John 20 - CSB Spurgeon Study Bible

20:5 “Stooping down, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in.” John knew they had not taken away the body of Jesus [as Mary had concluded in verse 2], for if they had, they certainly would not have taken off the linen clothes. It would have been difficult and would have taken considerable time to unwrap the cold grave clothes when they were bound to the body by the ointments that had been used.

20:16 “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ Turning around, she said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’—which means ‘Teacher.’” In the simple utterance of her name, there were tones she could not mistake. It was the sweetest music she had heard since her Lord’s last message from the cross. “Mary.” “Why, surely,” she must have thought, “it is the Master’s voice calling me by name!” The word, “Rabboni” means something more than “Master.” Mary seems to say, “Greatest and best of all Teachers, I know your voice! Now that you have called me by my name, I recognize you, and I wait to listen to the instruction you are ready to impart to me.”

20:29 “Jesus said, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’” We have a special and singular blessing through not having seen and yet having believed. So let us not diminish it by looking for a voice, or a vision, or a revelation—something that is like sight—so that it could not then be said of us that we have not seen. Perhaps we have said to ourselves, “Oh that God would in some way reveal himself to me so that my senses might assist my faith. Oh that I might be hidden away in some cleft of the rock and might see the hem of Jehovah’s robe. If I might hear some divine voice whisper that I am his, then I would, indeed, rejoice and never doubt again. Or if I might see some miracle, something I was sure was the finger of God so that I would never doubt again, what a grand thing it would be!”

We should not ask for anything like that. We should not wish to have it even if we could, for “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” We would be waiting for something that is practically the same as sight. We would show that we do not feel content to swim in the pure sea of faith. After all, it is only vanity that we are waiting for, so he will deny it to us and will say, “My children, instead of wanting to see, believe, trust, follow me in the dark, for it is better for you not to see. Even if you did see and believe, you would have obtained only an inferior gift; for the higher blessing, the cream of blessing, belongs to those who have not seen and yet have believed.”