Luke 24
v.10-11
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
v.25-26
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?“
v.31
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
Connection to Genesis 3:7? Article
Think of the first meal in the Bible. The moment is heavy with significance. ‘The woman took some of the fruit, and ate it; she gave it to her husband, and he ate it; then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’ (Genesis 3.6-7). The tale was told, over and over, as the beginning of the woes that had come upon the human race. Death itself was traced to that moment of rebellion. The whole creation was subjected to decay, futility and sorrow. Now Luke, echoing that story, describes the first meal of the new creation. ‘He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them; then the eyes of them both were opened, and they recognized him’ (verse 31). The couple at Emmaus - probably Cleopas and Mary, husband and wife - discover that the long curse has been broken. Death itself has been defeated. God’s new creation, brimming with life and joy and new possibility, has burst in upon the world of decay and sorrow.
Here we note broader parallels in the events of the narratives of both Genesis 3 and Luke 24, beyond the specific overlapping phrase just discussed. In both narratives:
- two human beings are involved/addressed (Gen 3:6; Luke 24:13);83
- the human pair is offered food (Gen 3:1-5; Luke 24:30);
- the one offering the food is a supernatural being (note Rev 12:9 and 20:2 in light of Gen 3:1-15; Luke 24:52);84
- the food is offered in an unexpected way: in Genesis 3 it was not the serpent’s prerogative to play the “host” by subversively mediating the fruit to Adam and Eve, and in Luke 24:30 Jesus assumes the role of “host” despite clearly being, up till that point, the guest (note v. 29)
- the food is accepted (Gen 3:6; Luke 24:30b-31a);
- the human pair does not recognize the one offering food for who they really are (Gen 3:1-7; Luke 24:16);
- the eating of the food results in a profound new perception of spiritual reality (Gen 3:7-10; Luke 24:32);
- this new understanding is described with the phrase “and their eyes were opened, and they knew” (Gen 3:7; Luke 24:31; see above);
- the human pair now understands retrospectively something God had already told them: Adam and Eve now truly understand what God meant when he said that they would know good and evil,85 and Cleopas and his companion now truly understand what Jesus meant when he had opened the Scriptures to them on the road (Gen 3:7b; Luke 24:32);
- the human pair is physically separated from God in the immediate wake of taking the offered food: in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve try to hide from God (v. 8); in Luke 24, Jesus promptly “vanished from their sight” (v. 32);
- God comes and is present among his people in the wake of the eyeopening, frightens them, and asks a series of questions (Gen 3:9-13; Luke 24:36-41);
- the human pair immediately physically relocates, Adam and Eve leaving the place of God’s special residence (Eden), Cleopas and companion returning to the place of God’s special residence (Jerusalem;86 Gen 3:23; Luke 24:33).
I conclude that the events of the broader narrative provide several subtle parallels which cumulatively affirm an allusion to Eden in Luke 24.
A few verses before the breaking of bread we are told that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27). Later that evening Jesus reiterates, this time to a larger group of disciples, that ‘“everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead’ ” (w. 44-46). In the immediate context of chapter 24, then, both before and after verse 31, Luke is transparently concerned to communicate that the whole story of Scripture is a unified narrative, diverse but not disparate, testifying to and culminating in Christ.
v.32
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Give me the love that leads the way, The faith that nothing can dismay, The hope no disappointments tire, The passion that will burn like fire, Let me not sink to be a clod, Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.
v.37
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.
v.42-43
They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in in their presence.
v.45
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
He whom we viewed last evening as opening Scripture, we here perceive opening the understanding. In the first work he has many fellow-labourers, but in the second he stands alone; 🔥many can bring the Scriptures to mind, but the Lord alone can prepare the mind to receive the Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus differs from all other teachers; they reach the ear, but he instructs the heart; they deal with the outward letter, but he imparts an inward taste for the truth, by which we perceive its savour and spirit. The most unlearned of men become ripe scholars in the school of grace when the Lord Jesus by His Holy Spirit unfolds the mysteries of the kingdom to them, and grants the divine anointing by which they are enabled to behold the invisible. Happy are we if we have had our understandings cleared and strengthened by the Master! How many men of profound learning are ignorant of eternal things! They know the killing letter of revelation, but its killing spirit they cannot discern; they have a veil upon their hearts which the eyes of carnal reason cannot penetrate. Such was our case a little time ago; we who now see were once utterly blind; truth was to us as beauty in the dark, a thing unnoticed and neglected. Had it not been for the love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in utter ignorance, for without his gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more have attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant can climb the Pyramids, or an ostrich fly up to the stars. Jesus’ College is the only one in which God’s truth can be really learned; other schools may teach us what is to be believed, but Christ’s alone can show us how to believe it. Let us sit at the feet of Jesus, and by earnest prayer call in his blessed aid that our dull wits may grow brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.