‘MY GOD, AND YOUR GOD’

Scripture references are to the King James

(Authorised) Version.

A short study in John 20: 1, 11-17

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Mary Magdalene arrives at the burial chamber in which the body of the crucified Jesus had been deposited. This was now the third day of his death. She encounters two angels guarding the entrance. Looking into the sepulchre Mary sees that it is empty. It is then that she utters those forlorn words, which have echoed down the ages (v. 13),

they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

Heavy-hearted and dulled, Mary turns aside. She encounters someone she takes to be the groundskeeper (v. 14). But it is Jesus (vs. 15, 16).

When she has recovered from her shock, Jesus tells her (v. 17),

Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

Note how Jesus aligns himself with the disciples, here represented in Mary, acknowledging their mutual relationship with the Almighty, as fellow-children and fellow-subjects (my Father, your Father . . . my God, your God). This interpretation agrees with the prophetic statement of Psa. 22: 22, in which the Psalmist David a type of Christ declares to God that,

I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

This synchronises with Heb. 2: 11, 12, in which Jesus, the servant of God, is sanctified by the sufferings which the Father permits to come upon him:

Both he [God] that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them brethren. Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (brackets added)

But at another level John 20: 17 profoundly affirms the bodily (existential) distinctness of Jesus the Son of God from the Father of the Son.

For in declaring that Jehovah is ‘my’ Father and ‘my’ God, Jesus is teaching that he himself is not the Father and is not God. By identifying his own relationship with his Father and his God as like that enjoyed by the disciples (‘your’ Father . . . ‘your’ God), he aligns himself with their situation, and thus implies that he is bodily separate and distinct from God, even as his disciples were bodily separate and distinct from God.

‘I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.’ (John 14: 28)

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January 2016. You are free to re-use this article.

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