Today’s Passage: Mark 16
When the Sabbath is over the women come to the tomb with their spices, meaning only to anoint a body for burial. On the way they worry over the great stone at the door, and when they arrive they find it already rolled away. Inside sits a young man dressed in white, and he tells them the one thing that changes the world: He has risen! He is not here! He sends them to carry the news to the disciples, and to Peter by name, that Jesus is going ahead of them into Galilee, just as He promised. They flee from the tomb trembling. Do not let a question about the closing verses swallow the wonder of the day. He has risen. He is not here.
As you read, hold this: He has risen! He is not here.
Context The world of Mark 16
They come at sunrise, once the Sabbath rest is past. For a people whose week had always climbed toward the seventh day, this walk out to the tomb on the first day already carries the hint of a new creation beginning. It is why the church will come to gather on this day and no other, because it was on this day that the Lord rose.
In the ancient world a woman’s testimony was often given little weight in a court of law, and no one inventing a story to persuade that world would have chosen women as its first witnesses. That all four Gospels set them first at the empty tomb is a mark of plain historical honesty rather than legendary polish. These women expected a sealed tomb and a dead body; they had come only to finish a burial.
The two words and Peter in verse 7, spoken after Peter’s threefold denial, are pure grace. The very man who had fallen the hardest is singled out by name for restoration, and Galilee, the meeting place promised back in 14:28, is still a stop on the road that mercy is traveling.
Mark 16:1–8 (BSB)
¹ When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could go and anoint the body of Jesus. ² Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they went to the tomb. ³ They were asking one another, “Who will roll away the stone from the entrance of the tomb?” ⁴ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, even though it was extremely large. ⁵ When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. ⁶ But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here! See the place where they put Him. ⁷ But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.’” ⁸ So the women left the tomb and ran away, trembling and bewildered. And in their fear they did not say a word to anyone.
Love arrives at the tomb carrying spices for a corpse. These women are not expecting a miracle; they are expecting a practical difficulty, and the difficulty is a real one, for the stone is extremely large. Mark presses on that detail so that the open tomb will not look like a small convenience but like the moving of something no one there could have moved. They look up, and the barrier is simply gone. Their alarm is met at once with both a command and a gospel. The messenger names Jesus with care, calling Him the Nazarene, who was crucified, refusing to hide the shame of the cross, and then comes the thunder: ēgerthē, pronounced ay-GER-thay. Strong's G1453, to raise, awaken, rouse from sleep. The passive form points beyond the empty tomb to the Father’s own act of raising the Son: not that Jesus rose by His own initiative alone, but that He was raised. The young man does not say that Jesus’ spirit lives on, or that His cause carries forward. He points instead to a place and to a body that is not in it, the body that was truly crucified and has now been truly raised. Christian faith stands or falls with this one verb. If Christ has not been raised, Paul says, then preaching is empty and faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:14), and Mark’s final chapter stakes everything on it. ! He is not here! He invites their eyes to the proof, See the place where they put Him, and then he gives them their errand, go, tell His disciples, folding into it that particular mercy, and Peter. Galilee is still the meeting place He had named. The women run out trembling and say nothing to anyone, and Mark’s undisputed ending is as stark as that. Their fear and their silence are honestly told, yet they are plainly not the last word, for we are reading this account only because in the end the news did get out. The gospel does not depend on perfect first witnesses. It depends on a risen Lord who keeps every appointment He makes, waiting in Galilee just as He told you.
Mark 16:9–20 (BSB)
⁹ Early on the first day of the week, after Jesus had risen, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had driven out seven demons. ¹⁰ She went and told those who had been with Him, who were mourning and weeping. ¹¹ And when they heard that Jesus was alive and she had seen Him, they did not believe it. ¹² After this, Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them as they walked along in the country. ¹³ And they went back and reported it to the rest, but they did not believe them either. ¹⁴ Later, as they were eating, Jesus appeared to the Eleven and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. ¹⁵ And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. ¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; ¹⁸ they will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be made well.” ¹⁹ After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. ²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked through them, confirming His word by the signs that accompanied it.
The BSB, like most English Bibles, carries on with 16:9–20, and we read it here as the church has long heard it, with its appearances and its commission and its account of the Lord’s continuing work, without letting these verses become a second meal set beside the first. Mary Magdalene is again the first to see Him, and again the disciples are slow to believe, until He appears among them, rebukes the hardness of their hearts, and sends the gospel out to every creature. Salvation is tied here to believing, and baptism stands as the public seal of that faith. The signs that are listed describe the way the Lord authenticated the advance of His word in the days of the apostles; they are not a standing dare offered up for showmanship. Then come the ascension and the session, for the risen Lord is not merely alive again upon the earth. He is lifted up to the right hand of God, which is exactly the claim He had made under oath in 14:62. So the disciples go out, and the Lord goes on working alongside them. The book that opened with good news now ends by sending that news everywhere. Mark began by naming it the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and a Roman centurion spoke that very title at the foot of the cross; now the empty place sends the same title out into the world as public news and not as a private vision. He has risen. He is not here. That is enough to make a witness of anyone.
Study notes Going deeper
A careful word on the ending. Some of the earliest Greek manuscripts we possess bring Mark to a close at 16:8, and a few preserve only a brief alternate ending in place of the longer one. The longer ending, 16:9–20, is nonetheless widely attested across the later manuscript tradition, the early translations, and the church fathers, and Irenaeus already knows it in the late second century. Faithful Christians differ over whether Mark himself wrote these verses or whether the early church supplied a fitting conclusion that gathers up traditions found also in Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts. We do not hide the question, because nothing essential hangs upon the way it is settled. The account in 16:1–8 is undisputed on every side: the empty tomb, the angelic announcement, the risen Lord, the promise of Galilee, and the grace shown to Peter. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is not in doubt. Paul himself received and handed on, as of first importance, that Christ died, was buried, and was raised on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4), and the longer ending, whether it came from Mark’s own hand or from an early conclusion the church received, coheres fully with that apostolic gospel and invents no different Christ. This is not skepticism about the resurrection. It is simply Library honesty about the text as we have received it.
"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 (BSB)
"But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee." Mark 14:28 (BSB)
He has risen! He is not here. The one who meets them at the tomb is only reminding the women of what Jesus had already promised them. The tomb is empty, and the Lord is risen.