Power of the Risen Christ: Encountering Jesus along Life's Road
By Charles Swindoll
Charles Swindoll is Senior Pastor of Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, TX, and Chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary.
In the first century, Christian gatherings customarily read this and other writings aloud. So, when the audience heard Cleopas putting all the clues together without understanding their meaning, the tension must have become unbearable for the audience. I imagine someone in the congregation finally reaching a breaking point and blurting out something like, “He’s risen, you fool!”
Cleopas and his companion saw everything clearly in the sense that they had all the facts; nevertheless, they lacked the ability to see what should have been plainly visible. Three faulty perspectives coated their eyes like layers of dark film, shielding them from the truth and keeping them perpetually groping for answers in a despairing darkness. Jesus came to them to peel away the faulty perspectives one layer at a time until they could see clearly.
First, their viewpoint lacked a spiritual dimension, leaving them with a merely human understanding of the events. Take note of how Cleopas characterized the death of Jesus. Don't miss the lack of any divine involvement. He saw Jesus as “a prophet before God and all the people,” but the chief priests and rulers “handed Him over” and “crucified Him.”
Jesus, however, didn’t see the events that way. In His trial before Pilate, He said, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). The disciple Peter would later declare to the same “chief priests and rulers,”
“Jesus the Nazarene, a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed among you through him, just as you yourselves know C this man, who was handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing him to a cross at the hands of Gentiles.” (Acts 2:22-23; emphasis added)
Peter then added, “The things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:18).
Shortly after this, the community of believers identified with the voluntary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. While enduring persecution, they praised God saying, “Indeed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed to do as much as your power and your plan had decided beforehand would happen” (Acts 4:27-28 NET).
Now, that’s viewing the world from a divine perspective! They recognized that the people who thought they were playing such a significant role in history – people like Pontius Pilate, Annas, and Caiaphas – were nothing more than pieces of lint on the page of prophecy. While God is not the author of evil and He never prompts or condones sin, nothing occurs without His sovereign oversight. Others may choose to do evil deeds and God’s people may suffer in the short term, but He will transform the evil intentions of evil people into opportunities for the enrichment of those in His care.