Commentary - Luke 24:36-49

Bird's-eye view

In this portion of Luke's gospel, we come to one of the central proofs of our faith. The resurrection is not a spooky ghost story; it is the linchpin of all history. Christ did not rise as a disembodied spirit, but in a true, physical, glorified body. This passage is a frontal assault on any attempt to spiritualize the resurrection into something less than a brute historical fact. The disciples, huddled in a room, are confronted by the very man they saw crucified. Their fear and doubt are not glossed over; they are answered with tangible evidence. Jesus shows them His hands and feet, invites them to touch Him, and even eats a piece of fish to prove He is not a phantom. This physicality is crucial. A spirit could not have atoned for the sins of embodied men. A ghost did not conquer death. A man did, the God-man, Jesus Christ.

Following this undeniable proof of His bodily resurrection, Jesus then turns to the Scriptures. He connects His suffering, death, and resurrection directly to the Old Testament, showing that this was God's plan from the beginning. He "opened their minds," which is a divine act of illumination. Without God's grace, the Bible remains a closed book. But with enlightened eyes, the disciples see that the entire Old Testament points to Christ. This leads directly to the mission He gives them: to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name to all nations. This is not a suggestion; it is the marching order for the Church, empowered by the promised Holy Spirit. They are to be witnesses to these historical, scriptural, and glorious truths.

Outline

Verse by Verse Commentary

v. 36 Now while they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace to you.”

The disciples from Emmaus are in mid-sentence, breathlessly recounting their encounter with the risen Lord, and then, without any warning, He is simply there. He does not knock. He does not open the door. He stands in their midst. This is a demonstration of His glorified body's capabilities, but it is also a picture of how Christ comes to His people, He enters our situations sovereignly. And what is His first word? Peace. Not "I told you so," not a rebuke for their cowardice, but "Peace." This is covenantal peace, the shalom of God. It is the peace He purchased on the cross, the reconciliation between God and man. He speaks this peace into their fear and confusion, establishing His presence as the source of all true tranquility.

v. 37 But being startled and frightened, they were thinking that they were seeing a spirit.

Their reaction is entirely natural, which is the point. They are not predisposed to believe in a physical resurrection. Their first assumption is that they are seeing a ghost. This is an important detail Luke includes under the inspiration of the Spirit. It shows us that the disciples were not gullible men looking for an excuse to invent a story. They were hard-headed skeptics, and their skepticism had to be overcome by overwhelming evidence. They were terrified because, in their minds, a spirit meant something unnatural, something from the realm of the dead intruding upon the living. Their fear validates the extraordinariness of the event.

v. 38 And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”

Jesus addresses them with a gentle but firm rebuke. He goes straight to the heart of the matter: their troubled minds and doubting hearts. The word for "doubts" here has the sense of arguments or debates. They were reasoning within themselves, trying to process this impossible sight through the grid of their natural understanding. But the resurrection is a supernatural event that shatters naturalistic categories. Christ's question is a call to move from seeing with the flesh to seeing with faith, a faith that He is about to ground in tangible evidence.

v. 39 See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Here is the bedrock of our faith. Christianity is not a philosophy; it is a religion founded on a historical event. Jesus offers empirical proof. "See My hands and My feet", the very places where the nails were driven. The wounds are the proof of His identity. This is the same Jesus who was crucified. Then He says, "touch Me and see." He invites physical contact. This is a direct refutation of any Gnostic or spiritualizing heresy that would deny the goodness of the material world or the reality of the incarnation and resurrection. A spirit, a phantom, is ethereal. But Jesus is solid. He has "flesh and bones." This is a crucial theological point. He has a real, human, albeit glorified, body. This is the body that ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. This is the kind of body we will have in our own resurrection.

v. 40 And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.

Luke emphasizes the action. Jesus doesn't just say it; He does it. He presents the evidence. The scars of His crucifixion are now the emblems of His victory. Those wounds, which were marks of shame and death, are now the glorious proofs of His identity and His triumph over sin and the grave. He is not ashamed of His scars, and neither should we be of the wounds we receive in His service.

v. 41 And while they still were not believing because of their joy and were still marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”

This is a wonderful psychological detail. Their disbelief now comes not from fear, but from an overabundance of joy. It was too good to be true. They were marveling, stunned into a state of happy incredulity. So Jesus, in His profound condescension and kindness, provides one more proof, one that is mundane and utterly physical. He asks for food. Ghosts don't get hungry. Apparitions don't ask for a snack. This is the Lord of glory, the conqueror of death, grounding their faith in the simple, earthy act of eating.

v. 42-43 They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and He took it and ate it before them.

They give him fish, and He eats it. In their presence. The act is definitive. It demonstrates the normal bodily functions of His resurrection body. He is not a phantom floating through the room; He is a man, eating a meal with His friends. This event seals the deal on the physical nature of His resurrection. It leaves no room for doubt. The one who created the world and all its appetites now uses that same created order to prove He has redeemed it.

v. 44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

Having established the fact of His resurrection, Jesus now explains the meaning of it. He turns them to the Scriptures. He reminds them that none of this should have been a surprise. He had told them this was coming. More than that, the entire Old Testament had been telling them. He breaks the Hebrew Bible down into its three traditional sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (represented here by the Psalms, its largest book). His point is comprehensive. All of it, every part, points to Him. The story of Scripture is not a random collection of moral tales; it is a unified narrative that culminates in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The cross and empty tomb were not a divine Plan B; they were the fulfillment of promises made since Genesis 3.

v. 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

This is one of the most important verses in the chapter. The disciples had the Scriptures. They had heard Jesus teach from them for three years. But they did not understand. Understanding is a gift of God. It is a supernatural work of the Spirit. Jesus performs a miracle here that is just as profound as the resurrection itself: He opens their minds. He gives them the interpretive key to the whole Bible, and that key is Himself. This is why we must pray for illumination before we read the Word. Without God opening our minds, we are like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, slow of heart to believe what the prophets have spoken.

v. 46 and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,

Here is the core of the Old Testament message, as summarized by Jesus Himself. The central theme is a suffering Messiah who dies and then rises. The world wants a triumphant king, but God's plan was for a king who triumphs through suffering. This was the great stumbling block for the Jews, and it remains a stumbling block for all who trust in their own strength. The gospel is that Christ had to suffer, and then He had to be raised. Both are divinely necessary, written into the script of redemption from eternity past.

v. 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

The historical facts of the gospel, suffer, die, rise, now have a purpose that explodes onto the world stage. The message that flows from the empty tomb is one of repentance and forgiveness. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of direction, turning from sin to God. Forgiveness is the gracious removal of that sin's guilt and penalty. This message is to be proclaimed "in His name," meaning on His authority and based on His finished work. And the scope is universal: "to all the nations." The gospel is not a tribal religion. It breaks down all ethnic and geographical barriers. But it has a specific starting point: Jerusalem. The very city that crucified the Lord of glory is the first to be offered His grace. This is the magnificent mercy of God.

v. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

This is their new identity. They are no longer just fishermen and tax collectors. They are witnesses. A witness is someone who testifies to what they have seen and heard. They were eyewitnesses of His life, His death, and His resurrected, fish-eating, flesh-and-bones reality. They were also now enlightened witnesses to the scriptural truth of it all. This is the foundation of all Christian testimony. We don't share opinions; we bear witness to historical and biblical facts.

v. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus gives them a great commission, but He does not send them out in their own strength. They are to wait. Wait for what? "The promise of My Father," which is the Holy Spirit. He describes this as being "clothed with power from on high." The mission is supernatural, and it requires supernatural power. The work of proclaiming the gospel is not a human endeavor. It is the work of God through His people, empowered by His Spirit. The book of Acts is the story of this promise fulfilled. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that would now work through the Church to turn the world upside down.