This article is an excerpt from the seventh chapter of the new book, 7 Big Questions (Crown & Covenant Publications, 2020).

People often look for what they want in the wrong place. I once had a student who finished a math test and then erased his correct answers to copy his neighbor’s wrong ones. Eve and Adam wanted to be wise and followed the snake’s advice to eat fruit from a tree God had forbidden and became foolish instead (Genesis 3:6-7; see Romans 1:21-23). After Jesus was buried, loyal women who loved him went looking for his body in the wrong place, his grave.

Angels met them with a rebuke: You are looking in the wrong place. Here is what happened.

Jewish rulers who hated Jesus got Roman soldiers and Temple guards to arrest Jesus at night when he was alone with his disciples. All the disciples fled. Before the Jews’ highest court, the Sanhedrin, the high priest put Jesus on oath, asking him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (Mark 14:61) “I am,” answered Jesus, “and you will all see the Son of Man seated at the right side of the Almighty and coming with the clouds of heaven!” (Mark 14:62; see Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1). Immediately the court convicted Jesus of blasphemy.

In the morning they took Jesus to Pilate, the Roman governor, and falsely told him that Jesus was plotting rebellion against Caesar. After a short trial, Pilate declared Jesus to be innocent. Nevertheless, Pilate ordered his soldiers to scourge Jesus and then crucify him in order to satisfy the Jewish leaders.

So at Passover, when Jews remembered God’s saving them from slavery in Egypt and sacrificed a lamb, Jesus, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” died (John 1:29). He crushed the head of the snake that asked Eve, “Did God really say?” He fulfilled the meaning of the ram that Abraham sacrificed instead of his son Isaac. In fact, wherever the story of Jesus’s sacrifice is told, animal sacrifices soon cease. The news about the sacrifice of Jesus for sin makes them now meaningless.

Jesus was buried hurriedly late on a Friday afternoon on a shelf in the rock tomb that Joseph from Arimathea, a rich man, owned. Another rich man, Nicodemus, provided some spices for a quick burial before sundown, the start of the Jewish Sabbath day of rest.

After the Sabbath rest, on the first day of the week, some women, who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem and had watched him die, headed toward his tomb with spices to complete his burial. With birds singing, trees covered with new leaves, and flowers perfuming the air, they went to the tomb. Combining the different Gospel accounts, it seems likely that there were five women, three of whom were named Mary: Mary from the village of Magdala; Mary, Jesus’s mother; Mary, the mother of James; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, King Herod’s steward; and Salome, perhaps the mother of James and John.

For two reasons women rather than men came to finish burying Jesus. First, preparing bodies for burial was considered women’s work at the time. Second, the men were hiding. As Jesus had prophesied, the disciples had scattered: “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Matt. 26:31; quoting Zech. 13:7).

“Sheep without a shepherd” is an ancient picture of people with no leader or protector. Few people today have seen a flock of sheep with or without a shepherd, so “sheep scattered” only vaguely tells us how the women felt. Here is my story of how they felt: Two boys, ages five and six, wake up on a Saturday morning, February 14, 1953—Valentine’s Day—and run into Mother’s room. “How’s Daddy?” they asked. They knew he was in the hospital, but they had barely understood that his remaining kidney was failing. Mother answers, “Daddy’s dead,” and bursts into tears, burying her face in her hands. Daddy—who gave us love and security, who made life fun—was dead. We crept from the room, feeling guilty for making Mother cry. We were alone for the rest of the day: Mother had to deal with the hospital, the funeral home, and the cemetery. The next day was lonelier. At church, two old women told me separately: “Now you have to be the man of the house,” a burden a six-year-old boy can no more bear than carry an elephant. Sheep without a shepherd, the newly fatherless and the widowed—such were these women.

As the women walked, they pondered a practical problem: Who would roll away the stone, a giant disk, six feet or so in diameter, perhaps six inches thick, set in stone grooves? They would have to roll it uphill like a tire and then wedge a stone in front of it. They were not strong enough to do that.

Then the earth shook under their feet. An angel rolled back the stone and sat on it as they approached the tomb. He looked like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The Roman soldiers guarding the tomb, scared witless, fell on their faces. So when the women got to the tomb, the stone was rolled away. Inside it, they met two angels. Like the soldiers, the women also fell to the ground. An angel asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here. He has been raised” (Luke 24:5).

As we think about the women going to Jesus’s tomb, we sympathize with their devastating despair and their love for Jesus. But the angel rebuked them for coming to the tomb. “Remember what he said to you while he was in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and three days later rise to life.’ Then the women remembered his words” (Luke 24:6–8). Running from the tomb, they hurried to the hiding men and told them that the tomb was empty and what the angel had said. Peter and John ran to the tomb and confirmed their news: it was empty (John 20:1–8).…

They were searching for the living among the dead because of unbelief. They did not believe Jesus, who healed the sick, stilled a storm at sea, gave sight to the blind, walked on water, raised the dead to life, and fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. They did not believe him when he said he would be killed and on the third day rise from the dead.

When people disbelieve God’s Word, they look for life in a world cursed to futility and decay, but cannot find it there. Apart from God, every strategy people use to find life fails. Will you look for life and meaning in building and creating? When you are done, you won’t find it satisfying. Try going for experiences—travel, drugs, sex, or skydiving. It will leave you empty. Gather a lot of wealth. You’ll have to leave it behind to someone else, maybe a fool. Become wise? That beats being a fool, but in the end, the wise and the fool both die. Live a thousand years, have a hundred children, get rich, and still it will end badly. Death wins. Under the sun, apart from God, it’s all smoke and mirrors.…

What is wrong with the human race? Our worst fault is that we won’t fear God or believe him. That was the women’s fault. They had not believed Jesus when he said he would rise from death, so they went to his tomb. Yes, they loved Jesus and wanted to do right. But no, they did not believe him, so they looked for the living among the dead.

Where do you look for life? Parents, teachers, politicians, and bloggers tell young people to pursue their dreams. What dreams? Successful careers. Happy families. Great experiences. “Making a difference.” Building something! They utter idiocies like, “Believe in yourself,” or, like the windbag Polonius in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.”

Old people sometimes tell the young, “Life is short,” or that at seventy-five no one will care if you were once CEO of a company. But young people don’t believe the old because they don’t believe Jesus, who said that a full life belongs to the poor in spirit, to the humble before God and man, to the peacemakers, and yes, even to the persecuted (Matt. 5:1–11). They don’t believe Jesus who said, “Don’t bother getting rich on earth. It won’t last,” and “Don’t worry about tomorrow” (Matt. 6:19–21; 25–34).

And you know what? Old people don’t believe Jesus either. So people keep on looking for the living among the dead, not believing Jesus that in him alone there is life.

In my life, I have worked with many good people, traveled far, helped to raise a family, and enjoyed many good things. I can point to a few worthwhile things I have done. But where is life? After I die, no one will long remember me or what I have done. Only Jesus has life, and he is my judge. You will never hear sweeter words than these: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord,” nor worse words than these, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, for I do not know you” (Matt. 25:23; 7:21–23). Believe Jesus. Live to hear these words, and you will not be caught looking for the living among the dead. Only the Lord Jesus Christ has conquered death, and all who are united to him by faith and trust in him will live also. Slandered and murdered by his enemies, Jesus died and then returned to life. His resurrection changes everything.

It dispels the gloom of life, which always ends in death. One might say to everyone born of woman, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter life,” because death awaits you. But one can’t say that to Christians. They have stopped looking for the living among the dead.…

Jesus is alive, so like the five women who in unbelief went looking for the living among the dead but instead found life, we testify with them the best announcement the world has ever heard: Jesus, the King of the Jews, died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and then, according to his own word, he rose from the dead, to be seen alive by many people. He lives to save all who worship him with Thomas’s words, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). We do not need to search for the living among the dead. We live and we die expecting to meet Jesus at his coming, when we will stand again on this earth with him. There are no fatherless Christians. The Lord is our living Shepherd.

Bill Edgar pastored the Broomall, Pa., RPC for over 30 years while also teaching high school mathematics. Most recently, he served as interim president of Geneva College. He is author of History of the Reformed Presby­terian Church of North America, 1871–1920.