Hide and Seek

Children play this popular game of hiding and seeking. One child closes one’s eyes while counting to a certain number, while others run and hide. Then that child goes and finds the other children. In C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy, the youngest child, hides, and no one seeks her, or at least that’s what she thinks.

But imagine that you hide something and search and search for it and can’t find it. That was the situation of the prophets.

“The prophets who prophesized about your grace sought (exezitisan), searched (exirafnisan), and examined (erafnodes) when Christ’s sufferings and glory – which they prophesied ahead of time – will fulfill. They were told it wasn’t at their time.” (1 Pet 1:10–12a)

Again, using alliteration and repetition of synonyms, Peter stated two points: the prophets knew of Christ’s suffering and glory (i.e., resurrection), and Christ’s life wouldn’t be in their times. Prophets predicted someone they couldn’t see or enjoy.

This would have been an eye-opening but truthful revelation to the original Hebrew audience. They were familiar with prophets who prophesied about the Messiah. Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Malachi spoke of him. None, however, saw the Messiah. But the apostles and the early witnesses saw that Messiah and the Hebrews in diaspora heard about the Messiah’s arrival, suffering, death, and resurrection through their relatives from Judea and the apostles.

If the prophets had predicted the suffering and the glory of Messiah, why did the disciples like Peter not get the message and object to Jesus going to the cross? Time and crucifixion.

Between the time of the prophets (c. 700–400 BC) and the coming of the Messiah (c. AD 30), the Hebrews were under the rule of Persians, Greeks (including Seleucids and Ptolemies), and Romans – all Gentile nations. They were briefly under the Hasmoneans’ control, but they were more Greek than Hebrew in their lifestyles. With four hundred years of Gentile rule and organized religious functions in the temple uninterrupted, it was easy for them to forget the coming Messiah, his suffering, death, and glorious resurrection.

Second, if Jesus had foretold them that he would be decapitated like John or stoned (the usual Hebrew way of killing evil people), the disciples might have been sympathetic. But he told them he would be crucified. For Hebrews, bodies hanging on a tree were under God’s curse (Deut 21:23). How could the cursed Jesus be God’s anointed king, the Messiah? If Jesus were to die on the cross, then he must not have been the Messiah, they reasoned.

Time and crucifixion confused the disciples’ understanding of Jesus as God’s anointed king. Resurrection, however, changed all of that. They believed God wouldn’t raise an unrighteous or sinful person from the dead. If Jesus was resurrected, which he was, Jesus must have been who he claimed he was – God’s anointed Messiah, the king of Israel.

What the prophets eagerly sought, searched, and examined didn’t fulfill in their times but in Jesus. He was the Christ who suffered, died, and glorified. Peter repeated Jesus’s words in a prayer:

“Father, now glorify me, with your glory which I had before cosmos so that I will be with you.” (John 17:5)

The Father answered that prayer and gave him that glory, resurrected him.

In his resurrection, we are resurrected or glorified. That’s why we cherish and celebrate Easter!

Χριστός Ανέστη (Christos Anesthi), Christ is Risen!