Christian Science Perspective audio edition

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It’s not like they hadn’t been told. The book of Luke in the Bible reports that on at least three separate occasions, Jesus had clued his disciples in on the fact that he was going to be arrested, mocked, beaten, and crucified – a horrendous form of execution – but assured them that he would rise again the third day.

On one of those occasions he told them to let his words “sink down into [their] ears” (Luke 9:44) – in modern terms, “Listen up, guys, this is really important.” Another of those occasions was following a deep moment when the disciples recognized his divine mission to bring light and salvation to mankind.

But when all that he had foretold did happen, and in exactly the way he had said it would happen only days earlier, it seemed his words had not, in fact, sunk into the disciples’ ears. When Jesus was taken off the cross and buried in a tomb, instead of counting the days until he rose again, the disciples went into hiding. It wasn’t until Jesus appeared to them personally that they finally believed.

Their failure to believe what Jesus had told them shows how deeply the human mind resists accepting the gospel that Jesus came to teach and to prove. Peter’s strong reaction on one of the occasions when Jesus foretold the things he would suffer shows how shocking those words were to them: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22, Revised Standard Version). Was crucifixion an appropriate experience for God’s anointed? “God forbid!” Peter exclaimed, and it’s hard not to join him in feeling that way.

But how else was Jesus’ message of man’s full salvation to be conveyed to those to whom matter seemed as real as Spirit, God? Jesus had already been proving the ability of God’s children to reflect the divine power by destroying every sort of evil and overcoming matter itself. He’d healed the sick, raised the dead, and traveled instantly from one place to another. But even his own disciples still believed there was a limit to Jesus’ dominion over evil and matter.

Yet there was no limit. God has no limits, so His children have none, either. But Jesus’ followers needed to be fully awakened to that fact. To break the resistance of the human mind, to prove its unreality, Jesus allowed the sum total of the evil and hatred aimed at him and the truth he taught to do its worst. And he beat that effort. Exactly as he had said he would. Exactly as he knew he could. It was a knowledge born of his conviction that God is the only power.

It was this mighty demonstration that finally destroyed his disciples’ fear that there was a limit to God’s power, that in the end, matter would always be the victor. The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, “His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 34). The disciples soon came out of hiding, empowered to carry Jesus’ message forward boldly, teaching it, demonstrating it, passing it down to us.

The message of the resurrection is still true. We are not mortals trapped in mortal troubles. We are children of light, children of Love, beloved by the Love that is caring for us, guarding us, and guiding us every moment.

Perhaps we feel buried in doubt and fear. If so, we can let Jesus’ resurrection be our resurrection, too, empowering us to uplift ourselves and others from a hopeful faith in God into the clear understanding of all that is possible to God.

As we acknowledge Christ Jesus’ sacrifice, we can remember that he made a complete, public demonstration of the power of God over the belief in any power apart from God. We don’t have to suffer with Jesus in the sense that we have to repeat his experience. But to share in his glory, we do need to live as he taught us to live, think as he taught us to think, act as he taught us to act. We can start small, but as we do, as we faithfully put his teachings into practice, we’ll find that we, too, can heal, can shine the light of salvation in the world.

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Hallelujah! We have been told – the good news is ours!

Adapted from an editorial published in the April 2026 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

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