Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
God himself is present. Throughout Scripture people encountered God and conversed with him. He was at hand, there, where people were. Sometimes his presence made them uncomfortable, and sometimes his presence brought peace and joy. Sometimes it seemed that he had gone away, leaving his people in one wilderness or another. But it always turned out that he had been there all the time. He was the promised “Immanuel” (God with us) (Isa. 7:14, Matt. 1:23), who assured us that he would be with his people to the end of the age (Matt. 28:18). Those who trust in him sometimes wonder where he is, but they always find out that he was there all along.
But on that particular morning, he really was gone! Just plain not there, where he really just had to be. Corpses do not move of their own accord. The dead stay put. That is why the guards at the tomb reacted in terror to the sound and movement of the stone, and because he was gone, they were out of there. They were not about to be held responsible for an empty tomb.
And, of course, they were not responsible for his being gone. But having the blood-stained body wrappings there was not sufficient to protect them from the wrath of the officials. The disappearance of the guards gives witness to the fact that the corpse was gone. The women came to the tomb and returned to tell the disciples that he was gone. Mary Magdalene wept because he was gone. With the mention of her name, Jesus showed his presence. He was gone from the tomb, from death, but he was still present with her. He would soon thereafter assure her and all his disciples that he was going to be present with them till the end of this age, even if in the flesh he was going to be gone from their eyesight for a time (John 16:16).
With angelic wisdom, the voice at the grave questioned what sense it made to seek some live person in a tomb. The women just did not know that Jesus had left death behind and was simply gone. They had begun to reconcile themselves to the fact that he gave up his spirit on the cross and that they would never see him again. But that very evening he popped in on them, right through the door, and with holes in his hands and feet to prove that this was Jesus in the flesh, flesh resurrected—as the flesh of his people will be.
The initial despair of the disciples was so great because they had not fully grasped his promise that he would restore life in the face of death.
He had invited them again and again to join the parade of triumph that would draw all his people in his train through the tomb and out the other end into fellowship with our heavenly Father (Col. 2:15). Martha knew something of the promise of resurrection, but she experienced it when Jesus raised her brother from death (John 11:1-44). How she must have rejoiced when she got word that her friend and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, had come back from death.
The emptiness of Christ’s tomb, or rather, his presence outside the tomb, became the new foundation on which all the disciples built their lives. The darkness of Friday night and all day Saturday disappeared with the dawning of Easter morning, when the fact that he was gone—from the grave—became clear. The angels undoubtedly sang their songs of rejoicing on that morning when one or two of their number had the task of guiding visitors away from the tomb simply because he was gone. The expectant melodies of Bethlehem’s hills on Christmas eve (Luke 2:13-14) became the triumphant choruses of Easter dawn as the angels rejoiced over this soul with its body that was gone, from the tomb.
His departure from the tomb means that Jesus led death captive (Eph. 4:8-10). His Easter triumph has disarmed and defanged death because on the cross Jesus laid our sins in his tomb. When he left, he left them there, out of the Father’s sight. He made a public spectacle of the author of death, the deceiver and murder, Satan, by dying between two criminals. Thus, Paul could rejoice in writing to the Colossians when he rehearsed what the Holy Spirit does when he takes people into Christ’s family through baptism, the promise of resurrection and life (Col. 2:11-15). Jesus nailed the indictment that doomed us to his own cross, where the stains of his blood made it illegible. And then the resurrection—when he was gone from the grave, returned to life.
He left the tomb because it now embraced its architect, the devil, who has to wallow in the sins and shame, the guilt and fear, that Jesus took with him into the tomb and left there when he was gone. Everything that casts shadows over our paths and our lives vanishes with the light that shines from heaven through the empty tomb into each day. Sins are gone because they were trapped in the grave in which he left them the day he was gone. God the Father has placed a “no trespassing” sign in front of his tomb and sealed our transgression, our guilt, our shame, our fear inside. We dare not try to go looking for them there with recollections of guilt that Jesus has taken away.
Given the fact that Jesus Christ is everywhere except swathed in burial wrap, we can live on the basis of his life, death, and resurrection. That means that the fears that crippled us and turned us into ourselves no longer have any ground to stand on with their threats. We are free to live as Christ lived, in self-sacrificial love for others. For he will not leave us in the lurch but will always pop up when we are in dire straits. He is Immanuel.