The point of view of the women and the disciples after Jesus died

After Jesus died on the cross and before He rose again, what might it have felt like to the women such as Mary his mother, and his disciples? This year at Easter I pondered this question. 

The women went to the tomb early in the morning with the intent of preparing the body for burial. As they went, was there any doubt creeping into their heads about Jesus? If I was one of them, I would have surely been tempted to wonder if He was really the son of God. If He was killed, what was the point of this? 

Of course, his mother Mary had the advantage of knowing the entire time that Jesus truly was the son of God - an angel had come to her to tell her when she was pregnant. An angel had visited her husband Joseph too, to give him the same information. But even knowing that Jesus was the son of God, did Mary wonder at any point whether God's plan had gone awry somewhere at the end? Or was she confident about the way things happened? And how about the disciples? The disciples had seen miracles happen, they witnessed this with their own eyes. They also believed Jesus was the son of God. Yet, after He died but before He rose, did doubts creep into their minds? Did they wonder why He didn't save himself (or perhaps why God didn't save him from death?) 

Added into this mix was significant societal pressure from the religious leaders of the time, the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were trying to get the Israelites to believe that Jesus was a heretic and not the son of God. Added further into this was the Roman Empire, who were in charge of the area and whose customs and laws were different from those of the Israelites. 

Surely, it would have been difficult at this point in time - before Jesus rose - for anyone to have been of one mind, fully believing that Jesus was the son of God. But maybe they were. Maybe they were so confident from their faith and from knowing the character of Jesus and all of the evidence that He was who he said He was, that they knew without a shadow of a doubt.

I freely admit that doubts would have crept into my mind if I were in their place - and even if I was confident of Jesus being the son of God, I would have worried that something had gone wrong with God's plan. Of course, it's a different situation after Jesus rose again. Jesus was the sacrifice that paid for all of our sins. But at that in-between time, it must have been tempting to have doubts.

The Bible doesn't say much about the point of view of the women before He rose. So we can never know what was going through their heads as they went to the tomb to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. They were, at the very least, expecting to see a body. 

Yet, with Jesus having risen, it all makes sense. In hindsight and from reading the Bible,  you can see that Jesus was the sacrifice for our sins. But the women didn't have that knowledge yet. This means that we too are living like them, at least in one sense. We are living before the parts of the Bible that are yet to come - the End of Days. We shouldn't be quick to dismiss parts of the Bible we don't understand or that don't make sense. Instead we should read the Bible with an open mind, realizing that we ourselves right now may be in the position of the women after Jesus died but before He rose. 

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