God’s Word for You
Mark 16:6 The Gospel
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, April 4, 2024
6 He said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
We hear the angel (1) comfort the women not to be alarmed, (2) identify Jesus clearly, (3) proclaim the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, (4) point out that he is not here (therefore he is elsewhere), and (5) come and see the place where Nicodemus and Joseph laid him.
The comfort the angel gives is the gospel. Their many fears can be set aside. They are in no danger of being arrested or harmed. Jesus’ body has not been moved or vandalized. No one connected with Jesus is currently in any danger at all. And lastly, they are about to be told exactly what they want to know.
The clear identification of Jesus is the gospel. What good news, that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the angel called Jesus ‘the Nazarene,” the very one that the women came to see, is the one who was crucified and who has now risen from the dead. While no heresy or theory I have ever heard of has ever tried to claim that someone other than Jesus might have been the one to rise from the dead (to do so would be to claim the miracle of the resurrection anyway), the simple fact is that no one else was in the tomb, and therefore the one who is gone is the same one who was buried. The new tomb of Joseph was one in which “no one had ever been laid” (John 19:41; Matthew 27:60). It was the tomb of Christ, and was until this time the tomb only of Christ.
The proclamation of the resurrection is the gospel. A body that has died and is said to have risen can only mean one thing, and therefore the usual word for “risen” is the Greek aorist tense, a verb form used to describe the fact or truth of an action rather than its tense. “Risen” means “he is in fact, truthfully, risen from the dead.” Jesus himself proclaimed why we should believe in the resurrection and not doubt when he said to the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, “You are wrong because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). It is from the Scriptures that Jesus wants us to learn about the power of God, and the will of God. And the will of God is united to his omnipotent power. What is there that God cannot do? What is there that God says he does that he does not do? If the resurrection were not in God’s mind, he would not have set it in man’s heart through the inspired word. The resurrection appears in the text of the Scriptures in almost all of the books.
Genesis 3:15. The works of the devil, even death, will be crushed.
Genesis 4:10. The blood of Abel still cries out, “he is still speaking” (Hebrews 11:4).
Genesis 12:3, 18:18; etc. All nations will be blessed through Christ. Since death (temporal and eternal) is part of the curse, when the curse is lifted, all will be blessed with life.
Exodus 3:6. God is the God of the living (see Mark 12:26-27).
Leviticus 23:9-11. Paul calls the risen Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20,23), therefore the firstfruits offering is a foreshadowing of the resurrection.
These are only a few examples from Moses. There are many others throughout the Old and New Testaments.
By pointing out that Jesus was not there, the angel proclaimed the gospel. The absence of the risen Christ showed that he is no longer slave to anyone, including death. The risen Christ no longer has the form or nature of a servant (as we are told in Philippians 2:7), but in his risen body is glorified in every way. And as Paul teaches of the risen Christ, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14). God has now given to the risen Jesus exaltation to the highest place, and “the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:9-10), which reminds us not only of his resurrection, but also of his descent into hell, since he triumphed over those in hell and made a public spectacle of them by the cross in his descent (Colossians 2:15).
The angel’s invitation to the women to see the place where his body had been laid is also the gospel, since it proves that the tomb was precisely the one where he had been laid and that his absence was not some trick. Here he was; here he is not. Like the man who was thrown into Elisha’s tomb, he had been there (2 Kings 13:21)—about that there could be no doubt or dispute—but he was gone, risen.
The gospel is not merely a biography of Christ (the story of his life and suffering as witnessed by men) but it reveals to us the meaning and the achievements of Christ’s life and death. The gospel tells us of God’s love, who sent his Son into the world to save us (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). The gospel tells us that Jesus made full atonement for our sins (Hebrews 9:12) and reconciled us to God (Romans 5:10). These things are accomplished. The gospel does not reveal a merely possible grace of God, but the actual grace of God, offered to mankind and conveyed through faith. The angel’s message was the gospel; the gospel in every respect. Through his message and every point we know that Christ is risen. “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Corinthians 6:14).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.