We can draw some fairly decent basic conclusions of Christ’s resurrection body from the scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments. There several detailed examples of recorded visits where Christ appeared before, walked with, and visited and dined with his followers during the interval after His resurrection and before His ascension. I’m only going to cover a couple of examples to highlight the conclusions we can draw.
Right off the bat when I started researching from the first appearance to Mary Magdalene, I realized it isn’t as clear cut and straight forward as I assumed it would be a few sentences ago. Why? Let’s look at this first appearance we find in Mark’s account in Mark 16:9 Now when [Jesus] was risen early the first [day] of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. (KJV) This seems simple enough, but we need to develop the context so when we read on a couple of more verses, we find this in Mark 16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. (KJV) What? What in the world does the word form in this sentence mean? In the Greek it means what we expect it to mean, the external appearance of something. So we can conclude that he appeared looking one way to Mary Magdalene and looking quite different to the others. John sheds some light on this in his gospel account in chapter 20:16-17 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God. (KJV) So it seems that when she first saw him he had just arisen and was still in the same human form as he was when he was laid in the sepulcher. Apparently between this visage and subsequent ones, he ascended and then returned in the form that he was seen afterward. Also on this first encounter by Mary Magdalene, a couple of verses earlier, in John 20:15 we are told she didn’t recognize him and thought he was the gardener. Why?
Let us look at beards. In I Chronicles chapter 19, as in many other places in the Old Testament, we find it was shameful for a Jewish male to be shaved. In Isaiah 50:6 we get a glimpse of one of the ways that Our Lord was tortured, because apparently they ripped out his beard. So, perhaps when she saw this beardless man her automatic and natural assumption would have been that this guy wasn’t a Jewish male, but rather a gentile, and likely a slave, instead of Our Savior.
Later on we find that He challenged Thomas to touch Him in John chapter 20 and also we read in Luke 24 that Christ walked and talked for seven miles and afterward dined with a couple of the disciple before he pulled a disappearing trick and vanished. I believe if he had been some floating, spectral being that we refer to as ghost, gliding along with them on on the road, they would have figured out something was very strangely wrong about this man (“Hey, why can we see through this guy, why isn’t his feet touching the ground as he moves?”). This one instance by itself is fairly definitive of the fact that He was flesh and blood…only he was flesh and blood that could vanish and move through walls which is a super indication that Christ had definitely changed form as we read in Mark 16:12.
God Bless, Jim
8-7-11
jimbussell 