When Peter and John entered Jesus’ tomb, the body was gone but the burial cloths remained. John gives particular attention to the cloth that had covered His head, lying apart from the linen. We should not turn those details into a description of folds or a secret message the passage never gives. The cloths belong within the larger testimony that the crucified Jesus truly rose bodily from the dead.
The Burial and the First Morning
Jesus died on the Preparation Day as the Sabbath approached. Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for His body, and Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes for the burial. Together they wrapped the body with spices and placed it in a nearby new tomb (John 19:38-42).
And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.
Matthew identifies the tomb as Joseph’s own, newly cut into the rock, and says that he rolled a large stone across its entrance. The women saw where Jesus was laid (Matthew 27:57-61).
When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb.
Luke also identifies Joseph as a council member who had not consented to the decision against Jesus. He describes the women observing the tomb and the placement of the body, then preparing spices and resting on the Sabbath (Luke 23:50-56).
That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.
The women had watched Joseph place Jesus in the tomb, so they knew where His body had been laid. They were returning to a place they had seen for themselves, carrying more spices to attend to the dead. Their purpose helps us understand why the empty tomb perplexed them.
Matthew adds that Jesus’ opponents secured the tomb and posted a guard because they remembered His prediction of resurrection. Both His followers and His opponents therefore knew the burial place. A suggestion that everyone simply went to the wrong cave fails to account for those circumstances.
The burial accounts also describe the linen used to wrap Jesus’ body. John calls the pieces othonia, the plural of a word for a linen cloth, while Matthew describes a clean linen cloth in the singular and Luke speaks of wrapping the body in linen. Naming the material does not require a writer to list every piece used in the burial, so these descriptions need not conflict. None gives us a detailed wrapping pattern or describes Egyptian-style embalming. I would not reconstruct a mummy-shaped casing from their words.
John begins the first morning with Mary Magdalene arriving while it was still dark. When she found the stone removed, she went to Peter and the other disciple with the conclusion that someone had taken the Lord away. Her report was an expression of alarm about a missing body, not an announcement that she already understood the resurrection.
What Peter and John Saw in the Tomb
The other disciple, whom Jesus loved and whom I understand to be John, reached the tomb ahead of Peter but stopped at the entrance. Peter went inside when he arrived, and John followed him. John records what he could see from outside before telling us what he found after entering (John 20:1-10).
And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.
Inside the tomb, the linen remained where Peter and John could see it, and the cloth that had been around Jesus’ head lay wrapped or folded together in a separate place. The body was missing, but these burial materials were still there. John connects his entry into the tomb with seeing and believing.
If someone had taken the body, why remove its wrappings instead of carrying it away as it was? Leaving the linen behind, with the head cloth set apart, seems difficult to reconcile with a hurried theft. I take that as evidence against such an explanation, while recognizing that John has not given us a complete description of the chamber or the process by which Jesus rose.
The words John uses help us stay within those limits. Othonia refers to the linen pieces; soudarion names the cloth used around the head or face. Thayer’s entry on soudarion includes its burial use here and in the account of Lazarus. Older English may call it a napkin, but John is describing a burial cloth rather than a table setting.
The linen was keimena, lying or laid there. For the head cloth, entetyligmenon describes something wrapped or rolled together. The lexical entry for that verb includes both wrapping a body and wrapping something together. These words do not tell us the precise number of folds, the shape of the linen, or who arranged it. John expressly says the head cloth was apart from the other materials.
John also uses three verbs for seeing as he follows the disciples into the tomb. In verse 5, blepei describes John seeing the linen from outside; in verse 6, theorei describes Peter observing it after entering. Then verse 8 uses eiden when John enters, sees, and believes.
We can follow that movement from looking into the tomb to entering and responding in faith without treating the verbs as three compulsory spiritual stages. Blepo can describe more than a superficial glance, while theoreo can describe attentive observation without always meaning scientific investigation. Eiden is an ordinary past form meaning saw. The sentence connects John’s seeing with his belief; the verb for seeing does not itself define saving faith.
I understand that belief to concern Jesus’ resurrection. The missing body and remaining cloths had led the other disciple beyond Mary’s first explanation. Some interpreters understand him simply to have believed her report that the body was gone, since the sentence does not expressly state the object of his belief. The NET note on John 20:8 discusses these alternatives and favors belief in the resurrection. That reading also fits the Gospel’s purpose of bringing people to faith in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God, with life in His name.
Verse 9 nevertheless says they had not yet understood the Scripture that He must rise from the dead. John does not describe a disciple who had already worked out every prophecy or understood all that resurrection would mean. He believed what the evidence was showing him while his understanding of Scripture still needed to grow.
Peter and John went home, and Mary subsequently encountered Jesus outside the tomb. When He called her by name, she recognized Him and could report that she had seen the Lord. The witnesses did not all reach understanding at the same moment. John records their alarm, observation, and growing conviction before describing the appearances in which Jesus made Himself known.
The open entrance gave Peter, John, and the women access to the place where Jesus had been laid. I understand the stone’s removal as allowing them to inspect the tomb, rather than rescuing Jesus from confinement. The writers report the empty burial place and the risen Lord’s appearances without describing how His body left the wrappings or the tomb.
Claims the Grave Clothes Do Not Support
John never says Jesus passed through the wrappings, leaving them in a hollow human shape. The cloths may have lain in an orderly arrangement, but the word lying does not describe an empty cocoon. The supernatural character of the resurrection does not authorize us to add a particular physical process to the account.
Nor does John identify who wrapped or folded the head cloth. Jesus may have done so, an angel may have moved it, or its position may have resulted directly from the resurrection. Those are proposed explanations of what the disciples found, and John does not tell us which, if any, describes what happened.
A popular explanation claims that a folded napkin told a Jewish servant, “The master is coming back.” John does not describe such a custom or apply it to the cloth. The claim needs reliable first-century evidence before it can be presented as historical background, and the burial use of soudarion provides no basis for turning this scene into a coded dinner-table message. Christ’s promised return rests on His teaching, not on that explanation.
The Gospel does not identify a cloth destined for preservation and later veneration either. Claims about the Shroud of Turin depend on separate historical and scientific arguments. Whatever conclusion someone reaches about that object cannot amend John’s account or make the biblical resurrection testimony depend on a surviving relic.
I would weaken the case for the resurrection by making it depend on an attractive detail John never supplies. We have ample reason to examine the testimony he does give: the buried body was gone, the burial materials remained, and Jesus Himself appeared alive.
Lazarus and the Risen Body of Jesus
John also describes burial cloths when Jesus raises Lazarus. That earlier event gives us a useful comparison, though it was not the same kind of resurrection life Jesus entered. Lazarus had been dead four days when Jesus ordered the stone removed and called him out (John 11:38-44).
Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
Lazarus came out with his hands and feet bound and his face wrapped, so Jesus told the people nearby to loose him and let him go. He had truly been raised, but the life restored to him was still mortal. Scripture does not narrate his later death, and we should distinguish his return to mortal life from Christ’s resurrection into life no longer subject to death.
Some preachers suggest that Jesus had to call Lazarus by name or every dead person would have risen. John does not give that explanation. The command brought Lazarus out because Jesus had authority to raise him; it does not suggest that Jesus needed to word His command carefully to avoid raising anyone else.
Jesus left His own grave clothes behind and rose to life over which death has no dominion. Paul calls Him the firstfruits, the beginning and guarantee of the resurrection harvest still to come. The difference between Lazarus’s restored mortal life and Christ’s incorruptible life explains why the resurrection promises us more than a temporary reprieve from death.
That victory was not immediately understood by the people who came to Jesus’ tomb. Luke describes the women arriving with prepared spices on the first morning, finding the stone removed, and discovering that His body was absent. Two heavenly messengers then reminded them of what Jesus had said (Luke 24:1-12).
Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles. And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them. But Peter arose and ran to the tomb; and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves; and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.
John’s account centers first on Mary Magdalene, while Luke names several women. Mary’s own report in John uses the word we, so focusing on her does not require us to suppose she was alone. Likewise, describing the angel who speaks does not exclude the presence of a second messenger. The writers select details rather than supplying a minute-by-minute itinerary of every visit, and we should not mistake their different emphases for denials of one another’s testimony.
When the women remembered Jesus’ prediction and reported what they had found, the apostles initially dismissed their words. Peter ran to the tomb, observed the linen lying by itself, and departed marveling. Those responses show how far the disciples were from confidently expecting the resurrection. They needed to consider the evidence before them and remember what Jesus had already told them.
The question “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” gives the explanation for the empty tomb. Jesus had foretold His crucifixion and resurrection, and His words were fulfilled. His body had not merely been moved to another burial place.
The appearances make the bodily nature of that claim unmistakable. The risen Jesus showed His wounds, invited His disciples to touch Him, and ate in their presence, as Luke 24:39–43 also records. He was not merely an immaterial soul, a vision of a dead teacher, or the continuing influence of His teaching.
John lets us follow the change in the disciples as Jesus appeared to them that evening, then returned when Thomas was present. These were men who had struggled to believe the first reports and who now saw the Lord for themselves (John 20:19-29).
Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus stood among the disciples even though the doors were shut. His arrival reveals His supernatural power, but John does not say He passed through the wood. Whether He opened the way miraculously or appeared by another divine action, we are told that He was there and showed them His wounds.
Thomas had missed that first appearance and refused to accept the other disciples’ testimony. When Jesus later invited him to examine His wounds, Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God!” The same Jesus who had been crucified was now bodily alive and glorified, and He received Thomas’s confession. His blessing on those who believe without seeing extends beyond that room to people who receive the witnesses’ testimony.
The Grave Clothes in the Larger Resurrection Witness
The linen belongs within a much larger testimony. Mary initially thought someone had moved the body, and the cloths left behind made that explanation harder to sustain. But Jesus’ followers went on to speak with Him, touch Him, share meals in His presence, and see Him ascend. The evidence did not end with objects found in an empty tomb.
A theft could empty a tomb; it could not produce the living Jesus who invited examination of His wounds. The disciples’ initial confusion and reluctance to believe also work against a claim that they had knowingly staged the event. I find that theory difficult to reconcile with the evidence recorded.
A private experience arising from grief would not explain the empty tomb and the appearances described to different people in different settings. Paul reports more than five hundred brethren seeing Jesus at once. The apostolic claim concerns a bodily resurrection witnessed by others, not merely the personal conviction that a loved teacher somehow remained present.
The suggestion that Jesus survived the crucifixion must account for His wounds, the spear thrust, and Pilate’s inquiry confirming His death before releasing the body. It must also explain how someone who had barely survived could emerge from that burial as the conqueror of death. His followers did not report nursing a grievously wounded man back to health. They testified that the Jesus who had died was bodily alive, no longer subject to death.
Paul sets out the received gospel in terms of Christ’s death for sins, His burial, His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture, and His appearances to witnesses. We do not have to make one theory about the linen carry the weight of that entire testimony (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.
Paul joins the burial, resurrection, and appearances in one account of what happened to Jesus. The burial concerns the body of the One who had died; the empty tomb shows that His body was no longer there, and the appearances identify Him alive. Scripture explains why He died for our sins and why He must rise. We need both the events and the meaning God gives them.
Paul’s qualification “unless you believed in vain” must also be read within the chapter. Some Corinthians were denying that the dead rise, as verse 12 explains. Remove bodily resurrection from the message and what remains is not the saving gospel Paul preached. I understand him to be examining the content and reality of their profession of faith, not teaching that a genuinely born-again person can become unborn. The hope he defends rests on Christ’s actual resurrection.
The Jesus who died for our sins is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. He willingly offered Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice, while wicked men inflicted His bodily suffering and crucified Him. His atonement rests on His perfection and His voluntary sacrifice through His shed blood and death. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus; Father and Son acted in perfect unity. His saving sacrifice was complete before He was buried, and on the third day He rose bodily from the dead.
Paul’s image of firstfruits takes our attention from Christ’s resurrection to the future of those who belong to Him. The first portion of a harvest preceded the gathering of the rest. Christ’s resurrection therefore begins and guarantees the harvest that follows at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:20-28).
But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.
Paul promises resurrection to those who belong to Christ and calls death an enemy that will finally be destroyed. Our hope rests on God’s power to raise the dead, rather than an assumption that human beings are naturally immortal or can simply discard the body. Believers who die are consciously with Christ while awaiting that bodily resurrection. When He returns, their hope will be fulfilled in bodies no longer subject to death.
A spiritual body in the next part of the chapter does not mean an imaginary or immaterial body. It is a real body transformed and fitted for life under the Holy Spirit’s power. We have already seen the bodily reality in Jesus, who could be touched and could eat while no longer being subject to death (1 Corinthians 15:35-49).
So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Paul’s seed illustration helps us understand how the body can remain ours while undergoing such a transformation. What is buried in weakness and corruption is raised in power and incorruption. Believers will bear the image of the heavenly Man, with more to look forward to than an endless extension of present frailty. Christ remains the crucified and risen Lord, and those who belong to Him will share the resurrection life He has secured.
I cannot treat the resurrection only as an event to defend while leaving my own need for Christ unexamined. He died for the whole world, and God’s offer is genuine even though people can resist His grace and reject His Son. Whoever repents and believes in the risen Christ is forgiven and justified, or declared righteous before God. Through that faith the believer is born again, indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit, and eternally secure in Christ.
The new life He gives should become evident in our conduct, so a shallow profession of faith that excuses lawlessness is no basis for assurance. Obedience is the fruit of salvation, never the means of earning or keeping it, and believers still need to confess sin rather than claim perfection. Because the Jesus who received Thomas’s worship ascended and will return bodily, we can carry on faithfully with the duties He has given us, knowing that death will not undo His promise.
The promise of resurrection also shapes how we face bereavement. I do not have to deny the pain of a funeral in order to believe that Christ will destroy death. Scripture calls death an enemy, so grief itself does not contradict faith. Because Jesus is the firstfruits, everyone who belongs to Him can face loss knowing that He will raise His people when He comes.
My Final Thoughts
The cloths in Jesus’ tomb deserve our attention because they belonged to His actual burial and remained after His body was gone. I want to follow John from those observations to the living Lord, without resting my faith on an arrangement of linen he never describes. The Jesus who was crucified rose into incorruptible life and made Himself known to His followers. Everyone who belongs to Him can face death knowing that He will raise His people when He comes.