Bible Study series: Luke 24:36-43. Jesus has to show himself alive, to get the mission started. The first-time, pioneering missionaries need him to appear.
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click here:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Luke 24:36-43
36 Now, while they were speaking about these things, he stood in the middle of them and said to them, “Peace to you!” 37 They were terrified and became filled with fear and were thinking they were seeing a spirit. 38 He then said to them, “Why are you disturbed and why are doubts rising in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet because I myself am he! Touch me and look, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, just as you perceive me having. 40 And saying this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 While they were still not believing from joy and were astonished, he said to them, “Do you have food in this place here?” 42 They gave him a portion of broiled fish. 43 And he took it and ate in front of them. (Luke 24:36-35)
Comments:
36:
The appearance was sudden. There he was! Wow. Were they startled! He said, “Shalom to you!”
“peace”: It speaks of more than just the absence of war. It can mean prosperity and well-being. It can mean peace in your heart and peace with your neighbor. Best of all, it means peace with God, because he reconciled us to him.
Let’s explore more deeply the peace that God brings.
This word in Hebrew is shalom and means well being, both in the soul and in circumstances, and it means, yes, prosperity, because the farm in an agricultural society would experience well being and harmony and growth. The crops would not fail and the livestock would reproduce. Society and the individual would live in peace and contentment and harmony. Deut. 28:1-14 describes the blessings for obedience, a man and his family and business enjoying divine goodness and benefits and material benefits.
With that background, let’s explore the Greek word, which overlaps with shalom. It is the noun eirēnē (pronounced ay-ray-nay, used 92 times, and we get the name Irene from it). One specialist defines it: “Peace is a state of being that lacks nothing and has no fear of being troubled in its tranquility; it is euphoria coupled with security. … This peace is God’s favor bestowed on his people.” (Mounce, p. 503).
BDAG, a thick Greek lexicon, has this definition for the noun: (2) It is “a state of well-being, peace.” Through salvation we have peace with God (Rom. 5:1). We have peace that has been brought through Christ (Col. 3:15). We are to run towards the goal of peace (2 Pet. 3:14; Rom. 8:6). It is the essential characteristic of the Messianic Age (Acts 10:36; Rom. 10:15). An angel greeted and promised the shepherds peace on earth for those in whom God is well pleased, at the birth of the Messiah (Luke 2:29). In the entire Gospel of Luke, Jesus was ushering in the kingdom of God.
Do I Really Know God? He Is the God of Peace
37:
They were more than startled. They were terrified and became fearful. This is excessive fear. They lowered themselves down from reverential awe of God to human fear, survival of the cautious. Modern scholars have said that the first century was superstitious and the people easily believed in the resurrection, but of course Jesus’s resurrection didn’t really happen, certainly not physically, so say these modern philosophers. However, this verse and others teach us that these people of the first century were not “cheap,” gullible believers; they were not superstitious, but they really had doubts about his resurrection, even when he appeared right in front of them, suddenly. Back then people understood, as well as we modern sophisticates do, that people simply didn’t come back from the dead. But clearly Jesus did.
They thought they were seeing a spirit or ghost. It’s the same Greek word, so I decided to be consistent and translate it as spirit. God does not allow your dead relatives to visit you like this. If you claim any visitation like this, then this is a demonic spirit. In 1 Sam. 28, Samuel visited Saul in an apparition, and it seems really to have been Samuel, who delivered an explanation to Saul as to why God has taken the kingdom away from him and given it to David. However, we have to be careful about transferring this unique episode to our lives today, because Saul was outside of God’s will and lost everything. He was under divine judgment that only a king goes through. He lost his bearings and broke parameters in a Satanic environment. Unique supernatural cases make for bad general practice.
Just say no to Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Fortunetelling
38:
Doubts can surge in your hearts and minds. That’s almost how I translated the verb, which fundamentally means “I go up.” But I decided to go with “rise up.” It is stunning to me that Jesus has to call them out about doubts when he is standing right in front of them. It shows that doubts can rise up in our hearts in the strangest places. The best way to counter them is to feed your faith. That’s what Jesus is doing in this verse. He is offering the ocular (eyewitness) evidence. He is about to permit them to touch him. If you have doubts about the resurrection, then go online to many websites and look at the evidence that these fine men and women of God offer you. Feed your faith. Starve your doubts.
39-40:
He reassures them many times, telling them that he is different from a spirit, because he has flesh and bones that spirits do not have. He tells them to touch his hands and feet. He must have lifted up one foot or sat down in a chair to lift up both feet. Or they bent over to touch his feet. I like to break things down to the nitty-gritty, and how else were they to touch his feet?
I myself am he. Egō eimi autos. (pronounced eh-goh ay-mee ow-toss) “I am he.” The pronoun autos is emphatic. Without it, it could be translated as “I am” or better “I am (he),” because he is identifying himself. With it, it is better to say “I myself am he.” Is there a reference to the I Am of Exod. 3:14 (through the Septuagint)? It cannot be ruled out completely. Come to think of it, I now see the connection. Firm.
41-43:
It is possible to have joy and still doubt because it was mixed with skeptical wonderment. It is better just to have joy. The point, however, that Luke is making is that they had mixed emotions and mental states. They want to believe, but they cannot yet. Joy overwhelmed them. “Is this really happening?! I can’t believe it!”
Therefore, he gives them more evidence that it is he. He eats fish in front of them. I wonder whether he would have broken bread if they had had any. I’m sure he would have, as he did for Cleopas and his companion. But fish is what they offered him. I see them standing and sitting in the room, staring at him.
However, they must have believed to some degree because in v. 52, as he ascends, they worship him.
Before we shift to Jesus’s commission of them (24:44-49), let’s read what my favorite theologian J. Rodman Williams wrote in his three-volume systematic theology Renewal Theology about the resurrected body. He comments on these verses in Luke and other ones at the end of the four Gospels and 1 Cor. 15, writing:
Thus Jesus emphasized that He was not a different Jesus from whom they had known before, but that in His whole person—which included his body—He was totally alive again. Resurrection could not have occurred if the body had been missing. He just as firmly denied being a spirit … We may, then, properly speak of the essential identity of Jesus’ resurrected life with His life before. He had not been changed from body into spirit, but was the same Jesus they had known in the flesh. (vol. 1, p. 386)
Then he adds that some transformation occurred, but the transformation did not obliterate the continuity between Jesus’s earthly body and his new one:
Indeed a transformation had unmistakably occurred. There was something unique here. Other resurrections are reported in the Gospels, but none such—for all their wonder—signify a new mode of spiritual existence. They were only resuscitations of corporal existence. They represent transitory returns to physical life, and in due time the resuscitated person died once more. Jesus, on the contrary, was raised not to die again but to continue living. Thus, the resurrection, though its bodily, is not a continuing physical life but a spiritual one. … Thus while there is an essential identity and a continuity between Jesus’ existence prior to and after His resurrection (there is no transition into a disembodied state), the is also an otherness and a certain discontinuity from what had preceded. (vol. 1, p. 387)
Finally, all the resurrection narratives lie on the borderline between mystery and the commonplace.
Thus all the resurrection narratives are on the mysterious borderline between the commonplace and the unusual, the natural and supernatural. Another dimension of human reality is for the first time becoming manifest. There is both identity and otherness, continuity and discontinuity, familiarity and unfamiliarity. It all suggests that something new and inexplicable has for the first time come about. This is the transformation of physical existence into a higher order of spiritual existence: the spiritual body of the resurrection! (vol. 1, p. 388)
Source: Do I Really Know Jesus? What was His Resurrected Body Like?
Further, here is a table of the resurrection appearances. I hope it clarifies the main passages:
|
Resurrection Appearances |
|||
| Appearance | Place | Time | Scriptures |
| The Empty Tomb | Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Mt. 28:1-10; Mk. 16:1-8; Lk. 24:1-12; Jn. 20:1-9 |
| Mary Magdalene | In a garden in Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Mk. 16:9-11; Jn. 11-18 |
| Other women | Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Mt. 28:9-10 |
| Two men on Road to Emmaus | Emmaus seven miles from Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Mk. 16:12-13; Lk. 24:13-32 |
| Peter | Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Lk. 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5 |
| Ten disciples in upper room | Jerusalem | Resurrection Sunday | Lk. 24:36-43; Jn. 20:19-25 |
| Eleven disciples in upper room | Jerusalem | Following Sunday | Mk. 16:14; Jn. 20:26-31; 1 Cor. 15:5 |
| Seven disciples | Sea of Galilee | Some time later | Jn. 21:1-23 |
| Eleven disciples on mountain | Galilee | Some time later | Mt. 28:16-20; Mk. 16:15-18 |
| More than five hundred | Unknown | Some time later | 1 Cor. 15:6 |
| James | Unknown | Some time later | 1 Cor. 15:7 |
| His disciples at his ascension | Mount of Olives | Forty days after resurrection | Lk. 24:44-49; Ac. 1:3-8 |
| Paul | Damascus | Several years later | Ac. 9:1-9, 22:3-16, 26:9-18; 1 Cor. 9:1 |
| Adapted from NIV Study Bible, p. 1754. | |||
Also see Do I Really Know Jesus? He Appeared to His Disciples
David L. Turner in his commentary Matthew: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 683-84, has a magnificent section in his commentary on “Without the resurrection,” which I modify here:
Without the resurrection…
Jesus’s redemptive act of dying for sinners would not have divine endorsement. The Father would not declare that Jesus’s death was victorious and the blood shed on the cross to initiate the new covenant would be effective (Rom. 4:25).
His promise that he would rise from the dead (12:40; 16:21; 17:9; 20:19; 26:32) would be empty, and his death would be scorned or pitied, but not believed or obeyed (1 Cor. 15:16-19)
Jesus could not save people from their sins, just as the angel had promised (1:21), for he would be cursed with infamy because he hanged on a tree or wooden pole (Deut. 21:22-23; Gal. 3:13).
There would be no apostolic foundation of the church (16:18), since the apostles deserted him at his arrest and death. Yet his resurrection turned them back and restored them and made them into disciples (26:27-29; 28:7, 10, 16-20).
There would be no complete model of sacrificial living. By dying to self, you gain your soul. Genuinely abundant living occurs when one gives up one’s own life, but without the resurrection the new orientation is short-circuited (10:38-39; 16:24-26; 20:26-28; 23:12; cf. Rom. 6:1-11).
There would be no eschatological shalom to rectify all earthly wrongs and renew the world (19:28). Shalom means peace and prosperity and wellbeing, and this will happen at the end of the age. But it would not happen without the resurrection.
The martyrs whose blood cries out from the ground would experience no justice or vindication (23:35; Rev. 6:9-11). Those who commit violence would not be held accountable without an ultimate reckoning (13:37-42; Dan. 12:2). “Satan would win the cosmic battle.”
People could not hope for their own resurrection and reward (13:43; 16:27; 25:31-40; 27:51-52). Jesus’s ethical teaching said that there would be judgment and reward in the coming kingdom (4:17; 5:12; 7:1-2, 21). What would become of the thrones of the twelve apostles and the rewards Jesus promised to all his disciples (6:9-21; 13:43; 19:27-29; cf. Dan. 12:3; Rev. 2:26-27; 3:21)?
The kingdom would never come to earth and be implemented fully, as it is in heaven (6:10, 33).
Jesus’s “climatic saving act of dying for sinners by crucifixion would lack interpretation and proof of divine acceptance.” The preaching of the cross (Gal. 6:14; 1 Cor. 18-25; 1 Pet. 1:19; Heb. 2:9, 14; 9:12-14; Rev. 5:6-9) would be insignificant and meaningless.
To sum up, the gospel must include the cross and the resurrection, side by side. The gospel must be communicated with the saving power of the cross, and the proof of the saving power of the cross comes through the resurrection. “Any ‘gospel’ that does not place Jesus’s resurrection alongside Jesus’s death is not the authentic message of Jesus and the apostles.”
Scriptures for the resurrection:
Acts 2:32; 3:15, 26; 4:2, 10, 33; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30-37; 17:18, 31; 23:6; 24:21; 25:19; 26:8, 23
Rom. 1:4; 4:25; 6:4-5; 8:11; 10:9
1 Cor. 15:3-8, 12-23, 32, 42.
2 Cor. 4:10, 14; 13:4
Gal. 1:1
Eph. 1:20; 2:5; 4:10
Phil. 2:8-9
Col. 2:12; 3:1-4
1 Thess. 4:14
1 Tim. 3:16
Heb. 1:3; 10:12; 12:1
1 Pet. 1:21; 3:18-22
Rev. 1:5, 18; 2:8; 5:6-10
Thus, the apostolic community, some of whom were infallibly inspired to write the NT, believed that the resurrection was the foundation of their faith. So it should be the foundation of our faith too. Are we better than their generation?
GrowApp for Luke 24:36-43
1. It is stunning that the disciples doubted right in front of Jesus. He met their needs with evidence. Have you ever doubted? How did you starve your doubts and feed your faith?
RELATED
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3. Church Fathers and Luke’s Gospel
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
