Matthew 28:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Certainly the consciences of these soldiers were going to be silenced with a lie! The chief priests pile one burden after another on these troubled men. They are to become the authorities’ false witnesses against what they knew to be the truth. The story they are to tell is the very thing the authorities feared in the first place: that his disciples would come and steal away his body. This was why they set the watch. But the watch having failed, they would rather claim that the thing they tried to stop has actually happened, than admit the truth. The soldiers knew what had happened; they still felt the dread of that supernatural appearance within themselves. The authorities had no reason not to believe the account of the soldiers, and they had seen Christ’s miracles, but they were going to deny with all their power that what he had said would happen, had happened – that after three days he had risen again. Anything was better than that. How the schemes of men break down under the relentless advance of God’s purposes.