Q. If Jesus after his resurrection was a glorious spiritual body, how was it that the disciples never saw his glorious body? Why did he appear to them as he had done before his death?

W. If Jesus had appeared to them and shown his glory, they would probably have been so alarmed as to be unable to receive instructions; besides if they had gone forth saying the Lord arose and appeared to us in glory, they would have been accused of telling ghost stories, believing in ghost. Remember that the object of Jesus appearing to them was to convince them that “He who was dead is alive forevermore;” that they might go forth as “witnesses.”

Being a spiritual body, it was simply a question of expediency – which way could he best appear to them, i.e., in which way would his object in appearing be best accomplished?

He could appear as a “flame of fire,” as the angel of the Lord (also a spiritual body) had appeared to Moses “in the burning bush.” Thus, Jesus might have appeared to, and talked with the disciples, or he might have appeared in glory as the angel did to Daniel, or as he afterward did to John and to Saul of Tarsus.

If he had so appeared, they would doubtless also have had “great fear and quaking” and would have fallen to the ground before Him and “become as dead men;” or he could do, as angels had done and as he had done with Abraham (Gen 18) when he appeared as a man. This last he saw to be the best way and he did appear as a man. But notice he did not appear to them as he had done before His death. First, he appeared to Mary as the gardener and she “saw Jesus standing and knew not that it was Jesus.” “After that he appeared in another form unto two of them” as they went to Emmaus (Luke 24:13). They knew not that it was Jesus, until he revealed Himself in breaking of bread. Then he vanished from their sight.

Again, some had given up all hope of being any longer fishers of men and had gone again to their nets. They had toiled all night and caught nothing. In the morning Jesus is on the shore within speaking distance but they “knew not that it was Jesus.” It was another form. He works a miracle giving them a boat full of fish in a moment; John, the loving disciple, remembers the feeding of the 3,000 and 5,000, the strange days in which they were living, and that Jesus had appeared to them already. He seems at once to discern who gave the draught of fishes; and said: “It is the Lord.” He recognized him not by the natural eye but by the eye of faith, and when they were come to shore “none of them dare ask him who art thou, knowing (feeling sure from the miracle for they saw not the print of the nails) that it was the Lord” (John 21). Thus did Jesus appear to his disciples at different times, to make of them witnesses of His resurrection, seemingly he was present but unseen during most of those forty days appearing in all, perhaps, not more than seven times. (John 20:26, 21:14.)

Q. What object could there be for His appearing in so many different forms?

W. I presume it was to guard against their idea that he was a fleshly body, by appearing in various forms and in miraculous ways, coming into their midst, the doors being shut, and vanishing from their sight. He not only showed that He had undergone a change since death, but He illustrated his own teaching to Nicodemus, that everyone born of the spirit (that born of the spirit is spirit) can go and come like the wind. “Thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goes, so is everyone that is born of the spirit.” So did Jesus go and come. “But some doubted” – some wanted to thrust their hand into his side and put their fingers into the print of the nails; and Jesus thus appears, whether it was the same body that had been crucified, or one like it, I know not nor does it make any difference, in any case it was not his body, for he had been “quickened of the spirit” – a spiritual body – “sown a natural body raised a spiritual body,” and none of the various forms or bodies in which he appeared were His (actual) body. They were only veils of the flesh which hid or covered the glorious spiritual body, just as angels had often used the same human form to veil themselves when appearing to mortals.

Q. One point which seems to confuse some is, that Jesus ate and drank with the disciples and said, “Handle me, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have.”

How do you explain this? 

W. It does not need to be explained away. Jesus affirms just what we have claimed, viz: That the body they saw and handled and which ate with them was not his spiritual body for the spirit hath not flesh and bones. Look back to the time when the Lord and two angels appeared to Abraham. (Gen 18) Jesus had not then left “the form of God” and taken the form of a servant. He was a spiritual body then, and it had not flesh and bones but he then used the human form as a veil (manifested himself in a human body). He ate and drank and talked and could have said to Abraham, “Handle me, this body (a real human body, but not his real body) which you see is ‘flesh and bones.’”

Continued with next post.