Jesus’ followers rightly understood that His brutal death left His body beyond the possibility of being raised to mortal life. Only after He had been resurrected from such a death to immortal life, of which He was the first, were they able to understand what the Scriptures had foretold. We gather that not even the angels understood what God was accomplishing, and that Christ’s suffering and resurrection were as much a mystery to them as they were to men; see 1Pe 1:10-12; cf. Eph 1:10, Phil 2:10, Col 1:16-20. But it was to men, and not angels that what we now know as the gospel was first articulated; cf. Heb 2:5-7. Namely, that the Christ was to suffer, and to be resurrected from the dead, and repentance for forgiveness of sins was to be heralded in His name to all the nations. I.e., God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself—both heavens and earth—and forgiveness is offered to all through the simple repentance of laying down one’s self-will in submission to God’s will. But that submission of our own will is costly, leading ultimately to our death to what we suppose is life; cf. Mat 16:25. Such death to our fleshly desires can even be described as torturous, for we suffer as we die, from which suffering our flesh naturally recoils. Apart from Christ, death is an impenetrable veil of darkness through which one cannot see, which the devil uses to enslave mankind; see Heb 2:14-15. But such is the power of the resurrection and what the gospel reveals. For now, through His suffering unto death and resurrection from the dead, Christ Jesus “abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2Ti 1:10).
What we think of as the gospel—Christ’s suffering unto death and His resurrection from the dead—is actually only two-thirds of a bigger whole that Jesus communicated to His apostles on that evening of the first day of the week when He first appeared to them. What was the third part of the gospel imperative He spoke to them? See Luk 24:47. Did Jesus say that belief in the atoning blood of His death is what would be proclaimed for the forgiveness of sins? What is the connection and great significance of Jesus’ suffering unto death and His resurrection from the dead to this all-important third part of the whole gospel, that repentance for the forgiveness of men’s sins might now be proclaimed to all nations? I.e., why is it in His name that such repentance for the forgiveness of sins must be proclaimed, as opposed to any other name or any other call to repent for the forgiveness of sins? See Act 17:30-31, Rom 6:1-14, Gal 2:20, 1Pe 4:1-2 and recall that Jesus came to save people from their sins (Mat 1:21), but man’s bondage to sin can only be broken by death; cf. Rom 8:13. And yet death is an impenetrable veil of darkness (Isa 25:7-8) through which man cannot see, which the devil had used to enslave men by their fears, so as to prevent them from exercising the repentance unto death for their sins that is necessary for deliverance from them; see again Heb 2:14-15 and cf. Gen 2:17, Mat 16:24-25, Joh 12:24-26. I.e., apart from Jesus’ brutal death from which it was clear that mortal life could not be restored to His body, but then His resurrection from the dead that removed the dark veil of death, men had no clear hope that dying to their sins would leave them anything but dead. And yet it is exactly such radical repentance of death to self in the cause of Christ that is necessary for our deliverance from sin, but that leads to suffering and death in this world just as it did for Him (see 2Ti 3:12).
In light of the near universal misconception among the Jews that the Messiah would save the Jewish nation that was small and powerless in the eyes of the Gentiles by destroying those nations, how jarring must it have been for Jesus’ disciples to hear Him say that the salvation He had just accomplished would now be proclaimed to those nations who were then oppressing them (Luk 24:47)? And yet, in what way was such sincere repentance unto death according to Christ’s gospel for the forgiveness of sins the only way to bring about the peace by which the great and the strong might come to care for the meek and the humble, rather than oppress them? I.e., in what way was a much greater and true and lasting salvation accomplished by including the Gentile nations in God’s plan to save His people the Jews than just destroying those nations? Cf. Psa 22:27-28, Isa 49:5-6, Mic 4:1-4. Do we think in terms of such a great salvation, or are we like the Jews who just want God to destroy our enemies, rather than rescue them so that we might have true, lasting peace? Cf. Mat 5:43-48, Luk 6:27-35.
For three years Jesus had ministered truth to the nation of Israel, setting apart twelve apostles to whom He had especially imparted the truth in order that they might teach others. Now, following His resurrection from the dead He has summarized the very heart of the gospel in three parts: that the Christ was to suffer, to be resurrected from the dead, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins was to be heralded in His name to all the nations, starting in Jerusalem. After opening their minds to understand this (Luk 24:45), with what action point did Jesus then give to these He had set apart for what it meant to them? See Luk 24:48; cf. Act 1:8,22, 2:32, 3:15, 5:32, 10:39-41, 13:31, 26:16-18. After whose image are they witnesses? See Rev 1:5, 3:14. In light of Jesus’ own suffering unto death in bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel, what is the significance that the word for witnesses is μάρτυρες from which we get our word martyr? Cf. Act 22:20, Rev 2:13, 17:6.