The resurrection accounts tell us much about the posture of the angels. Matthew records one angel: "An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it" (Matthew 28:2). He is the one who speaks: "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen" (Matthew 28:5–6). Mark describes a young man inside the tomb, "sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe," who startles the women with the same message: "He has risen; he is not here" (Mark 16:5–6). Luke increases the number: "two men stood by them in dazzling apparel" (Luke 24:4). Standing, sitting, one, two—critics have feasted on these apparent discrepancies for centuries, while defenders have offered harmonies of varying ingenuity.
A Bible believer simply recognizes that people and angels can move about. Still, the question remains: what is the significance of the angels' positions?
Consider something that may seem unrelated: an ancient piece of furniture. When God gave Moses the pattern for the tabernacle, its centerpiece was not an altar, but a box. The ark of the covenant was covered by a lid of pure gold, and the instructions were precise: "You shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end… The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another" (Exodus 25:17–19). Two figures, fixed in place—one at each end of a golden slab—gazing down upon it forever.
What happened beneath their gaze? Once each year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the inner darkness carrying blood. "He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat… and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times" (Leviticus 16:14). The golden slab received the blood. And from above that blood-stained lid, flanked by its two golden watchers, God promised to speak: "There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you" (Exodus 25:22). Atonement took place between two figures, over blood, in the holiest place, behind a veil no one could pass.
Mary Magdalene remained behind at the tomb, weeping. When she bent down to look inside, John records a striking detail—and John is deliberate in his details: "And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet" (John 20:12).
One at the head. One at the feet. Between them lay the place where Jesus' body had been—the body Paul describes when he says that we are "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood" (Romans 3:24–25). The word is hilastērion—the mercy seat. Mary, weeping outside the tomb, did not yet know what she was seeing: two witnesses at either end, gazing upon the place where blood had truly atoned.
The first mercy seat was hammered from gold, hidden behind a veil, and sprinkled year after year. This one was real. The blood was God's own, and it needed to be offered only once. Christ "entered once for all into the holy places… by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12). Because he did, the veil is gone: "we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain" (Hebrews 10:19–20).
The ark of the covenant was the original place of atonement for sin; upon its lid, the blood was sprinkled. In a garden tomb, Jesus lay between two angels, revealing the place where the blood of Christ had secured mercy for the whole world. God had said that he would meet his people between the cherubim. And he did.
Add comment
Comments