11. The Body of Christ.— (1) Christ's natural body.— Ah 'the man Christ Jesus,' our Lord was
possessed of ' a true body ' as well as of ' a reason- able soul.' When the time was come in the coun- sels of God for the redemption of mankind, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took upon Him human flesh by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary (Mt l'*, cf. Gal 4^). In due time, according to the laws of human life. He was born at Bethlehem (Lk 2=- '). The child
thus born was and the wise
, His infancy by the shepherds
, and, when He was eight days old, by Simeon and Anna (2^- ^). From His con- ception and birth His body developed in the man- ner usual to human beings. 'The child grew,' we are told (Lk 2™) ; arrived at 'twelve years old'; and still ' increased in stature ' (vv.''^. 62)_
After He had arrived at man's estate, we find Him living under the conditions to which the bodies of men in ordinary life are subject. We learn that He suffered hunger (Mt 4=) ; that He was wearied with journeying (Jn 4") ; that He ex- perienced pain (Mt 27^*) ; and that He underwent death (v.*). In healing sickness He frequently used common bodily action, and His power of motion, with one miraculous exception (Mt 14^ ||), was limited to that which men in general possess. After death, His body, nowise different from that of an ordinary man, was delivered by Pilate to Joseph of Arimathaja, who wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb (Mt 27""- )> where it rested till the moment of the Resurrection. Down to that moment, then, the Lord's body had been a human body with the powers, qualities, and capacities of the body of an
ordinary man.
Jhrist's the same body as before His death. The grave
(2) Christ's body after the Resiirrectit
-Iti
was left empty, because the very body which Joseph of Arimatheea laid there had risen and departed. Moreover, it had. in most respects the same appearance. His disciples might doubt and hesitate at first (Lk 24'"- »', Jn 20"), but they did not fail to recognize Him (Lk 24^i- '>-, Jn 2016. 20. 28 21'. 12, Ac P 232). We find Him eating and drinking as a man (Lk 24'''-'), making use of the natural process of breathing (Jn 20-=), declaring to His disciples that He had flesh and bones (Lk 24^5), showing them His hands and His feet (v.*"), and giving them the assurance that His body was the identical body which they had seen stretched upon the cross, by inviting the disciple who doubted, to put his finger into the print of the nails and thrust his hand into the wound in His side ( Jn 20^').
On the other hand, our Lord's resurrection body was freed from previous material conditions and possessed of altogether new capacities. It seems to be implied that it could pass at will tluougli material objects (Jn 20=") ; and it does not appear to have been subject as before to the laws of movement (Lk 24^"), or visibility (v.''), or gravita- tion (Mk le'", Lk 24='). These new powers consti- tuted the difference between His pre-resurrection and His glorified body. It was in His glorified body, thus diflerentiated, that He ascended into heaven ; and in that same glorified body He is to be expected at His final coming (Ac V- ").
There is little ground for the idea of Olshausen (Gospels and Acts,\\. 259-260) and others, reviveii by Dr. Newman Smyth (Old Faiths in New Light, en. viii.), that tlie transformation of Christ's body from the natural to the glorilicd (•(■ndiiii'ii was a
Srocess which went on gradually diii inj i he I'orty •ays, and was not complete. 1 iill ihr A-nnsion. Rather, it must be said that un tin- wry day of His Resurrection the spirituality of His risen body was as clearly shown as in the case of that much later manifestation by tlie Sea of Tiberias (cf. Lk 2131. 3ii^ Jn 21"-). We are not to think of the body
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of Jesus during tliis period as in a transition state with regard to its suDstance — partly of earth and partly of heaven. It was with a spiritual body that He rose, that glorified body of which His Transfiguration had been both a prophecy and a foretaste ; and if we see Him moving for a time along the borders of two worlds, that was because, for the sake of His disciples and the future Church, He made use of the natural in order to the revela- tion of the spiritual. It is in this way that we must explain His asking and receiving food (Lk 24^'"'-, Ac 10^'). He cannot have depended upon this food for His bodily support. His purpose in taking it was to convince His disciples that He was still a living man, in body as well as in spirit, — that same Jesus who had so often in past days partaken with them of their simple meals.
In respect of His body the risen Jesus now be- longed to the mysterious regions of the invisible world, and it was only when He chose to reveal Himself that His disciples were aware of His pres- ence. It is to be noticed that St. John describes His appearances as ' manifestations ' : He ' mani- fested Himself,' 'was manifested,' to the disciples (Jn 21'- '■*). His resurrection body was a spiritual body, but it had the power of materializing itself to the natural senses, and Jesus made use of this power from time to time in order to convince His disciples, by the actual evitlence of siglit and sound and touch, that the victory of His whole human personality over death and tlie grave was real and complete. And when this work «as accomplished. He parted from them for the last time, and went up to the right hand of the Father in a kind of royal state which not only proclaimed His own lordsnip over both worlds, but became a prophecy of the truth regarding the divinely ap- pointed destiny of those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. In the body of Christ's glory both St. Paid and St. John liud the type after Avhich the believer's body of Imniiliiition is to be fashioned at last (Ph 3-', 1 Jn 3-). We are to be like our Lord in the possession of a liuiuan nature in which the corporeal has been so fully inter- penetrated by the spiritual that the natural body has been transformed into a spiritual body (1 Co 15«-**).