Do You Need to Open Some Doors?

In John’s Gospel, there’s a curious scene nestled among the stories of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances.¹ After some initial interactions around the empty tomb, most of the surviving disciples gather themselves together and lock the doors (Matt 27:3–10; John 20:19a, 24–29). The small band that had followed the man from Galilee is afraid of those from Judea who have just executed their teacher (John 20:19a).

Locks, Doors, and Fear

The trouble with locked doors, however, is that they keep certain people in just as much as they keep others out.² Push-bar-activated latches are modern inventions.³ So, while the group gathers and enjoys some measure of safety from the Judeans, they find themselves in grave danger from a different angle.

Their fear is understandable, but they are in danger of giving in to it, losing their group’s cohesion, and dwindling into oblivion like followers of so many other executed, would-be messiahs.⁴ They are in danger of being indifferent toward the pain of the world outside and its desperate need for the news about the Lord about whose resurrection the group already has Mary Magdalene’s concrete report (John 20:18). And they are in danger of loving their own lives and seeking to preserve them so well that they may not be able to keep them or experience how they can be imbued with the age to come (cf. John 12:25).

Interacting with Jesus

For this frightened group of followers, however, “Jesus came and stood in their midst” (John 20:19; ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἔστη εἰς τὸ μέσον).⁵ John narrates no knocking, no door-opening, nothing. Jesus is simply and suddenly present with the group. And the first thing he does with this group of frightened disciples is to say “Peace be to you” (John 20:19b; εἰρήνη ὑμῖν).

Yet Jesus doesn’t merely make this pronouncement. He shows the group his hands and his side (John 20:20a). This interaction turns the disciples’ fear into joy (John 20:20b), and Jesus opens his mouth again. He reiterates the blessing of “Peace be to you” (John 20:21a) but this time has a bit more to say also. Jesus continues,

Just as the Father has sent me, I also am sending you (John 20:21a; καθὼς ἀπέσταλκέν με ὁ πατήρ, κἀγὼ πέμπω ὑμᾶς).

Whatever the range of things this sending might entail, the Father clearly did not send Jesus to cower for safety behind locked doors. Jesus’s commissioning of his disciples in the same way now means that they can’t do this either. To fulfill this task, they’ll need to unlock the doors, open them, and walk out to work in the unknown.

Preparing for the Future

At this point, however, little has changed for the group in one respect. When the fearful disciples sequestered themselves behind the locked doors, they had already received Mary Magdalene’s first-hand report of seeing the risen Jesus (John 20:1–18).

Seeing Jesus for themselves turns the group’s fear into joy (John 20:19–20). But this same Jesus has previously taught the group how a time would come when they would not be able to see him (John 16:8–10, 16–24). What will they do then? In the absence of the surety of seeing Jesus face to face, will the group’s fear return? Will they find themselves succumbing to a temptation to trade off obedience for what feels like the physical safety of closed and locked doors?

Against this possibility Jesus leaves the group not only with their memory of his appearance and words. But “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22; ἐνεφύσησεν καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον).⁶ And this Spirit, as 2 Tim 1:7 reflects, is not a “spirit of cowardice but of power and love and self-control” (πνεῦμα δειλίας ἀλλὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀγάπης καὶ σωφρονισμοῦ; cf. John 16:7–28).

The Spirit’s presence enables the disciples to turn away from their fears, unlock and open the doors, and resist the temptation to succumb to fear in the future (cf. Rom 8:15). The Spirit’s presence enables the group to step out in obedience to the commission they have received and to begin the new chapter that lies before them.

1. Header image provided by Ebru Yılmaz. ↩︎
2. Image provided by Daoud Abismail. ↩︎
3. “Panic Bar,” Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 10 May 2023. ↩︎
4. E.g., see N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 1 (affiliate disclosure; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992). ↩︎
5. Greek NT quotations accord with NA²⁸ (affiliate disclosure); translations are mine. ↩︎
6. See also Jesus’s final comment to the group in John 20:23. ↩︎