Luke 24:5

Luke 24:5 . ἐμφόβων , fear-stricken, from ἔμφοβος , chiefly in late writers, for ἐν φόβῳ εἶναι . Vide Hermann, ad Viger. , p. 607.— τὸν ζῶντα , the living one, simply pointing to the fact that Jesus was risen: no longer among the dead.— μετὰ τῶν νεκρῶν , among the dead. The use of μετὰ in the sense of among, with the genitive, is common in Greek authors, as in Pindar’s line ( Pytkia , v., 127): μάκαρ μὲν ἀνδρῶν μέτα ἔναιεν . Wolf mentions certain scholars who suggested that μετὰ τ . νεκρῶν should be rendered “with the things for the dead,” i.e. , the spices and mortuaria . But of this sense no example has been cited.

(5) Why seek ye the living among the dead? —Better, as in the margin, Him that liveth. The question was enough to change the whole current of their thoughts. The Lord whom they came to honour as dead was in very deed “living,” was emphatically “He that liveth,” alive for evermore ( Revelation 1:18 ). The primary meaning of the words is, of course, limited to this; but like the parallel, “let the dead bury their dead” (see Note on Matthew 8:22 ), they suggest manifold applications. It is in vain that we seek “Him that liveth” in dead works, dead formulæ, dead or dying institutions. The eternal life that is in Christ is not to be found by looking into the graves of the past in the world’s history, or in those of our individual life. In both cases it is better to rise, as on the “stepping-stones of our dead selves,” to “higher things.”

Luke THE FIRST EASTER SUNRISE THE LIVING DEADLuke 24:5 - Luke 24:6 . We can never understand the utter desolation of the days that lay betwixt Christ’s Death and His Resurrection. Our faith rests on centuries. We know that that grave was not even an interruption to the progress of His work, but was the straight road to His triumph and His glory. We know that it was the completion of the work of which the raising of the widow’s son and of Lazarus were but the beginnings. But these disciples did not know that. To them the inferior miracles by which He had redeemed others from the power of the grave, must have made His own captivity to it all the more stunning; and the thought which such miracles ending so must have left upon them, must have been something like, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save.’ And therefore we can never think ourselves fully back to that burst of strange sudden thankfulness with which these weeping Marys found those two calm angel forms sitting with folded wings, like the Cherubim over the Mercy-seat, but overshadowing a better propitiation, and heard the words of my text, ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen.’ But yet, although the words before us, in the full depth and preciousness of their meaning, of course could only be once fulfilled, we may not only gather from them thoughts concerning that one death and resurrection, but we may likewise apply them, in a very permissible modification of meaning, to the present condition of all who have departed in His faith and fear; since for us, too, it is true that, whenever we go to an open grave, sorrowing for those whom we love, or oppressed with the burden of mortality in any shape, if our eyes are anointed, we can see there sitting the quiet angel forms; and if our ears be purged from the noise of earth, we can hear them saying to us, in regard to all that have gone away, ‘Why seek ye the living in these graves? They are not here; they are risen, as He said.’ The thoughts are very old, brethren. God be thanked that they are old! Perhaps to some of you they may come now with new power, because they come with new application to your own present condition. Perhaps to some of you they may sound very weak, and ‘words weaker than your grief will make grief more’;-but such as they are, let us look at them for a moment or two together now. The first thought, then, that these words of the angel messengers, and the scene in which we find them, suggest, is this-The dead are the living.