Luke 24:15 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ initially comes to them as a stranger, so that they are disarmed and ready to speak their minds openly about their disappointments. He holds back their eyes from recognizing him for another reason also. He is going to convince them by Scripture alone with overwhelming them with his presence, so that there is an opportunity for their faith to be restored, and to start functioning again. Here then is a peculiar situation. These two disciples have the risen Lord with them and they do not know it. They have every reason to keep silent and to listen to him and to receive wonderful encouragement from him, but they completely misjudge the situation. Instead they want to tell him of their sadness, and their gloomy conceptions of what has happened, and he listens quietly to begin with, and lets them speak. How foolish their own words must have appeared to them in hindsight! They tried to give him their impression of what had taken place, and convince him that all was lost, and who were they telling all this to? The resurrected Christ, whose very presence with them, did they but know it, was the answer to all their sorrows. He allowed this occasion to become a picture of how we can so badly misread events, that when we ought to be full of joy, and of a sense of victory and triumph over the powers of darkness, we are instead sure that we have been defeated, and we wish to convince even God that it is so. Their eyes were held unseeing by God himself, just so this strange situation could unfold. Because they could not see the truth, their unbelieving minds fabricated an account of what had happened which saw no hope whatsoever in God’s blessing. They were ready to believe instead that the prophecies of the Old Testament had failed, that Christ had come into the world for nothing, that the one who had saved others could not save himself – the very taunt that the religious leaders and the unbelieving thief had thrown in his face – that he who correctly predicted every other detail had been wrong when he foretold his rising on the third day. They were ready to be gloomy and defeated and hopeless in the very presence of the one who had defeated death, and he listened patiently to their complaints, because he was about to teach them a powerful lesson, and to transform their unbelieving gloom into light which could never be extinguished.