(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
The empty tomb
- Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb early, with it still being dark, and she sees that the stone has been removed from the tomb.
- So she runs and comes to Simon Peter and the other disciple who Jesus loved and she tells them: “They took the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t *know where they put Him.”
- So Peter and the other disciple went out and were going to the tomb.
- And the two were running together, and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first.
- And having stooped down, he sees the linen wrappings lying there, yet he didn’t enter.
- So Simon Peter also comes following him, and he entered the tomb and observes the linen wrappings lying there,
- and the head cloth (which was on His head) not lying with the linen wrappings, but *folded separately in another place.
- So the other disciple – the one who came to the tomb first – then also entered and saw and believed,
- for they hadn’t yet understood the scripture, that it’s necessary for Him to rise from the dead.
- So the disciples departed to their own homes.
- But Mary had stood at the tomb, weeping outside. So as she was weeping, she stooped down into the tomb,
- and she sees two angels in white sitting – one at the head and one at the feet – where the body of Jesus had been lying.
- And those angels say to her: “Woman, why are you weeping?” She tells them: “Because they took my Lord, and I don’t *know where they put Him.”
- Having said these things, she turned around and sees Jesus *standing there, and she hadn’t known that it’s Jesus.
- Jesus says to her: “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking?” Thinking that He’s the gardener, she tells Him: “Sir, if you carried Him away, tell me where you put Him and I will take Him away.”
- Jesus says to her: “Mary.” Having turned, that woman says to Him in Hebrew: “Rabboni?” (which means: “teacher”)
- Jesus tells her: “Don’t cling to Me, for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go to My brothers and tell them: ‘I’m ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God’.”
- Mary Magdalene goes to the disciples, announcing that “I have seen the Lord!” and those things He told her.
Jesus appears to the disciples
- So it being evening that same day (the first of the week) and the doors having been *shut where the disciples were because of fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst. And He tells them: “Peace be with you.”
- And having said this, He showed both His hands and His side to them. So having seen the Lord, the disciples rejoiced.
- So Jesus told them again: “Peace be with you. Just as the Father has sent Me out, I also send you.”
- And having said this, He breathed on them and tells them: “Receive the Holy Spirit.
- “If you forgive someone’s sins, they have been forgiven. If you retain someone’s sins, they have been retained.”
- But Thomas (one of the twelve, the man called “Didymus”) wasn’t with them when Jesus came.
- So the other disciples were telling him: “We have seen the Lord!” But he told them: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I definitely won’t believe.”
- And after eight days, His disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Jesus comes despite the *shut doors, and He stood in their midst and said: “Peace be with you.”
- Next He tells Thomas: “Bring your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it into My side; and don’t be unbelieving, but believing.
- Thomas answered and said to Him: “My Lord and My God.”
- Jesus tells him: “You have believed because you have seen Me; blessed are the men who didn’t see and yet believed.”
- So indeed, Jesus did many other signs in His disciples’ presence which haven’t been written in this book.
- But these have been written so you might believe that Jesus is the Anointed, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name.
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