John 20

John sees and believes

8 So then the other disciple went in too, the one who got to the tomb first; and he saw and believed.*What did John ‘see’ that made him ‘believe’? He saw the linen strips ‘lying’, that is, in the form of the body, only there was no body inside them! If someone had stolen the body, as Magdalene supposed, they would have taken the wrapped package (much easier to carry, not to mention 100 pounds of expensive spices) and there would have been no linen strips. If someone had unwrapped the body there would have been a mound of linen strips and spices piled up (how much cloth would it take to wrap up a hundred pounds of spices?). No, Jesus simply passed through the cloth, as He would later pass through the wall, leaving the package like a mummy or empty cocoon. When John saw that he understood that the only possible explanation was resurrection. 9 (For they did not yet know the Scripture, that He had to rise from among the dead.)*But they should have; Jesus had told them repeatedly. But wait just a minute! Where in the OT is there such a Scripture? John wrote this Gospel over fifteen years after the other three had been ‘published’ and were in circulation, so his term ‘Scripture’ may be referring to them.