As we have seen earlier, Christ’s birth, earthly ministry, betrayal, and crucifixion can all be described in triplets reflecting His triune nature. This pattern continues through His resurrection and beyond!
Jesus prophesied to His disciples that after He was
crucified and buried, He would spend three
days in the tomb and rise again on
the third day (Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23;
20:18-19; Mark 9:31;10:34; Luke 9:22;18:33). Even the Romans had heard of this
prophecy, as they warned Pilate about it for
fear that the disciples would steal His body to deceive others into thinking
Jesus had risen from the dead (Matthew
27:63-64).
Christ’s actual resurrection
after three days was foreshadowed by earlier events in Scripture and by His
own use of symbolic language. He had said that he could destroy the temple of
God and rebuild it in three days (Matthew 26: 61), which referred
metaphorically to His willingly laying down His life and taking it up again three days later.
Jesus spoke of leaving His earthly body and entering His glorified body as being “perfected” on the third day. This was the most significant of the three miracles He told the Pharisees to relay to Herod, whom they said was threatening His life. The other two miracles were casting out devils and curing the sick (Luke 13: 31-32).
Even at the beginning of Genesis, the third day of creation symbolized the
resurrection, when God created the earth appearing from beneath the water (Genesis
1 :9-13). Baptism uses this same symbolism of the believer submerged beneath the
water to represent burial of the old man and sin nature, and coming up out of
the water to represent living as a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Jesus explained His coming burial and resurrection by
likening it to the prophet Jonah being entombed for three days and three nights in the whale's belly (Jonah 1:17),
saying that He also would be for three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He admonished the Jews,
who were always looking for a sign to identify the Messiah, that this sign of
His resurrection after three days
would be the only one given to them (Matthew 12: 39-40).
When the women came to Christ’s tomb that first Easter
morning and were shocked to find it empty, two angels reassured them that He
was risen and reminded them of His three
prophecies: “The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men,
and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” (Luke 24:7)
Luke names three
women who told the unbelieving disciples of these remarkable happenings: Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother
of James (Luke 24:10). Still bewildered, two disciples set forth to
Emmaus to talk things over on a long walk, which was about threescore furlongs from Jerusalem (Luke 24:13).
Jesus appeared to these two and joined them, making three travelers to Emmaus. In their
grief and confusion they did not realize Who accompanied them (Luke 24:15-16), even though they
said that it was the third day since His
death (Luke 24:21). Jesus patiently
yet fervently explained to them how all the Scriptures revealed Himself, yet
they did not recognize Him until dinner, when He blessed the bread, broke
it, and gave it to them (Luke 24:30).
Here is how Luke described their triplets of miraculous revelation:
Luke 24: 31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. 32 And they said one to another,
Did not our heart burn within us,
while he talked with us by the way,
and while he opened to us the scriptures?
So Cleopas and his companion raced back to Jerusalem to
tell the others of this Christ-sighting. Yet no sooner did they return and
share the news than Jesus appeared in their midst, greeted by triplets of fear,
not joy, from the disciples. They were “terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit
(Luke 24: 37).
But Jesus reassured them that He was not a ghost by three types of physical evidence: He showed them His hands and feet, He
allowed them to handle His flesh and
bones, and He even ate before them!
(Luke 24: 38-43).
Next Jesus gave them three
sources of Scriptural evidence about
Himself: the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms (Luke 24:44).
But He emphasized the most important prophecy: that He would rise from the dead on the third day (Luke 24:45).
When the disciples went fishing, perhaps to clear their
heads, or even thinking they might return to their former way of life now that
Jesus was gone, He appeared to them. John tells us that this was the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples
after He was risen from the dead (John
21:14). After instructing the disciples where to catch a boat load of
fish, He feeds them a delectable breakfast that He had already prepared.
Three
times, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him, allowing Peter three opportunities to affirm his love
and cleanse his conscience of the three times
he denied Christ.(Matthew 26:75;
Mark 14:72; John 13:38).
Although Christ asked if Peter loved Him with agape, or self-sacrificing love, Peter stated his love using the
term phileo, or kindly affection as
one would have toward a brother. In response to Peter’s declarations, three times Jesus asked Peter to “Feed my
sheep (lambs).” (John 21:
15-17).
Before ascending to Heaven, Jesus gave His disciples the three commands of the Great Commission:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19).
Paul reinforced and expanded on Jesus’s earthly
teachings about rising on the
third day as he explained the Gospel
of grace revealed to Him by Christ;
namely eternal life for all who place their faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:4) as the only
Way to Heaven (John 14:6). Praise God that Christ conquered death, that we
serve a risen Saviour, and that we
live with Him forever more!
© 2013 Laurie Collett
Painting by Arkangel Siete
