Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:53
After Jesus’ resurrection, there was another resurrection; a resurrection of select saints who would give evidence to certain people in Jerusalem of the fact of the resurrection and the victory of Jesus over death and the grave. Matthew says that these saints “went into the holy city and appeared to many.”
Interestingly, Matthew calls Jerusalem “the holy city” here. As he does with so many of his factual statements in his telling of the crucifixion story, he doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t expound on what he might mean. He gives us the facts, and his way of telling the facts, and then leaves it to us to wrestle with questions about why he said it the way he did.
Why call Jerusalem the holy city?
This is the city where Christ was rejected, tried, and crucified. Later, in Revelation John calls Jerusalem, “the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” (Revelation 11:8).
The most likely explanation is that at that time Jerusalem was still the place in which the Temple of God stood. That Temple was destroyed in AD 70 and hasn’t been rebuilt since. When John calls Jerusalem “great” he wasn’t paying it a compliment. He means great as in big or significant in the eyes of the world. He uses the same word for Babylon. Then, at the close of Revelation, John reverts to calling the New Jerusalem the Holy City because God dwells there among His people.
We can, therefore, distinguish between greatness and holiness by this test: Does the presence of God abide there? His presence is what makes for holiness. Something or someone can be “great” without God – at least in the eyes of the world – but it can never be holy. The converse is true. Something or someone can be seen by the world as piddling in the eyes of the world and be holy in the eyes of God.
If you can’t be great and holy, if you have to choose one or the other, chose holy.
