“And he said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’”
Luke 24:38-39
April 18, 2025
The resurrected Christ gives profound hope and encouragement to the believer’s expectation of the kind of life we will have beyond the grave. If by some reason, in a kind of time-warp that could put us back to the day after Christ’s resurrection, what would we notice? He was not a ghost or a phantom of some sort. He was a real being. As one writer has said, “No one saw bread going down a transparent esophagus when he swallowed.” He was not some kind of third gender. Mary called him, “sir,” thinking he was a man, the gardener (Jn. 20:15). Thomas touched him. His voice was the same pre-resurrection voice. On the shore of the Sea of Galilee, He had caught some fish, started a fire, and cooked some fish and invited his disciples to “come and have breakfast” (Jn. 21:12). Jesus experienced a “creative renewing of his original body, the body that is now fully glorified and deathless (Phil. 3:21; Heb. 7:16,24)” J.I. Packer. Christianity is not based on subjective personal experience (e.g., “You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart.”). Biblical Christianity and our faith is based on proofs, not personal visions, voices in the head, feelings, and preferences, but upon the historical realities of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Rejoice, all those redeemed by the blood of Christ, victory over death belongs to us by God’s grace.