly cause this very death to become subservient unto life, must overcome this death and transform it. God raised Him, because Hebrews, in and for Himself, had endured this death contrary to right; and yet, likewise, agreeably to right, inasmuch as He had surrendered Himself on behalf of man. Thereby this death of Christ has been made by God the world’s atonement. But when these two points are united, the death of Christ and His resurrection stand forth to our view as the grandest act of the omnipotence of God, and the greatest fact in the glorious revelation of the Trinity ( Ephesians 1:19).

8. The death and resurrection of Christ considered soteriologically.—The soteriological effect is here, as always, threefold; He accomplished: (a) reconciliation as Prophet; (b) expiation as High-Priest; (c) deliverance, redemption, as King (see the author’s Dogmatik, p793). Christ, as Prophet in His reconciliatory working, has overcome the world’s hate by His love, and sealed the grace of God by the blood of His martyr-death; as High-Priest, in His expiatory working, He has taken upon Him the world’s judgment, and changed it into deliverance; as King, in His redemptive working, He has made death itself the emblem of victory over death, or of deliverance from the power of darkness, which sinners were subject unto through death.

In this threefold character and working, He entered Sheol. As Prophet, He has lighted up Sheol, and made it appear as the translation-state from the first to the second and higher life. As High-Priest, He has likewise changed the punishment of the realm of death by taking the penalty of sins freely upon Himself. As King, He has led captivity captive, and opened the prison-house of Sheol ( Ephesians 4:8).

God has made all this sure by setting His seal to it in His resurrection. God Himself recognizes that courageous love and greeting of peace by which He carries His gospel back into that world which had crucified Him. God Himself sends Him back out of the Most Holy as a living sign of, and witness to, the perfect atonement. As the Redeemer, He comes forth in the glory of that triumph, which He shares with own: “O Death, where is thy sting! O Grave, where is thy victory!”

The unity of these results lies in this, that in Christ mankind have been virtually consecrated to their God, have died, been buried, descended into Sheol, risen again, ascended to heaven, and set down at the right hand of God.

Hence it is that the man who resists with demoniac unbelief this working of Christ, is cut off from humanity, and is handed over to the devil and his angels ( Matthew 25).

But to receive the redeeming efficacy of Christ, is to enter into the communion of His life by the communion of His Spirit. This entrance is a prophetic faith, in that we recognize what Christ has become to us; a priestly faith, in that we yield us up to His atoning righteousness; a kingly faith, in that we make, in sanctification, His life our own. The unity of all this lies in the fact, that we die, are buried, rise, and ascend in Christ. As regards his spirit, the Christian belongs to Christ, and in so far all is finished and completed in his salvation; but as regards his nature, he belongs to the world, and in so far he awaits the general end of that world, and a general resurrection with that world.

9. “The intercourse and companionship of the Lord, after His resurrection, with His disciples, during the forty days of joy, bore manifestly a different character from what they did before His death. Through His death and resurrection, the glorification of His body had begun (the transformation of His body was completed);—for, although His resurrection-body bore the marks of the wounds, showing it to be the same body, it was no more subject to the bounds and laws of the bodily existence, as before.” Lisco. For the historic certainty of the resurrection of Jesus, see 1 Corinthians 15; Ullmann: What does the institution of the Christian Church through one who had been crucified presuppose? (Studien und Kritiken, 1832); Lange’s Leben Jesu, ii3, p1738. According to one explanation of the negative criticism of modern unbelief, Jesus was only apparently dead (Paulus); according to the other, the resurrection was an illusion (Strauss). When the two are combined, they are self-destructive.