Mark 16:7

Mark 16:7

Love's Triumph over Sin.

I. Notice the loving message with which Christ beckons the wanderer back. If we try to throw ourselves back into the Apostle's black thoughts, during the interval between his denial and the Resurrection morning, we shall better feel what this love-token from the grave must have been to him. His natural character, as well as his love for his Master, ensured that his lies could not long content him. They were uttered so vehemently because they were uttered in spite of inward resistance. Overpowered by fear, beaten down from all his vain-glorious self-confidence by a woman-servant's sharp tongue and mocking eye, he lied; and then came the rebound. The same impulsive vehemence which had hurried him into the fault, would swing him back again to quick penitence, when the cock crew, and that Divine face, turning slowly from before the judgment-seat with the sorrow of wounded love upon it, silently said, "Remember." We can fancy how that bitter weeping, which began so soon, grew more passionate and more bitter when the end came. We can understand how wearily the hours passed on that dreary Saturday. In his sorrow come the tidings that all was not over, that the irrevocable was not irrevocable, that perhaps new days of loyal love might still be granted, in which the doleful failure of the past might be forgotten. Think of this message (1) as a revelation of love that is stronger than death; (2) of a love that is not turned away by our sinful changes; (3) of a love which sends a special message because of special sin; (4) of a love which singles out a sinful man by name.

II. Notice the secret meeting between our Lord and the Apostle. What tender consideration there is in seeing Peter alone, before seeing him in the companionship of the others. And may we not regard this secret interview as representing for us what is needed on our part to make Christ's forgiving love our own? There must be the personal contact of my soul with the loving heart of Christ, the individual act of my own coming to Him, and as the old Puritans used to say, "my transacting with Him."

III. Notice the gradual cure of the pardoned Apostle. He was restored to his office, as we read in the supplement to John's Gospel. In that wonderful conversation, full as it is of allusions to Peter's fall, Christ asks but one question: "Lovest thou Me?" So the third stage in the triumph of Christ's love over man's sin is, when we, beholding that love following towards us, and accepting it by faith respond to it with our own, and are able to say: "Thou knowest that I love Thee."

A. Maclaren, Sermons preached in Manchester,2nd series, p. 58.

References: Mark 16:7. Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 187; Outline Sermons to Children,p. 151; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 315.Mark 16:8. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,vol. i., p. 341.