Daily Devotional | Slow to Believe

On the surface, faith seems like it should be easy. The old chorus that urges us to “only believe” may make faith sound like something we can turn on like a light switch. To have faith, one needs only to believe. But simple does not mean easy. Those who first heard the news that Jesus had risen did not accept this news easily.

In chapter 20 of John’s Gospel, we read what seems to be an expansion of an incident Matthew describes only briefly in Matthew 28:9. Upon arriving at the tomb in the darkness, Mary Magdalene saw that the stone had been rolled away and realized the tomb was empty (v. 2). She ran back to the disciples and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” It seems that Mary and the other two women separated for a time as she rushed back to report this news to the disciples and then returned to the tomb. When we compare John’s account to Matthew’s, we can speculate that she encountered Jesus before reentering the tomb to hear the angel’s announcement (v. 2).

John and Peter raced to the tomb. John was the first to arrive, but instead of going in, he bent down and saw the strips of linen from the grave clothes. Peter hurried past him and saw the graveclothes as well as the piece that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head lying in a separate place. When John finally entered, he saw all this and “believed” (v. 8). Yet, according to verse 9, he did not fully grasp what had happened. John accepted the fact that the tomb was empty. Perhaps even that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, neither he nor Peter understood “that Jesus had to rise from the dead” (v. 9).