Mark 16:7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee: there shall you see him, as he said to you. Why was this meeting fixed in Galilee? Why was this long journey to be taken? Why did Jesus go to Galilee at all after His resurrection? Why was it evidently a matter of so much interest and importance to the mind of Jesus to go there? At Jerusalem He was crucified, at Jerusalem He rose, at Jerusalem He ascended; Jerusalem was the place of all honour; why then should He be so careful to go down to that northern province? Many reasons doubtless there were of which I know nothing; but I think we may be permitted to see some of them. 1. One might lie in that very fact of the distance and the difficulty. For it is a universal law that God always requires efforts, and always blesses the efforts He requires. You will not find your best privileges close to your hand. You must be content to go far for them. You must exercise self-denial and labour to get at them. 2. There is no doubt also that Jesus did it partly because Galilee was despised. He had lived in Galilee as a child and youth; He had taken most of His apostles from thence; and now that He was risen and almost glorified, He was not going to pass by the place He loved in humble life. That would not be the Jesus with whom we have to do. 3. Underlying this feeling, there can be little question that there was a great principle upon which Christ acted, — of extending the proofs of His resurrection as widely as possible. Therefore He manifested His risen body in the two extremes of the land to which that dispensation was confined. 4. Christ was true to all the finer sympathies of our nature, and amongst those sympathies is the love of old, and especially early, associations. (James Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. |
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