The Stubbornness of Unbelief Text: Mark 16:12-13
Introduction: The Hardness of Appointed Witnesses
We come now to a portion of Mark's gospel that modern, effete scholarship wants to put in brackets, as though God somehow fumbled the ending of His own book. But the testimony of the church has been firm, and the content of these verses is entirely consistent with the rest of God's revelation. What we find here is not a textual problem, but a spiritual one. The problem is not with the manuscript evidence; the problem is with the hardness of the human heart, a hardness that is on full display here, even among the chosen apostles.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central, immovable fact of all history. It is the hinge upon which the door of salvation swings. If Christ is not raised, our faith is futile, and we are still in our sins. It is the event that separates all of human history into two great epochs: before and after. But for those who were closest to Him, the disciples who had walked with Him for three years, this glorious, world-altering truth was not something they received with open arms. They received it with folded arms. They were not eager believers; they were stubborn skeptics. Their initial response was not faith, but a dogged, mulish unbelief.
We have already seen them dismiss the testimony of Mary Magdalene. She, a faithful witness, came with the greatest news the world has ever heard, and they treated it as an idle tale. Now, in our text, we see the second wave of witnesses arrive. Two more disciples, men this time, have seen the risen Lord with their own eyes. They rush back to the apostolic circle, breathless with the news, only to run headlong into the same brick wall of unbelief. This is not a flattering portrait of the apostles. Scripture does not airbrush its heroes. It shows them to us, warts and all, so that we might understand that the power of the gospel is not in the quality of the vessel, but in the glory of the treasure the vessel contains.
This persistent unbelief of the disciples is, ironically, one of the great proofs of the resurrection. If the apostles had been gullible men, prone to wishful thinking, their testimony would be worthless. If they had invented the story, they would have made themselves look far more heroic and perceptive. But what we have is a record of hard-headed men who had to be confronted, convinced, and ultimately rebuked by the risen Christ Himself. Their skepticism was not an intellectual problem to be solved with more data, but a spiritual problem that had to be conquered by a direct encounter with the resurrected Lord of glory.
The Text
After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the countryside. And they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either.
(Mark 16:12-13 LSB)
The Emmaus Encounter (v. 12)
We begin with the appearance itself, a brief summary of the longer account we find in Luke's gospel.
"After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the countryside." (Mark 16:12)
The phrase "after that" connects this event directly to the previous one, the appearance to Mary Magdalene. The evidence is mounting. God is not being stingy with His witnesses. He is patiently, graciously accumulating the testimony. These two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, the epicenter of God's redemptive work. They are downcast, defeated, and retreating. Their hopes had been crucified with Christ, and they are heading back to the normalcy of their old lives. This is what unbelief does; it makes you walk in the wrong direction.
And it is here, on the road of retreat, that Jesus meets them. He comes to them "in a different form." Luke tells us that "their eyes were kept from recognizing Him" (Luke 24:16). This was not because Jesus had a resurrection body that was utterly unrecognizable, for Mary knew Him when He spoke her name, and the apostles would later recognize Him as well. Rather, this was a sovereign, divine act. He veiled their perception of Him for a specific purpose. He wanted to teach them, and us, a crucial lesson: faith does not come by sight alone. He wanted to show them that the key to understanding His resurrection was not first in their eyeballs, but in the Scriptures.
He walks with them, opens the Scriptures to them, from Moses and all the Prophets, and explains to them how the Christ had to suffer these things and then enter into His glory. He sets their hearts on fire with the Word before He opens their eyes to the Word made flesh. This is the divine pattern. We do not come to the Word through our experiences; we interpret our experiences through the Word. He appeared in a "different form" so that they would learn to see Him in His true form, which is revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture. The resurrection body of Christ is a true, physical body, but it is a glorified body, and our ability to perceive it rightly is a gift of God's grace, not a function of mere optics.
The Rebuffed Report (v. 13)
Having had their eyes opened in the breaking of the bread, these two disciples do exactly what a true witness must do. They immediately reverse course and return to Jerusalem to testify.
"And they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either." (Mark 16:13 LSB)
Their reaction is one of immediate, joyful obedience. They don't form a committee. They don't wait until morning. They get up from the table that very hour and make the seven-mile, uphill journey back to Jerusalem in the dark. This is the fruit of a genuine encounter with the risen Christ. It turns you around. It fills you with an urgent need to bear witness to the truth.
They arrive and find the eleven apostles and those with them gathered together. They burst in and deliver their report. They have seen the Lord. He is alive. He opened the Scriptures to them. He broke bread with them. This is now the second wave of credible, eyewitness testimony. First Mary, now these two men. The legal standard of two or three witnesses has been met. And what is the response of the apostles?
"But they did not believe them either." The word "either" is crucial. It links their unbelief here to their previous unbelief toward Mary. This is not a momentary lapse; it is a pattern of obstinate refusal. Their hearts were hard. They were slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken. They were grieving and weeping, yes, but their grief was the grief of unbelief. It was a grief that was locking the door against the very comfort God was sending them.
We must be clear about what is happening here. This is not intellectual skepticism. This is not a group of men carefully weighing the evidence. This is a spiritual condition. It is a form of pride. They had their own idea of how the Messiah's kingdom was supposed to come, and a crucified and resurrected Messiah was not part of their program. Their paradigm was so rigid that they refused to accept the testimony of multiple, credible witnesses who were telling them that God had done something glorious that didn't fit into their little theological box. They were so locked into their own despair that they could not receive the joy that was being handed to them.
Conclusion: The Gracious Assault of Grace
So what do we take from this brief account? We see, first, the profound patience and grace of our Lord. He does not abandon His disciples in their unbelief. He pursues them. He meets them on their road of retreat. He opens the Word to them. And when their appointed witnesses are rebuffed, He does not give up. As we will see in the very next verse, He is about to appear to the whole lot of them and rebuke them for this very unbelief and hardness of heart. God's grace is a pursuing, conquering grace. He will have His witnesses, and if they are stubborn, He will graciously assault their unbelief until it shatters.
Second, we see the nature of true faith. True faith is not a leap in the dark. It is a confident trust in the revealed Word of God, confirmed by the testimony of reliable witnesses. God has given us both. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, and we have the apostolic testimony recorded for us in the New Testament. To refuse this testimony is not a sign of intellectual sophistication; it is the same spiritual malady that afflicted the apostles here: unbelief born of a hard heart.
Finally, this passage is a profound encouragement to us. The foundation of the Church was laid by men who were, in their natural state, doubters. They were not spiritual giants from the outset. They were weak, fearful, and slow to believe. But the risen Christ transformed them. The very men who huddled behind a locked door in unbelieving grief would, just a few weeks later, stand before the Sanhedrin and declare that they could not help but speak of what they had seen and heard. The power was not in them. The power was in the resurrection. And that same power is at work today. It is the power that takes our own stubborn, unbelieving hearts, confronts them with the reality of the risen Christ, and turns us around, sending us back out into the world as joyful witnesses to the fact that Jesus is Lord, and He is risen indeed.