Luke 24:39

39. A spirit hath not flesh and bones We have here, in opposition to materialism, the clearest possible assertion of the independent existence of spirit. There is no other explanation of these words which does not insult the Saviour and abuse his language.

In regard to the nature of our Lord’s risen body previous to the ascension, we may say that there are FOUR different opinions prevalent. The first supposes a body in substance entirely new substituted for the previous body; the second, a body the same in substance and attributes; just as Lazarus’s natural unchanged body was raised the same as before death; the third, a body the same in substance but endowed with new properties and powers; the fourth, the same body glorified as completely as after his ascension.

We reject the first as being no resurrection at all, but a creation; and doubt the fourth as not provable if true. That the third is preferable to the second may thus appear.

Perhaps all will grant that our Lord’s ordinary stay or abode between his resurrection and ascension was in the invisible; his visible appearances during the forty days being only occasional. His body possessed then normally, and perhaps we may say naturally, in its risen nature, the power of invisibility, at will. It possessed, also, a superiority to the control of gravitation, to the need of food, clothing, and other bodily necessities, and, probably, a superiority to disease and a second mortality. But these are all new powers; possible by miracle, but not belonging to man or to Jesus corporeally as a man. The third, therefore, seems the preferable view.

This view assumes, that although our Lord’s risen body had its own proper form and substance, and its own proper outline and limitation, yet that he was able, more or less, to modify it at will. so as to retain or resume traces, constituent parts, or substantive properties of its former self, such as wounds, limbs, flesh, and bones. However modified, temporarily or permanently, by will or by nature, it would be the same body; able to prove itself such to human eyes by resuming its old familiar peculiarities. So he could identify himself to Thomas, John 20:25; he could be grasped by the women, John 20:29; could (like the angels in Genesis 18:8; Genesis 19:3) invest himself with apparent garments, and eat and drink before his disciples. Luke 24:41-43.

By his self-modifying power he could not only enter the invisible instantaneously, (Luke 24:31,) but could appear under another form, (Mark 16:12;) could pass through any material impediments, doubtless by those interstices between particles which science has so amply revealed as belonging to solid bodies. John 20:19.* Nor was the rolling the stone from the tomb by angels necessary so far as his power was concerned; but necessary to render visible to the world’s perception, the external reality of the resurrection. So it was, apparently, that our Lord after his resurrection (as at no previous time) seemed often times unrecognisable to the best acquainted eyes. John 20:14; John 21:4; John 21:7; John 21:12. So his ready presence (Luke 24:36) at different places evinced his power of invisible and, probably, instantaneous transference through space at will.

[* In the most solid bodies the ultimate particles are supposed to be immensely smaller than the spaces between them. In a body as dense as water they are, proportionately, as “one hundred men distributed over the whole surface of England.” Sir William Armstrong’s Presidential Address before the British Association, 1864.] All this involves not the idea either that his body was properly glorified, as after his ascension; or, as some imagine, that it underwent a gradual glorifying process through the forty days. The endowment with the properties belonging to a resurrection body (properties possessed even by the risen wicked) is one thing; his investiture at his enthronement with his full Mediatorial glories at God’s right hand is quite another thing.