From Matthew 28:11-15

Is the picture above one of a white vase, or two silhouetted faces? It depends on your perspective.

The eye of faith grasps one thing. The eye of unbelief, another.

It would be hard to find a contrast more stark than that contain in verses 11-15, over and against 16-20.

The first is a commission to lie and obscure the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. It was designed to keep people in darkness and bondage.

Vs. 11 says that while the Marys were off telling the disciples the good news of Jesus resurrection, some of the guard went to the chief priests. Both told the very same story. But both came to very different responses. And herein is the work of Satan in the world writ large for us to see.

In Eden, Satan’s chief tool and tactic was to obscure the truth – especially the truth about God. Nothing has changed. This is why the Word of God is so central to the Believer, and the World as a whole. We must have some source of “true-truth” as Francis Schaeffer would phrase it. Personal perspectives, opinions and conjectures can bring eternal life to no one. We must know what THE truth really is if we are to know God and know ourselves.

We must know that God crested the heavens and the earth. That all that exists exists with a purpose and that by the omnipotent God who made it all for His own purposes.

We must know that humankind was made in the image of this God.

We must know that humankind – to a man – has rebelled against God’s right of supremacy over our lives, and that we are lost and condemned in our sin of rebellion.

We must know that God in His constitutional holiness and justice cannot simply dismiss sin, but must satisfy His own justice in judgment.

We must know that we have no means to be reconciled to our Creator by our own devices.

We must know God’s only provided means for that reconciliation, in having sent His Son – Jesus the Christ – to live in perfect holiness, and die a substitutionary death on a cross to satisfy His justice, and make a way for the unjust.

We must know that this salvation is held out to us, not because we deserve it, but because in His glorious, inscrutable love and grace – He delights to rescue His enemies and reconcile them to Himself, and at that, at the highest cost imaginable.

We must know that the only way we can have access to this salvation and reconciliation is by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of this Jesus.

Without knowledge of these basic realities, we live lost, aimless, purposeless, ultimately meaningless lives which end in judgement.

The second commission was by Jesus to the Marys to go and tell.

What the women told the disciples, motivated them to go to Galilee that they might see Jesus. What the guards told the priests, motivated them to do everything they could to keep people from seeing Jesus. And so it remains today.

The facts remained the same for both. Jesus rose from the dead. Angels attended His resurrection. He appeared to many. We will either embrace these truths so as to fall at the feet of the Savior, or respond by indifference and/or deliberate opposition. This is the difference that defines our eternity.

To you reader, if you do not yet know Him – know this: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

God has put Him forward. Receive Him by faith.