◄ John 20 Devotional Commentary ►

John 20:2

Mary Magdalene was one of the women who went to the tomb early in the morning, on the first day of the week. She had been at Golgotha the previous Friday and wept as she saw her Saviour crucified on a cruel Roman cross. She watched, with the other women, to see where the body of Jesus was laid. She waited until the early hours of the morning to prepare her spices and she set out with the other women, very early in the morning - while it was still dark. Together read more...

John 20:8

As we look back to Christ's Resurrection, we rejoice that He was willing to die as the substitute for our sin and rise again on the third day. But John 20 gives us a glimpse into the happenings on Resurrection Day and the heart of some of His disciples.

Mary Magdalene had come early in the morning to anoint the dead body of Jesus with spices, and finding that the stone was rolled away, immediately ran to tell the disciples. Two of read more...

John 20:17

In Proverbs, we are advised: "Those that seek Me early will find Me," and what a beautiful example of this we see in Mary who went to seek Jesus so early in the morning: "While it was still dark." And what ecstatic joy must have flooded her heart when Jesus spoke her name, and yet He told her tenderly but firmly: "Touch Me not for I am not yet ascended to the Father."

Throughout Old read more...

John 20:21

Just as the Transfiguration was a tiny preview into the coming earthly kingdom, when Christ would rule and reign as King of kings and Lord of lords, so the things that Christ said to His followers and the things that Christ did with His disciples following His Resurrection was also a tiny foretaste of the coming Church dispensation: A time when believers not only have peace with God by grace through faith in His death, burial and Resurrection, but they have the read more...

John 20:28

The development of the disciple's faith in Jesus as their God and their Saviour, can be traced from the time of John the Baptist to the final chapters of John's apocalypse. For the three years of Christ's own ministry, we see evidence of little seeds of faith taking root, growing, and blossoming into a firm foundation of unshakable faith.

It was revealed to Peter, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God... and the read more...

John 20:29

So often we refer to the son of Didymus as 'doubting Thomas', yet when Christ's other disciples expressed a reluctance to go to Jerusalem for fear of the Jews, it was Thomas who, cried out,  "Let us also go, that we may die with Him". Thomas was also the disciple who prompted the Lord to say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" when he questioned Him, by saying, "Lord, we read more...

John 20:31

We are exhorted by Christ's apostles to live by faith and not by sight. We are charged to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, and we are counselled to believe on the One Whom God sent into the world to be the propitiation for our sins.

It is by God's grace that the Father gave His only begotten Son to pay the ransom price for our sin, and it is by faith in His finished work on Calvary's Cross, that salvation (the read more...