The Characters of Easter - Daniel Darling

This is Doug Hastings, Vice President of Moody Radio, and we're thankful for support from our listeners and businesses like United Faith Mortgage. If you go to our mortgage team's website, you'll find hundreds of testimonials of real Christian radio listeners we've helped. Laura here is a recent friend who is kind enough to share a few words with her local station.

I was actually referred to United Faith Mortgage through my mother-in-law. We decided it was time for us to start looking for a house, and I reached out to Kelly, and we found several houses we liked, but you know, with the seller's market, things kept falling through. But any time we needed her, she was there for us. She got everything we needed as soon as we asked for it, and she made it work. She made sure that if that was the house that our family wanted, we were going to get that house.

They're a wonderful company, and we're just really blessed that we found them in the process, that they helped us get through it, and we are in the home of our dreams, and our family is so happy. We are United Faith Mortgage. Fearful fishermen, despised tax collectors, marginalized women, feeble politicians, and traitorous friends—these are a few of the characters of Easter. God sees us. Jesus sees us. Not who we are, but who we can be, and I think that's how we need to see each other.

We need to see what God is growing people into, not necessarily where they are today, that God is at work in all of us in that way. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today we'll take a closer look at the people who populate the story of the Passion of Christ. Author Daniel Darling joins us to talk about the characters of Easter. Dan has done this topic with the characters of Christmas, and today we're going to see how ordinary people reacted to the extraordinary, miraculous events of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You can find out more about our featured resource at FiveLoveLanguages.com. And our host, as always, is author and counselor, Dr. Gary Chapman. Gary, you have been a pastor for 50 years. Easter is really the pinnacle of celebrations, isn't it?

Well, it is, Chris. Without the resurrection, we would not be here. I mean, why do we want to follow simply a dead leader? No, no, no.

He is the only religious leader who defeated death. And so, yes, it's huge for those of us who are Christians. We're going to dig into that story that we've heard so many times. And maybe today you'd say, well, I've heard this story before.

No, no, no, listen. Listen to the new perspective, the fresh look at Easter, as we welcome back Daniel Darling, who is senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters and a regular contributor to several leading publications, including Christianity Today and Home Life In Touch and others. He's written six books, including Teen People of the Bible, The Original Jesus and The Dignity Revolution. Dan's a teaching pastor at Greenhill Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, and he lives with his wife and four children in the Nashville area. The Characters of Easter is our featured resource.

Again, find it at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Dan, welcome back to Building Relationships. Well, thank you for having me.

It's an honor to be with you today. Now, you grew up in the church, so like the Christmas story, it can become almost too familiar. Is that why you chose to write this book, The Characters of Easter?

Well, it is. I mean, there's a couple of reasons I chose to write it. Number one, like you said, Easter, unlike Christmas, I think Easter, for those of us who are not in a more liturgical type church, kind of sneaks up on us, unfortunately. I do think Christians are getting back to sort of a Lenten season and taking more time to focus on it, but it kind of sneaks up on us. And then I've always been fascinated by character profiles. You know, I used to grow up listening to like Chuck Swindoll do these great character profiles of biblical characters. So I've always been fascinated by just the ordinary people that are in this, the story of Easter, the greatest story in the history of the world.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting that the Christmas story included people from all social groups, you know, from high to low. Is that also true of the Easter story, the characters that surround the Easter story?

It really is. If you think of the people who are swept up in this story, you think of the disciples, for instance. Jesus chose most of his disciples from the Galilee region, which was kind of just an ordinary sort of, I want to say, middle class, but just regular hardworking folks.

His disciples were not trained in any of the rabbinical schools. They were fishermen and just kind of common people. They were not the kind of people you would think of when you're trying to launch a worldwide world-changing movement. And yet these are the people that Jesus deliberately chose to be closest to him during his earthly ministry. And then, of course, even the people who we think about in terms of Pontius Pilate and, you know, the women who witnessed the empty tomb. You know, again, the type of people Jesus chose to be near him, the kind of people that make up the kingdom of God, are predominantly mostly ordinary people. And it's really the same way today that the church is made up mostly of ordinary people.

So set the scene for us politically, socially. What was going on in the first century in Israel and what forces were at work there? So in the first century, you know, you had Israel was under the thumb of Roman rule.

So every time they walked past the temple, every time they would go on main thoroughfares, they would see that Roman flag flying high above their land. It was a reminder to them that they were under occupation, that they had lost their independence. The centuries leading up to this, they had traded superpowers who ruled over them from the Greeks to the Syrians to the Romans.

There was a time where they had independence during the time of the Maccabees, but there was a lot of... They were looking for political revolution, but there was a lot of cynicism. They had seen false messiahs come and go. They'd seen their religious leadership corrupted. There was just a lot of cynicism and wondering, is this kingdom of God, this idea of a messiah, is this really going to happen? So talk about the disciples and their three years with Jesus.

What was that like? So we forget with the disciples what they committed to when they followed Jesus. It's easy for us to read in the Gospels and see them make mistakes or say things that are wrong and think, man, how could these guys not see it, not understand everything?

But we would be in the same position. But we forget the courage it took for them to follow Jesus. Think of Peter and John, who had a really thriving fishing business. They gave that up. They gave up security, stability to go with Jesus for three years.

There was no financial security. Jesus was this itinerant rabbi who was building this movement, but he was still controversial. They did it because they really believed he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't know all what that looked like, but they did believe that. And then, of course, comes the events of the Passion close to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, where everything they thought would happen turned upside down. Everything that they believed in, they thought he was going to be the one to lead political revolution. And here he is allowing himself to be arrested. He's not using his power as the Son of God to resist the armies in the garden to destroy his enemies.

Instead, he's willingly giving himself up. It was just also puzzling for them, even though Jesus had promised that he would do that ahead of time. They didn't quite understand it. So if you put yourselves in their shoes, the three years with Jesus was thrilling and amazing to see Jesus walk on water and heal the sick and raise the dead and feed multitudes on the hillside with a little boy's lunch.

But then all of that to come to a really dramatic end with his arrest had to be really devastating for them. So I hear you saying that they had one set of expectations of who Jesus was or what he was going to do. Then it all came to an end at the cross in their minds.

Yeah, it really did. And again, you and I would have been the same way. They read the prophets. They understood a Messiah would come. But to understand there would be a first Advent and second Advent, they couldn't really see that. It's very similar to the way we view the end times a little bit that we know Jesus is coming back, but there's not agreement on what that's all going to look like. That's kind of where they were.

And to see everything they put their hopes in dashed and brought to pieces was just completely devastating for them. Well, Dan, we know that Peter was one of the main characters in the life of Jesus and was there certainly there at the Easter celebration and all of that. But give us a little picture of Peter. He's one of the favorite characters, I think, of a lot of us.

Yeah, he is one of my favorite characters. And I spend a lot of time on him in this book because there's so much written in the four gospels about him. There's a few things I think about when I think about Peter. I think, first of all, the patient way that Jesus pursued him. Jesus and Peter lived in the same area, Capernaum. Jesus had set up his ministry there. Peter had moved there to become part of that.

That's where the fishing trade was really strongest, the most important port there. And Jesus had patiently pursued him. His brother, Andrew, actually had seen Jesus first through John the Baptist. And then he comes to Peter and says, we found him, which is just a remarkable thing to say. The one we've been praying for, we found him. So Peter follows his brother.

And there's a few more encounters. And then Jesus asks Peter to follow him and say, I'll make you fishers of men. And Peter's call is dramatic. Jesus enters his life where Peter is at his best. He knows the fishing trade. He knows the Sea of Galilee. He's had a difficult day at the office. They didn't catch any fish.

They're about ready to pack it up and go home. Jesus offers the advice, which none of us want to hear. Hey, have you tried this? And so he does this, and there's this great miracle, and Peter falls down and worships. It's interesting at the end of Jesus' ministry time that he repeats that same miracle in John 21. It's to say, yes, Peter, you failed me. Yes, you denied me three times.

Yes, you said things that you shouldn't have said. But I still want to use you for ministry. But the Peter we see at the end of the Gospels is a humbled Peter, not one who's self-assured, not one who has convinced himself that he's the most courageous, but one who depends in power on the Holy Spirit and who knows that he can only do things in the strength of the Spirit. Then you see him preaching on the day of Pentecost to thousands of people, the same one who denied Jesus. And so it's just a powerful statement of how God takes and uses people and changes them and strengthens them. You follow his life as you've just done, and you see Jesus over and over again, reaching out to Peter and calling him and restoring him as he needed to be restored.

What does that tell us about this whole route, this whole method of discipling people? Well, I think it tells us that God sees us, Jesus sees us, not who we are but who we can be. First of all, he loves us for who we are, but he sees past our failures into what we can be. When he saw that young, precocious, impulsive fisherman who would blurt things out, who pulled out an unwieldy sword and cut off some guy's ear in the garden, he didn't see that. He saw the person preaching on Pentecost. He saw the courageous martyr who would give his life for the gospel. And I think that's how we need to see each other, that we need to see what God is growing people into, not necessarily where they are today, that God is at work in all of us in that way.

Well, that's important, because you see some people you think, hmm, I don't know how God could ever use it, but the reality is God has a place for all of us and anyone that we may lead to Christ. He's got plans for them. And that's our main thing, right? We're making disciples. That's what Jesus said.

That's exactly right, yeah. How about John? You know, John, he was called the Son of Thunder, and he went on to be an apostle of love.

How did that happen? John has such an interesting story. We forget how young John and Peter both were when they were joined up with Jesus, probably in the early 20s. But John, we think of Peter as the hotheaded one, but it was really James and John who were. I mean, Jesus gave them the designation Sons of Thunder, and it wasn't like a nickname like he gave to Simon to call him Peter.

This was almost a pejorative to say, these are the hotheads. I mean, there's two examples in Scripture where John at one point wants to call down fire on the Samaritans because they are not getting with the program. Another time, there's another group of folks doing gospel ministry that is not part of what they're doing, and he wants to shut that down, send a cease and desist letter, if you will. He's one of the ones who's jockeying for positions in the kingdom of God, who's going to be in the right and left. He's thinking, okay, if I'm part of this movement, am I going to be secretary of state?

Am I going to be secretary of defense? He even employs his mom to ask, which is really amazing. You know, hey, you asked Jesus.

You got a good relationship with him. So that's the one we see, but I think where John is transformed is at the Last Supper, because John wanted to be on the side of Jesus in power, but you see him at the side of Jesus in humility, where Jesus is washing feet, and he's learning that this is a different kind of kingdom. This is a kingdom of love, a kingdom of humility, a kingdom of service, and I think from that point on. And then, of course, seeing the empty tomb at the resurrection turned him from a son of thunder into an apostle of love, where he outlives all the disciples.

He writes the gospels and revelation, but also these three letters that are predominantly characterized by encouraging the people of God to love. So it's amazing the transformation that takes place in his life. Yeah, the diversity of these guys. You know, Thomas. Let's take Thomas. You know, he's an interesting guy. You know, we think of him primarily, well, he was doubting. We say doubting Thomas.

How do we sometimes misunderstand that characterization of him? Yeah, I don't like the fact that we call him doubting Thomas, and I wonder where that started, but we do have that scene at the end of John where he does have those questions, but it's interesting. The gospels only record three times where Thomas speaks, and each time he asks great questions and he provokes great answers. The first time he speaks, the disciples are deciding whether or not to go to Bethany, where Jesus's enemies are.

It's very unsafe, but they need to go there because Lazarus is sick and is dying. And at the end of all this deliberate debate, Thomas pipes up and says, let's go die with Jesus. In other words, if we need to go and we've signed up for this, we're going to go and we're going to stand with him.

What an amazing testimony of faith. And then the second time you hear him speak is when Jesus is in the upper room, and he is sharing about what's to come, that he's saying, I'm going to go prepare a place for you and where I'm going, you can't go. Thomas, after all this, says, well, if you're going there, how can we know the way? And of course, Jesus' response is, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So, Thomas was very analytical, but he believed Jesus, but he asked the question, if we're to go here, how can we know the way? And Jesus gives a great response. Then, of course, at the end of the book, end of John, we see where he is despondent, I believe, between the crucifixion and the resurrection. All his hopes and dreams have been dashed. He put all his faith in Jesus.

He thought he had everything figured out, and he just can't make sense of any of it. Jesus had appeared to the disciples in the upper room without Thomas the first time when he appeared to them. It's interesting that gospel writers make a note that Thomas isn't there. In other words, they felt a hole.

They felt something missing because their brother was not there. And you see them go to Thomas, and they're kind of pulling him out of his despair, and they're saying, we have seen Jesus, trust me. And he's doubting. He's like, unless I see him, his scars, I'm not going to believe.

But that community pulls him out of despair. And of course, Thomas, again, sees Jesus, and again, another appearance. And when he sees the evidence, he gives this great statement of worship. He says, my Lord and my God. So he's really a great example for us of bringing your questions to Jesus, that we will have doubts, but bringing them to Jesus.

And then once we see the answers of provoking worship, and that's really the only response for us at Easter when we see the risen Lord is to worship and say, my Lord and my God. Absolutely. Well, what about women? The significance of women in the ministry of Jesus, particularly during his death and resurrection.

What role do women play? Well, it's really interesting because, as you know, women's testimony was not considered trustworthy in the first century in terms of evidence, and in the courts, and in terms of weighing things. But that is actually one really great piece of evidence for the resurrection, that the story relies on the testimony of women.

That if this was some kind of hoax or some kind of thing that would not have put forth women to testify. But it also tells us something about the way that Christianity elevates women. That the first witnesses of the empty tomb are not the disciples.

They're not anybody considered important. They're these female disciples. You think of Mary Magdalene, who had her life transformed by Jesus. You think of Jesus' own mother, Mary, who had to endure all the suffering she saw her son do. And you think of John's mother, Salome, who was willing to let her son go follow Jesus instead of take on the family business. So, I think it tells us a lot about what Christianity says to women and about women. We are all made in the image of God, and we're equal in value. Let there be no question about that.

Yeah, it's amazing how even in that culture, which did not value women as we hope that women are valued today, yet they played this major role. Well, let's tackle Judas. What do we know about him other than the fact that he ultimately betrayed Jesus? Judas is really the most mystifying character, because obviously we know him because of his betrayal. But think of the fact that he was one of the most trusted people that Jesus knew.

Jesus had hundreds of disciples, but then he narrowed down to 12 key men who were part of this movement. Judas was one of those. Judas was so trusted, he was the treasure.

You don't appoint someone to be treasure that you don't just trust with your life, right? We know that he was not from the Galilee region. He was from Judea.

Most people think Iscariot is a town near Hebron. He was probably a little bit more on the revolutionary side in terms of wanting to overthrow Rome. Not a zealot by any chance or insurrectionist, but in that stream. What's haunting to us is Judas was a gospel preacher. I mean, Judas was among those that Jesus sent out to heal and preach the gospel. If you want to really think about it, there were people in the first century who believed in Jesus who believed in Jesus as Messiah after hearing Judas preach and Judas do these miracles that Jesus commissioned them to do. Judas had seen everything that Jesus had done, walking on water and healing the sick and all that. So, why did he turn?

I mean, there's a lot of speculation. Why did he turn? We don't really know, except we have to think that Jesus was not the kind of king that Judas wanted. That he wanted a political savior. Jesus, toward the end, was doing all the wrong things that you would want someone for this movement to be doing. He's allowing this perfume to be wasted on him to prepare him for his burial.

He's talking about death and resurrection. He's letting his enemies capture him. He's walking essentially into a trap to be crucified. I think Judas didn't get what he wanted out of Jesus. What is haunting to us is that after he sold Jesus, he has this moment of remorse. He comes to the religious leaders and he realizes what he's done.

What really haunts me is that the religious leaders could not help him. I want to think that Judas could have turned to the one who offered to take his shame and guilt. The one who he betrayed could have been his savior.

You think of the contrast with Peter, where Peter denied the Lord, but he found forgiveness and hope and freedom in the one he had denied at the cross. Well, Judas doesn't find that. What a sad commentary, both on the religious establishment at the time, that they could not point him to spiritual freedom, but also that Judas, you want to think he could have turned to find hope in Jesus.

We know that God would have forgiven him if he'd done that. Just thinking about when Jesus sent them out two by two and said, don't take this with you and shake the dust off your feet. Judas is part of that. Judas is even doing the miraculous things too. It says that they were able to heal because of what Jesus commissioned them to do. Judas is right there, and then the upper room, we think of that, and the dipping of the bread in the cup, and then the questions. All the disciples said, is it me? No, not me, Peter says, and then it becomes Judas.

I agree with you. The word that you used in haunting really does come over that story, doesn't it? It really does, and we don't quite know when Judas flipped, if you will, but I tend to think it was when Mary of Bethany opened up that ointment and spilled it. If you're trying to build an earthly kingdom, you're trying to conserve your resources, this is the wrong thing to do, but Jesus embraces it and then says, she's preparing me for my burial, and I think it just finally hit him.

All the talk of death, all the talk of this, and he sort of flips there, but it is haunting to us. You said, Chris, that Judas was one of the ones Jesus sent out. Judas was a gospel preacher, and yet he ended up betraying his Lord, which should haunt all of us, really. I was reading somebody the other day who said, maybe Judas, this is just conjecture, maybe Judas was trying to force the hand of Jesus, that by going and betraying him and then the soldiers come out, then Jesus is going to reveal who he is and become the leader that Judas wants him to be.

What do you think about that? I think that's very plausible, and I actually kind of talk about that in the book a little bit, that it could, that very well could be what he's trying to do, to force his hand. Like, Jesus is not playing along with what a revolutionary political leader should be doing.

He's doing all the wrong things. He's leading himself into a trap this way. So Judas tries to force his hand, and that's probably why you see the despair at the end of, man, what did I just do?

That's a good idea, I think. Yeah, well, but, and the struggle that I have with that then is Jesus was telling them, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go to Jerusalem. I will be, you know, handed over. I'll be killed, and on the third day rise again. And then they, you know, looked at themselves and said, what does that mean?

You know, we'll rise again. You know, they just, it just wasn't on the radar. Even though he was telling them, he was, he was preparing him for that. They're preparing them for that. They're preparing them for that.

Yeah, that's exactly right. He was preparing them for that. But as you know, in John 14 through 16, he says, essentially, you don't understand this, but the Holy Spirit is going to illuminate you after all this. So then they're going back, obviously, afterwards and saying, oh yeah, this all makes sense in the pieces.

But at the time, it didn't make any sense. They're tuning out Jesus a little bit when he's talking about death and resurrection. And Judas was, I think, too. It's interesting, you know, how could someone who was so loyal to Jesus betray him? But then you have to ask, what was he loyal to? Was he loyal to the idea of Jesus instead of being loyal to the Jesus that is?

Like there's a Jesus in his mind that he wanted to be, and the real Jesus disappointed him. Well, that's Daniel Darling, our guest today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. You can find his book at our website, 5lovelanguages.com. The title is The Characters of Easter, the villains, heroes, cowards, and crooks who witnessed history's biggest miracle.

Again, go to 5lovelanguages.com. Well, Dan, let's talk a little bit about Pontius Pilate, because he was obviously a player in this whole thing. And he represents weak leadership. I think we could say that. But you say that it wasn't really Jesus who was on trial before Pilate.

Why do you say that? That's the interesting thing, the way that the gospel set this up. Here you have a powerless itinerant rabbi from Nazareth with no place to lay his head, who is beaten and flogged, who's rejected by his own people. And then you have Pilate, who is a powerful Roman governor, who is placed in this position by Caesar after a succession of Herod's offspring couldn't handle Judea. Pilate didn't necessarily want to be here. Judea was a tough place to govern. There had been other uprisings with the Jewish people. There had been missteps that he had made, skirmishes he had put down. But he had to get this right because he was on thin ice, both with the Jewish people, but also with Rome.

But he didn't want to be here. It's interesting when he pulls Jesus back into his private chambers, and he's essentially pleading with him saying, can you help me out here? Can you throw me a bone? I know you're innocent, but I want to help you. In other words, I have the power to save your life. And what Jesus does is he flips the script. And what he's making Pilate aware of is, actually, I'm not on trial before you.

All this is preordained. I've already accepted the cup of God's wrath. I'm already going to the cross. This is going to happen.

I'm laying down my life. No one can take it. But you, Pilate, your soul is on trial. And it's interesting the way that Jesus pursues him in this, and that God even sends a dream to Pilate's wife to haunt her. The power is flipped. And we think today, we look and see who's in a position of power, whether the president or the governor or celebrity.

We think they have all the power. If you were in the first century in Israel, you would think, you know, Pilate has all the power, and everyone's fearful of him. But the truth is, the real power was in Jesus.

And he was the one. We only know Pilate as a footnote to the story of Jesus. We only know Pilate because he's mentioned in the Apostles' Creed, suffered under Pontius Pilate.

He's a historical marker. But it also reminds us of the clash of kingdoms, of the earthly kingdom, and the kingdom of God. Dan, a part of that, which I think you've made clear, is God's plan for the crucifixion. As you said, Jesus knew it. He was already expecting it. And Pilate could not have stopped that. I mean, he happened to be an instrument in the legal system part of it. But Jesus was dying because he came to die.

Well, that's exactly right. I mean, as Peter says in the book of Acts, that this was determined before the world began. I mean, you can see back in Genesis 3 that there's the prediction of this violent clash between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And all through history, I mean, all through the Old Testament, you see these echoes of this coming, the lamb slain for sin, the Old Testament sacrifices, all kind of pointing to this. So this was, heaven was not shaken by the death of Jesus. Heaven was not trembling at the arrest of Jesus. And yet, humans are accountable for their actions, as Peter says, that there's that tension between human responsibility and divine authority. But as we see Easter, we should look at Easter as God's plan from the beginning of time to save his people, to put the weight of sin on Jesus and take our sin and offer us forgiveness, and to rise again and defeat sin, death, and the grave. I mean, that is how we should view Easter.

Absolutely, yeah. Well, one of the most interesting people in the Easter narrative is Barabbas. Who was he really, and why does this story resonate with us? So Barabbas is an insurrectionist. You know, he's a Christian, he's an insurrectionist. You know, there was a spectrum of attitudes about Roman power. You had most people who are probably like the Pharisees who did not like Roman power, who tried to resist it, but called for spiritual renewal. Then he had more radical folks like Simon the Zealot, who advocated more violent overthrow.

But then you have people like Barabbas who are on the far end, who were mercenaries and insurrectionists, and they plotted acts of terrorism and murder in order to to do these things. He was guilty of this crime. He and two others were set to be executed for this by Rome. Now, just an historical note, to be executed by Rome by crucifixion meant that you are really guilty of serious crimes.

It was a very humbling way to die. Barabbas was guilty of the things that Jesus was being charged with, and Pilate understood that Jesus wasn't guilty of insurrection. In fact, that's part of the reason that Judas and others abandoned Jesus, because he wouldn't do that. But what happened is Pilate every year would offer to the Jewish people the release of a political prisoner in order to kind of ease tensions.

I think his thought was, I know Jesus is innocent. I'll offer Barabbas Barabbas. You pick one, they're going to choose Barabbas.

He's not very well liked. Of course, they choose him to be released instead of Jesus. The interesting thing, I always think about this, Barabbas in his cell, he's reviewing his life, he's writing letters to his family, he's getting his things in order, he probably has regret about the crimes he's committed, he knows it's his last few hours, and then a knock on the cell comes and it opens, and a Roman guard says, you've been set free, in a very shocking way. I just wonder if the rest of his life he had gratitude for Jesus who died in his place. Did he ever come to see Jesus, not just dying in his place physically and taking his place where he should have been, but did he ever come to see him as his spiritual savior? In my mind, I want to think that we'll see him in heaven, that he was so overcome with joy at what Jesus had done for him. But in a sense, all of us at Easter are Barabbas.

All of us are guilty of crimes against God, but Jesus has taken that punishment for us. He's died in our place. So Barabbas is actually a metaphor of the salvation that is available in Christ at Easter.

Yeah, yeah. We often think, at least I've often thought, you know, what happened to Barabbas? And as you say, we don't know. Historically, we don't know, but certainly there was the option for him to see Christ for who he was, because there are no sins that cannot be forgiven by God. How about the religious leaders? Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes. It's easy to see them simply as, well, these were religious enemies of Jesus, and maybe we miss something important when we do that.

I think we do, and it's easy to just kind of collapse them all together, but there's different groups. The Sadducees were kind of in the minority. They were folks who did not believe in the resurrection.

They only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament. They accommodated themselves to Roman power. In fact, they were more trustworthy of Rome, and they had worked themselves into a position of spiritual power. Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, had been able to do this, and so they didn't like Jesus because he talked about resurrection, but they also didn't like him because what he was stirring up was a threat to their power. They had this delicate relationship they had managed to negotiate between Rome and the Jewish people that they didn't want him to disturb.

They controlled the majority on the Sanhedrin, which is the 70-member ruling council. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were different. They were looking for spiritual renewal in Israel. They were looking for repentance and renewal. They cared about the law. They believed what the prophets had said when the prophets had called out Israel for their idolatry and their disobedience, and they very much wanted spiritual renewal.

So it's interesting. Jesus, theologically, was closer to the Pharisees. A lot of people think, well, Jesus just came to get rid of the law and all that. No, Jesus was actually closer to them, but what the Pharisees did not see in in their law keeping and their wanting to bring about spiritual renewal is that their self-righteousness would not usher in the kingdom of God. That even they who were concerned about Israel's spiritual state, even they needed a savior.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, who perhaps is the most devout religious leader of the time, he says, even you need to be born again. That offended them. They were also offended that he claimed to be the Messiah, the promised one, which if Jesus was wrong would be terrible blasphemy. They couldn't see past all that to see the miracles, to see the way he fulfilled the predictions of the prophets.

So we have to understand both of these. The Pharisees were the conservative Bible-believing folks, if you want to say it, and the Sadducees were more of the kind of liberal religious people, but yet they both united in fact that Jesus was a threat to their way of life. How about the scribes?

Who were they? So the scribes were the scholars. They were the ones that poured over the Old Testament text. They knew scripture backward and forward. They're often seen with the Pharisees because again, the Pharisees cared about biblical accuracy. They cared about the scriptures. The scriptures the scribes were the scholars.

They should have seen the sign. They should have seen Jesus and said, yeah, he fits all the definitions, all the things that the priests and the prophets had predicted in the Old Testament, and yet they too missed them. But they were what we would consider today, if you think of an Old Testament or New Testament PhD scholar at a university, that was the scribes. Interesting that none of them, even with all of their emphasis in the scriptures, recognized who he was, and many times people today don't recognize, even though they're very educated people. Talk about the secret disciples. Who were they, and what do we know about them? So I loved studying about these two secret disciples that are mentioned, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was one of the most revered religious leaders of the day.

He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the 70-member ruling body. He came to Jesus by night to inquire. There's a lot of speculation, why did he come by night?

I think there's a couple of different things there. I think one you see in John, particularly the metaphor between light and darkness that you see at play there, but also I think he was being wise. He had a spiritual leadership role in the community.

He wanted to make sure he got things right. He met with Jesus in a way that they were able to have a good conversation away from the crowds. Joseph of Arimathea, we just know him as a wealthy benefactor who believed in Jesus and wanted to take care of Jesus. Jesus' body, had they not come and taken it, would have just been thrown into a common unmarked grave as a common criminal.

But they wanted to give him a proper burial, so Joseph gave off his own tomb. It's easy for us to look at them and say, well, they were secret believers, they're ashamed of being disciples of Jesus, they should have been more outspoken. But that's not really how I see it, because I think there are times where people are in positions where they have to be wise about the way that they practice their faith. God calls some people to be loud and outspoken. God calls some people to practice their faith in a different way. They chose just the right time to declare their faith in Jesus. It was a great risk for them to go to pile and ask for the body. They were essentially outing themselves as followers of Jesus.

That would put them at odds with their contemporaries. They would risk social relationships and their employment, and they were willing to take that risk and take that step of faith because they loved Jesus and they cared for him after he was dead. They really gave him a proper burial, which shows us, I think, how much they really believed. They didn't understand everything, but they knew enough to take a very hard and difficult step of discipleship.

We don't often see that, do we? That was really a bold thing for them to do. It really was. For them to do that was bold. Discipleship and being bold and being courageous sometimes requires wisdom and the right timing of when do I declare this, when do I say this, when do I take a stand, when do I risk everything.

That was the moment for them to do that. So what about the Romans who actually executed Jesus? It's interesting to think about the Romans because they were the ones that carried out the execution. The religious leaders had some authority to rule people, but when it came to executions, they really wanted the Romans to do it. They rarely actually did crucifixions.

It would have to be for the most important capital cases. I think it's interesting the soldiers that beat Jesus, the ones who put the nails in his hands and feet, what they were thinking. We know that at least one centurion stood and said, surely this must have been the Son of God. What they saw that they saw that night when the earth opened up, the fear that the Roman guards who guarded the the tomb imagined their stories years later, did they become believers in Christ. We see a Roman centurion earlier in the Gospels beg and plead with Jesus to heal his son. In fact, Jesus made a statement about faith that he didn't make about anybody else in the Gospels when he said about that Roman centurion, I've not seen great faith in all of Israel.

What I think the Gospels are showing here is that Jesus saving faith was not just for the Jewish people, but is for the whole world. I wonder how many Roman soldiers later became Christians. We do know that Cornelius, Peter visited his house and he followed Jesus. Some people speculated that maybe Cornelius was one of the Roman centurions that was at the crucifixion and maybe what he saw just really moved him and stirred him toward Jesus.

We don't know that for sure, but it's interesting to see from their perspective. It's also easy for us to say, well the Romans killed Jesus or to pinpoint who's the one that killed Jesus, but the truth is all of us with our sin put Jesus on the cross. Isaiah 53 says, all we like sheep have gone astray, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. When we approach Easter, we don't blame the Romans, we don't blame the religious leaders, we're the ones that put him here. In fact, actually, Jesus is the one who laid down his life and no one took it from him. He said that himself, didn't he?

That's right. On the cross also he said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Some people have said that God immediately forgave them, but I see that as a prayer and that's why he was dying, so that they would receive him. Later on, of course, Peter preached at the day of Pentecost and said, you crucified the king of glory. It says many of the priests believed, so many of the people who were involved in the crucifixion did believe. We don't know about which ones, but we do know that many believed.

I love that fact. I mentioned that in my book when Jesus says, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. It's such a powerful statement of Jesus forgiving the people that put him on the cross, but also recognizing this is part of the long cosmic plan of God to rescue the world, to rescue his people from sin. I think it should give us comfort and hope that we often focus on people and situations, but God's plan is much bigger. Our story is wrapped into the much larger story of what God is doing in the world. Well, you know, we've been through a long pandemic and some churches have been closed for a long time.

Others have opened up partially. So this Easter we typically, historically, the largest church attendance in the year is on Easter Sunday. It'd be interesting to see what will happen this Easter in terms of actual attendance as churches may open up wider for people to come back. So what are the implications of Easter for us at this juncture in our society? You are right that this year I think Easter will be probably more meaningful. Of course, it always has meaning for Christians in the two thousand years that we've celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus. You know, Easter is everything.

It's the whole ballgame. Paul says if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then we're, of all people, most to be pity that we should just essentially go home and not bother with any of this religious stuff. But if he did rise from the dead, it changes everything. But I think this year's going to be even more meaningful for a few reasons. Last year, none of us could gather to worship on Easter.

We all had to do it virtually. That's going to be the case for a lot of folks this year, but not everyone. I think there's going to be a lot of folks who are able to gather in their churches and celebrate. But if you think about where we are, even in the pandemic, that one of the things it's caused us to think about is the frailty of our lives. It's caused us to think about the way that brokenness has made its way through the human experience, that we are in a fallen world where viruses and diseases can wreak so much havoc and death. And one of the things that Easter says is that Easter celebrates the death of death, that Jesus defeated death. And it says that in the resurrection, there's something new coming. And I just love that Easter is in the spring because one of the things about the spring is you see new things growing. You see, after a long, hard winter, particularly if you're in a really cold weather state, you start to see things shoot up.

Grass and leaves and flowers bloom. And it's a sign that there's something new coming. And that's the story of Easter. It's the sign that there's something new coming. There's a new world coming in the midst of this brokenness, in the midst of our despair, and especially this year when we've lost so many people, when there's so much tension and hardship. We can declare to ourselves and to the world that there's something new coming, that Jesus is renewing and restoring people, and he's renewing and restoring the world.

Yeah. And that for those who believe there is life beyond the grave, as he was risen, so we will rise. You know, I think if ever there was a day in our culture in which people might be open to the reality of life beyond the grave, it should be now because we've heard on our screens that every day, death, death, death, death, you know, this many has died, this many have died. So let me just thank you for being with us today. Thank you for the time you invested in this book, looking at these characters of Easter.

And I know that many of our listeners are going to want to read it because it's very rich and takes us back to the pivotal point in the Christian faith, and that is the resurrection of Christ. So thanks for being with us today. Thank you. It's an honor to be on here with you. Thank you. Daniel Darling has been our guest today. If you want to find out more about our featured resource, go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. We have the book linked right there. The characters of Easter, the villains, heroes, cowards, and crooks who witnessed history's biggest miracle. Again, go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. And next week, the untold love story of a famous couple from history. Don't miss the marriage lessons from the Spurgeons in one week. Our thanks to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.