Because if you look at that verse, especially in modern translations, and you begin to question what it says in the King James (I believe the King James says, "Do not touch Me.") and virtually every modern translation will say something like my Bible does here. I have a New King James and that is, "Do not cling to Me."
Well, one gives the impression that as Mary probably rushed over to Christ, that He kind of shrunk back in horror and said, "Don't touch Me. I haven't yet ascended to My Father." Whereas the modern translations give the impression that she rushed over and she grabbed on to Him and was already holding on to Him when He said, "Don't cling to Me."
Mr. Armstrong has always followed the King James approach to it and that is that He said, "Don't touch Me." That is, that He hindered her from doing it before she did it and the reason that He said it is because He wanted to be pure, as it were, untouched by human hands before ascending to His Father. Now, if you would approach this verse from the standpoint of what the modern Bibles say and what most of the commentaries say, you might be led to doubt the things that Mr. Armstrong taught.
What it is, it is one of those things that I do not know whether we are ever going to be able to come to a satisfactory answer to. And part of the reason is because if you look back in the Old Testament and you evaluate what it says about the firstfruit offering, you know, the first of the firstfruit, it is very obvious that the priest had to touch the firstfruit offering. Now, the way they did it, of course, is they went out into the field and they first separated, let us say, a number of sheaves of grain that they were going to use for that firstfruits offering.
So first of all, they had to separate it according to the historical accounts that have been left to us. The priests would go out into the field and they would grab a sheaf and then kind of tie it together, go to another place, tie some more together, go to another place until they had three or four or five different sheaves of grain. And then somebody else would come and make an evaluation of which ones look the best.
In order to do that, they had to touch it, then they took a sickle to the one that they chose. So they had to touch it again. Then after they took the sickle to it, then they took it to a place where it could be ground up. See, the sheath was not waved before God. It was actually an omer of ground grain that was offered to God. So it was ground up and totally prepared as though it was going to be an offering that was going to be made on the altar. So in order to reap that little bit, they certainly had to touch the firstfruits offering and then to grind it up, they also had to touch it again.
Now, Christ was the first of the firstfruits. And so if He was the first of the firstfruits, and we have an exact type there, then to touch Him would not have been wrong. But there is the aspect, you see, that Christ is not exactly the same as a sheaf of grain and that indeed He might have wanted to be absolutely pure, untouched by human hands before being presented to His Father. And so God may very well have given Mr. Armstrong the inspiration to see that what was written in the King James indeed was the correct approach, even though the Greek does not clearly indicate that that is so.
This is a very clear statement that Jesus had a God, and that God was His Father. Do you understand the implications of that? This was uttered while He was a man dying on the stake, so it might be argued that Jesus cried out to God because He was a man. But that argument begins to lose some of its force when we look at John 20:17, when Mary Magdalene grabbed Him when she recognized who He was there outside the tomb.
There He is, resurrected, and that same One He said in Mark 15 was His God is still His God.
Our Lord—the Mediator between us and the Supreme God—has a God, and that God is the One He revealed.
Brethren, we must see God. We must hear God. But that is literally impossible because of the restraints that God has imposed upon Himself, but we can realize both of these exalted Beings through Jesus Christ, our Mediator. Now we see in Him not only Himself, but also His God, and through His words we hear not His words, but the words of the Father who sent Him. Jesus Himself said that. "These are not My words. They are the words of My Father."
The glory of Jesus Christ lies in His perfect submission to His God. He is not a mere man, or Absolute Deity, but the Mediator between them.
There are some who might make the claim that Jesus stated this only because He was a man, but we will smash that to smithereens.
We see Jesus making the claim twice: once when He was in the flesh, that He had a God, and that God was His Father. Even though He was God in the flesh, He had a Father who was greater than He. Then in John 20:17, Jesus was no longer in the flesh. He was transformed into spirit, and began to assume the glory that He had with the Father from the very beginning, and He again stated in this condition that He still had a God, and that God He names as His Father. That Father is the One that I have been calling the Absolute Deity.
One is greater than the other. One is the Source, and the other the means through whom God—the Source—has revealed Himself. Both are of the God-kind. Both are worthy of worship, and both have thrones of rulership. They do not share equality in the Godhead, and we shall see when this series is all over that they do not permanently occupy the same throne. We are to understand clearly from Christ's own testimony that His Father is the One who is supreme, who is the Absolute Deity, and who is His—Christ's—God.
The priests of the temple would have been conducting the wave sheaf ceremony on the day of Christ resurrection. It is quite evident that Christ ascended about the same time as the wavesheaf was being waved before God.
This was very early in the morning. Just after sunrise. We do not know exactly what time after sunrise, but they came to the tomb while it was still dark. And He was already gone at that point. So He could not have risen at sunrise. It was sometime after sunrise when Jesus stopped her and told her to tell His disciples these things. So, shortly after Mary returned to the disciples—however long it took her to get back to where they were all staying—Jesus ascended to His Father's throne in heaven to be accepted as our Redeemer and our High Priest.
Our sinless Savior qualified to be our High Priest and our Mediator before God. That is what He is now doing as the Head of the Church. It is one of His jobs as High Priest.
What are these privileges? Here is the first one. God is our Father. The everlasting, eternal, and supreme God of all existence is our Father. We can go to Him as our Father and remember how Christ Himself said to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17 which we will read.
A personalized, intimate, relationship, and Christ is emphasizing it here, just before ascending. Mary was converted by this time, a baptized Christian; and there was surely no greater honor and no greater dignity that can ever come into our comprehension than just this that we have on us the name of God. Of course we have to wait until the resurrection to receive or have that name placed on us. But as children of God, we await anxiously for that name which we do not know. For the time being we have to be satisfied with our last name in the sense of being God. But only in that spiritual sense of course.
Remember that one of His titles, His names, was Immanuel. He was God with us. In John 20:17, following His resurrection, He stated to Mary Magdalene that He had to go to "My God and your God." In other words, He and Mary had exactly the same God. Furthermore, we saw in that sermon in I Corinthians 11:3 that God is the Head of Christ.
Actually it says "Do not cling to Me." It gives the impression that she was already touching Him. She probably threw herself prostrate on the ground and was holding onto His ankles.
Is it not becoming clearer and clearer with each message that there cannot be a trinity of co-equal beings when the Son Himself makes it clear—though His very name and title says that "He is God with us"—that He Himself has a God; a God that sent Him, that He submits to, and appeals to for deliverance?
Christ’s use of this title indicates His awareness that He was the Son of God in a unique sense, but amazingly He then revealed that it can be used by those who become sons of God in a lesser sense, by their union with Him. After His resurrection Jesus announced that the disciples could come to the Father as He came to Him.
Is this important? Of course it is because it means that while God is the great, high, exalted, eternal, self- sufficient, self-existent, omniscient God, He is, at the same time and in equal measure, the Father of all who believe. So we can come to Him, not with a prayer that says, “Oh, unreachable, unknowable God, far from us in Your majesty,” but rather with a warm and personal prayer that begins, “Our Father.”
This string of verses is making it very clear that the lesser is submitting to the greater. Let us add something here because some might say that these statements were made while He was a man. Jesus has already been resurrected, and He is once again fully—absolutely, totally, in every way, including bodily—Spirit as He was before He became a man.
He was still subject to the Father, and that Being [the Father] was His God. Do you see what I am saying here? Jesus is admitting that He was not the Absolute God. There was a God beyond Him that was greater. This declaration was made immediately following His resurrection. But for additional proof, I want you to go to Revelation 3. This is within the message to the church of Philadelphia.
