Jesus caught up with a couple of disciples walking to Emmaus on the day of His resurrection (believed to be Cleopas and Luke). Luke 24:16 says their eyes were holden that they should not know Him: or as the N.I.V. puts it, but they were kept from recognizing Him. How or why was this? Emmaus was west of Jerusalem and some have suggested that they were looking into the sun! Others have said it was because His new body was of a heavenly nature! Something similar happened to Mary at the tomb (John 20:14-16). The text says she supposed Him to be the gardener and He called her ‘woman’. She probably didn’t pay too much attention to His features, especially since she was crying (v.13). But when He called her by name, the penny dropped. Bearing in mind Jewish men customarily wore beards, often drew their cloak over their head, there is no reason to assume something miraculous was happening here. We often don’t see people, perhaps in a crowd, when we aren’t looking for them. So, the last person the two disciples would have expected to come ranging up beside them on their journey was Jesus.
The same expression is used of stated truths. Luke 9:45 records that after Jesus had predicted the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men, they did not understand this saying for it was hidden from them. A similar expression is found in Luke 18:34 after Jesus had again warned them that He would be delivered to the Gentiles, mocked, spitefully entreated, spat on, scourged, put to death, and rise again the third day. It says they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoke. If this sounds like repetition, and it does (cf. Ex. 1:7), then I would suggest that it’s Luke’s way of saying they didn’t have a clue!
What was the case here? I think there are two possibilities for our consideration. Was it the case that God deliberately did this because they may not have been ready to bear the truth that Jesus would be crucified. They did not understand the scheme of redemption at that time, with the necessity for Christ’s death, and to be confronted with this horrible truth at that time might have been destructive to their immature faith. In other words, it might be like the principle in 1 Cor. 3:2, only in this case God did it some other way, not Paul. But we may wonder why Jesus would bother to mention it if such was the case that God didn’t want them to hear this? (cf. John 16:12).
But there is another explanation that bears considering. There is such a thing as the permissive will of God in that everything can be attributed to God in that He allows things to happen as the expression of the free-will of man and the Devil. In other words, he does not command evil to be done, and neither does he delight in such, but all things happen under His watch. In the case in question, these things were not hidden by some direct operation by God, but by the disciples’ own mental and emotional education and awareness. Take the account in Luke 9. Perhaps the fact that Jesus had just been transfigured and then cast out a demon created an impression that no power could bind Jesus. The problem may have been an ignorance of true humility and the use of power – cf. Jesus’ temptation of the use of power in the wilderness – “turn these stones into bread”. The idea that God would actually humble Himself and take on the form of a servant and die the death of the cross was unthinkable. It was too much lateral thinking. Peter couldn’t conceive of Jesus being taken but Jesus said, “Get thee behind me Satan”. He couldn’t handle Jesus getting on his knees to wash his feet either.
What did Jesus mean in Matt. 11:25 when He said, I thank you, O Father,..because you have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes.? Did not Jesus preach to all? Note Matt.13:10-15. It was a disposition of the attitude that caused them to be blind – John 12:40 (note this is the same as with Pharoah – God hardened his heart through his hardening of his own heart) cf. Luke 16:14. What does this mean for us? Have you ever found yourself saying, I just can’t see it with respect to some point, theological or otherwise? I do all the time with respect to computers with which I have a love/hate relationship – no, sorry, just a hate relationship. What’s wrong with the old system of the tape-recorders: PLAY; STOP; FULL-FORWARD; PAUSE; REWIND; and RECORD?! Simple and self-explanatory! With computers I find myself saying “Why won’t you do what I am telling you to do?!” The reason is I have large gaps in my knowledge as to how computers work. I have learned from experience that if you want to stop a computer you hit START. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it! And it’s downhill all the way from there! But there are a lot of other things I haven’t been able to work out by experience.
This simply illustrates knowledge on a larger scale. Every piece of truth is compatible with every other piece of truth. This means that if I don’t understand some aspect of truth I won’t be able to understand other aspects as well.
Take love, for example. Many people have a problem correlating Hell with a God of love. The same problem comes up with love and discipline, whether child discipline or church discipline. People forget that God wrote the book on love, not Mills and Boone, not Hollywood, not their experience or any other author. If I do not understand love from God’s perspective then I am not going to understand certain doctrines, such as hell or church discipline etc.
If we do not understand the basic facts of the nature of man or of God and His Kingdom, then many kinds of truth will be hidden from us. I was reminded of this when speaking to a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She was talking about how wonderful the world will be in the future and how wonderful it would be to live here forever and I said to her that I didn’t want to live here forever. She looked at me in amazement. It was obvious we were on different wavelengths and it made communication most difficult. She didn’t contemplate going to Heaven, for, to her, every place in Heaven had already been taken by the 144,000 spoken of in Revelation 7. Her only hope was a place on earth. I told her I didn’t want to live here forever for this place is destined to be burned up and destroyed (2 Pet. 3). She couldn’t contemplate that God would ever destroy His creation.
If we think that Christ was coming to set up an earthly physical kingdom, the spiritual nature of the kingdom will be hidden from us as will such passages as John 18:36 or Col. 1:13. The stone that the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner (Matt. 21:42) has reference to this very problem. The Jew’s concept of the nature of Her King and His Kingdom led to the rejection of Jesus. He was the round peg in the square hole. And unless we understand the true nature of the kingdom we will ultimately be forced to be pre-millenial in our thinking, waiting for the enthronement of Jesus Christ, an event that has already happened 2000 years ago!
If we think that man is totally depraved from birth, the whole system of Christianity will be perverted, starting with the plan of salvation and reaching into every corner of it. We will be wanting a plan of salvation for infants and so we will pervert the one for adults to adapt it to children. We will turn immersion into sprinkling, and faith will come after salvation rather than before it. In fact the whole system of salvation by faith will be turned on its head. We will invent an imaginary system of godparents, and a confirmation system to cover the inadequacies of infant baptism. None of this is in the Bible. We will be forced to invent an imaginary immaculate conception of Mary so that Jesus, when born, would not be contaminated with original sin. And if Mary was immaculately conceived then it would follow she should be treated differently than the rest of mankind and taken bodily up to Heaven, and given a position of Mediatorship, things which the Bible never asserts.
If we think that grace and law are the antithesis of one another, then we will never understand passages on obedience. John 1:17 does not have the contrast that many believe. If your translation has “but” in it, it should be in italics to indicate it was something added by the translators. If there is some antithesis in the verse then we would have to say that Moses brought no grace or truth! Did he bring legalism and lies?! Moses brought the law which was “good” (Rom. 7:7,12), because by the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20) and Christ is God’s ultimate answer to the problem of sin. Heb. 5:9 still stands. And the question raised by 1 Pet. 4:7 still remains.
Men have had to deal with the presence of baptism in the N.T. because it is there! – but what to do with it? A popular view is that it is a public acknowledgement of salvation already received. The Bible never says that on either score: that is, nowhere is it prescribed that baptism be a public ceremony (we have example in Acts 8 and 16 where it was decidedly private, even clandestine) and no where is it said that baptism comes after salvation (cf. Mk16:16; Acts 2:38). So why do men say these things? If we think that faith and works are the antithesis of one another, we will never understand the necessity of baptism for the remission of sins. It is true that meritorious works cannot earn anything in the sight of God – Paul calls these works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3:5). He says that such works cannot save and besides it would cause men to boast (Eph. 2:8,9). But baptism is not a meritorious work that we could boast about as if we had done some great thing, even if we dipped ourselves 7 times! (cf. 2 Kings 5:13). The one who does the baptising bends his back and does the work, such as it is! Baptism is not a grandiose work that earns salvation, but rather an act of faith (Col. 2:12). Remember, faith that does not work is dead (Jas. 2:20), and how can a dead faith make a man dead in sins alive?
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a good Bible knowledge. The basic building blocks of the milk of the word must be laid, in order, and then on that foundation must be laid the meat of the Word, block by block. An inadequate foundation will mean that we never build an understanding of faith in accordance with the pattern of truth.