0968. An Image

An Image

"And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly" (1Co_15:49)

There are many things about the body of resurrection which we do not understand, but there are also many things which we may understand.

The Word of God clearly teaches that as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the Heavenly. That is, as we have borne the image of the first Adam's body of humiliation, so shall we bear the image of the Last Adam's glorified body. This is clearly taught in Php_3:20 : "For our citizenship is in Heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall change our vile body (that is, the body of our humiliation), that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body."

In First John we read: "When He shall appear, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is." Let us then examine briefly the marks which Scripture gives of the resurrection body of our Lord. After His resurrection He was on earth, seen of His disciples. They speak authoritatively of the body which He bore.

1. It was a literal body–a body of flesh and bones. Did not Jesus Christ say unto Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side"?

Did not Christ also say to His disciples, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have"?

Thus, in the resurrection we shall have a literal, not an ethereal body.

Some may speak of God being a great idea and of our being ideas shot off from God, and that these ideas will eventually be gathered back into the great idea; but this does not satisfy saints, nor is it Scriptural. We are to have real, literal, tangible bodies without blood, but bodies with flesh and bones.

Some one may ask us to explain how Christ in His resurrection body could enter a building that was tightly shut up for fear of the Jews; or, how Christ, in a literal body, could have ascended up in a cloud to Heaven. We confess at once that we do not know, but we do know that we will have a literal body, even as our Lord had a literal body of flesh and bone.

2. It was a deathless body. The body which our Lord had in His resurrection, was a body without blood.

In this body, the life is in the blood, and when the blood is shed, death occurs. The body that we then shall have dieth no more. Death will have no more dominion over it. It will be a body that shall live forever more.

3. It was a Heavenly body. Jesus Christ's body is a body which ascended up on high. In His body He sat down at the right hand, on the Father's Throne.

The body that we shall have, will not be held back by gravity. It may go and come through the air, even as our Lord with His body went through the air.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR