1 Corinthians 15:42-53 “So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. (43) It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. (44) It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. (45) And so it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”… (49) And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. (50) Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. … (53) For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”
By describing to us in the above passage of scripture what the resurrected bodies of the saints will be like, the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul also describes what our Lord’s resurrected body is like, for the scripture declares that we will receive a resurrected body that is just like His. And so we see that our Lord no longer has a natural mortal body, but rather He has an immortal spiritual body that is incorruptible, full of glory and full of power. Our Lord’s resurrected body can take on several different forms. In Luke’s account that we read earlier, the Lord Jesus appeared to the disciples in the form that they recognized, for He appeared in the same likeness that He had when He walked with them in the flesh. As we read the various accounts of our Lord appearing to the disciples after His resurrection, the most common form that our Lord appeared in was as He looked when He walked the earth in the flesh. And so we see that with regards to our Lord’s resurrected body, in appearance it looks exactly like it did the day before He went to the cross. Except for the holes in His hands and feet, where the nails had gone through and the hole in His side, where the spear had pierced through. And although scripture does not reveal this to us, it seems most likely that our Lord’s back carries the scars of the stripes that He bore for us on that day as well. As our Lord revealed to us on the first night that He appeared to the disciples, His body is made up of flesh and bones. But there is no blood flowing through His body, as His blood was offered up for our sins. All of this gives us an indication as to what we will look like in our resurrected bodies, for they too will take on the same form as when we walked in the flesh. And our resurrected bodies will also not have any blood flowing through them, for as Paul teaches us, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”.
Michael E.B. Maher
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