What would we have seen had we been there at the moment at which Jesus was raised from the dead? Would we have seen Jesus stir, open his eyes, sit up, and begin to struggle out of the bandages? That would have been a resuscitation, not a resurrection. It would have been as if he had recovered from a swoon or had merely been raised from death as he had raized Lazarus. He would have been raised in a natural body rather than a spiritual body, that was not the case at all.
If we had been present in the tomb at the moment of the resurrection, we would have noticed either that the body of Jesus would have seemed to have disappeared or else that it was changed into a resurrection body and passed through the graveclothes and out of the sealed tomb just as it was later to pass through closed doors. John Stott says that the body was "vaporized, being transmuted into something new and different and wonderful." Latham says that the body would have been "exhaled," passing "into a phase of being like that of Moses and Elias on the Mount."
What would have happened then? The linen cloths would have subsided once the body was removed because of the weight of the spices that were in them, and they would have been lying undisturbed where the body of Jesus had been. The cloth which surrounded the head, without the weight of spices, might well have retained its concave shape and have lain by itself separated from the body cloths by the space where the Lord's neck and shoulders had been.
This is exactly what John says he and Peter saw when they entered the sepulcher. John was first at the tomb, and as he reached the open sepulcher in the murky light of early dawn he saw the graveclothes lying. There was something about them that attracted John's attention. First, it was significant that they were there at all. John stresses the point, using the word for "lying" at an emphatic position in the sentence. We might translate, "He saw, lying there, the graveclothes" (v. 5). Futhermore, the clothes were undisturbed. The word that John uses (keimena) occurs in the Greek papyrii of things that have been carefully placed in order. One document speaks of legal documents, saying, "I have not yet obtained the documents, but they are lying collated." Another speaks of clothes that are "lying (in order) until you send me word." Certainly John noticed that there had been no disturbance at the tomb.
At this point Peter arrived and went into the sepulcher. Peter saw what John had seen, but in addition he was struck by something else. The cloth that had been around the head was not with the other clothes. It was lying in a place by itself (v.7). What was even more striking, it had retained a circular shape. John says that it was "wrapped together." We might say that it was "twirled about itself." There was a space between it and the cloths that had enveloped the body. When John saw this he believed.
What did John believe? I imagine that he might have explained it to Peter like this. " Don't you see, Peter, that no one has moved the body or disturbed the graveclothes? They are lying exactly as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea left them on the eve of the Sabbath. Yet the body is gone. It has not been stolen. It has not been moved. Clearly it must have passed through the clothes, leaving them as we see them now. Jesus must be risen." Stott says, "A glance at these grave clothes proved the reality, and indicated the nature, of the resurrection."
How foolish in the light of such evidence are non-Christian explanations of the events of Easter morning. Some have taught that the body of Jesus was stolen, but in that case the presence of the graveclothes is inexplicable. They would have been removed along with the body. Others have taught that Jesus revived in the tomb and escaped after having unwound the linen bands. In that case the linen would have been displaced. Even if we can imagine that Jesus replaced the clothes where they had been and somehow moved the stone, there is still a problem with the spices, for these would have been scattered about the tomb. Of this there is not the slightest suggestion in the Gospel. None of these explanations will do. The disciples saw everything in order, but the body was gone. Jesus had indeed been raised, and in a resurrection body.
(by James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John, Volume 5)
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