DEVOTION
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO MATTHEW
IT WILL HAPPEN
Matt 28:8-10
8 So the women hurried away
from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9
Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him,
clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be
afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see
me."
NIV
John does give us another
account of Jesus meeting only with Mary when she stayed by the tomb after Peter
and John had gone in and found the grave clothes folded up and they left to go home.
So then what Matthew's accounts tell us is that Jesus met with these women when
they were on the way to tell the disciples what the angel had said, that Jesus
had risen from the dead and would go ahead of them into Galilee. It does not
matter how these accounts fit together as what these accounts do is
present us with the most important doctrinal issue. We serve a risen Savior!
The doctrine of the resurrection is at the very core of our faith. Without the resurrection
Christianity is a worthless religion, it is meaningless, for, without the resurrection,
we would be serving a dead god, like every other religion in the world.
However, Jesus was raised from the dead, in some sense, at least that is how we
look at it or were told to see it. The fact is that when Jesus was on the
cross, he gave up his spirit, thus he left his body there lifeless, or what we
would call dead. The body was dead, but Jesus was not dead, his spirit left as
he gave it up, and as we have been thinking, took that one thief to paradise,
just as he told him that this very day he would be in paradise with Jesus. Although
many are of the opinion that Jesus descended into hell to preach to the prisoners,
that doctrine, although contained in the Apostle's Creed, the phrase that Jesus
descended into hell does not appear in the scripture. It was not added to
the creed until around 630AD. The earlier versions do not contain that phrase. Secondly, Peter did not mean that Jesus went to
preach and give a second chance of salvation to those who died before he came
to earth. That would mean a whole new doctrine giving everyone a second chance
to be saved after they died. How could that be possible? Then we could live our
life wholly given over to sin, and once we are dead, then we get to accept
Jesus and be saved. This is preposterous to even consider. No, it is through our
faith in Jesus now while we have our one life to live that gives us a resurrection
into eternal life. This is the one and true doctrine that we can have faith in.
When Jesus’s body was in the grave, He was alive, he was in paradise, and then he
returned to take up his body in a glorified state, able to appear in a locked
room. This is our future, to have a resurrected body in a glorified state, perhaps
able to travel at the speed of thought. Because the grave could not hold Jesus,
it will not hold us either. However, that happens, whenever that happens is not
the issue, but it is that it will happen, just as Jesus had told us it would.
We have nothing to be afraid of, even the death of our bodies, for Jesus has
told us so. We will be changed forever, resurrected into a new life. it will be
so because Jesus has told us.
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