It’s not like they hadn’t been told. The book of Luke in the Bible reports that on at least three separate occasions, Jesus had clued his disciples in on the fact that he was going to be arrested, mocked, beaten, and crucified—a horrendous form of execution—but assured them that he would rise again the third day.
He didn’t just say it in passing. On one of those occasions he told them to let his words “sink down into [their] ears” (Luke 9:44)—in modern terms, “Listen up, guys, this is really important.” Another of those occasions was following a deep moment when the disciples recognized his divine mission to bring light and salvation to mankind. But when all that he had foretold did happen, and in exactly the way he had again said it would happen only days earlier, it seemed his words had not, in fact, sunk into the disciples’ ears. When Jesus was taken off the cross and buried in a tomb, instead of counting the days until he rose again, the disciples went into hiding. Then they scoffed at those who reported they’d seen Jesus alive on the third day. It wasn’t until Jesus appeared to them personally that they finally believed.
Their failure to believe what Jesus had told them shows how deeply the human mind resists accepting the gospel that Jesus came to teach and to prove. Would we have responded any differently had we been in the disciples’ shoes? They didn’t have the New Testament—they didn’t know how the story ended. Peter’s strong reaction on one of the occasions when Jesus foretold the things he would suffer shows how shocking those words were to them: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22, Revised Standard Version). Was crucifixion an appropriate experience for God’s anointed? “God forbid!” Peter exclaimed, and it’s hard not to join him in feeling that way.
