Is the risen Jesus made of flesh and blood? If so, where does he reside?

Question

I am genuinely confused. I believe that he was "put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit" (1 Peter 3:18) and "there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ" (1 Timothy 2:5). I believe is was his physical body that was resurrected and that is what his disciples saw and touched when Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection (Luke 24:36-43).

But then he ascended to heaven, to be with his Father. As a man? Flesh and blood? I thought the heavenly realms were inhabited by spirit creatures. If God is a spirit, if the Holy Spirit is a spirit, therefore the risen Jesus must surely also be a spirit?

If Jesus merely resides in my head (and in the heads of millions of other Christians) then this question does not matter. However, if he is not a figment of my imagination then this is a very important question indeed.

By the way, I never give anyone a thumbs down, so if any appear, it wasn't me!

Please be assured, this is NOT a trick question. The confusion arose in my mind after reading answers to the question "Was Jesus a spirit when he rose from the dead?" You see, I was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness and I believed their teaching that Jesus' physical body was NOT resurrected, that he ascended into heaven as a spirit. I am now a Christian, but I still have so much to learn. That's why it's important for me to understand this subject because I trully want to know what the Bible tells us.

Jesus mortal remains reside somewhere on the earth? That's what Islam teaches. The Bible clearly says that his physical body was resurrected.

He was a spirit and could materialise a body of any description? That's not what the gospel accounts say.

The passage in Genesis 33:20 "No man can see God and yet live" simply shows that the risen Christ was God.

Now, about 1 Corinthians 15:43-53 where it says "flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom" - here's a thought. As we know, Jesus laid down his life as an atoning sacrifice for sinful humanity. He shed his blood for us. We also know that the life is in the blood - and that is what God accepted. We've had lots of evidence to support that the resurrected Jesus had a glorified body, and that his body changed from being corruptable to incorruptable. So now I'm beginning to see what others are suggesting - that his glorified, incorruptable body was flesh and bone, not flesh and blood.

LushBuck, no offence taken! And thanks for your additional comments. I don't think the Bible contradicts itself - the confusion is all in my own head! Whether we have physical, glorified, incorruptable bodies or not when we go home, is not really the issue. I trust God implicitly and am not worried. What troubles me is that I've been hanging onto beliefs I was brought up with and I now realise that to claim Jesus' physical body was NOT resurrected is against what the Bible says. Hence the q - to seek clarification. Thanks for your input.

Answer 1

Jesus' body was changed when he was resurrected. It was changed from corruptible to incorruptible. Yet, it is mass and can be touched as well as walk through walls or disappear.

When Thomas ridiculed some of the apostles about Jesus being risen from the dead, Jesus appeared to him and told him to stick his fingers in the holes in his hands and feet. He told him to put his hand into his side where he was pierced by the spear.

Jesus is eternal and is in a body that will never die. The same awaits all who believe.

So the body of Jesus has mass and is spiritual. It is a spiritual body, spiritual material. It is the soul and body reunited through the resurrection to form a body that is incorruptible. So it is not just spirit, but a spiritual body.

When we die, those who believe in Jesus go and await the time of the resurrection. 1 Thess. 14 And at that time, he brings us back and puts us into our resurrected bodies that were asleep in the earth.

Answer 2

The problem with Scripture is that is difficult to understand and correctly interpreting without putting aside our material senses. How could Jesus speak to both Men, and Angels who were behind and within Men? By just speaking that is it.

The problem with that is that humans tend to be self centered, forgetting thus that there can not be balance on Earth without balance in the heavens. Therefore for everything to be reestablished, Angels must fill up the Sky and Men must fill up the Earth. Jesus was born of the Flesh of Mary, so he was flesh, but he had the exact Spirit of the Father (God was in Him, also so was the Word), so he was Spiritual. We have read that a man had a Legion of demons or spirits in him, so there can be more than one good spirit in a body.

So there is a promise for spirits to go to heaven, and there is a promise for men to go to Paradise.

Jesus resurrection was an example of that promise.

So I think Jesus as man was risen and taken as a King of Kings into Paradise being the first one of many, as the Word was taken to seat at the side of God and as High Priest in the only Temple that can hold God.

So How can Jesus come back so that every eye will see him, (in East and West, the Earth is not flat!). It is said that Satan is the King of this world, who does not see it then is blind. So will Jesus take over as Spiritual King of Kings, As the Word and High Priest and God's favorite, he will reconcile (as in marriage of the Lamb) the Angelical Congregation of God. As the Jesus of the flesh of Mary he will maybe come in great power as if an Alien to us, with a body capable of transmutation that would allow him and the other resurrected people to travel the Universe in a flash to other worlds, having power over material things at will.

This is all perhaps confusing and maybe not how it will be, but it is my best understanding of things.

Answer 3

Jesus did have a physical body when He was resurrected. The bible records He ate food, so He clearly wasn't a spirit being. However it also records He walked through walls which is something a little different from our human body. We do not know anything about that type of physical body but it is clearly physical. It says He stands at the right hand side of the father and His wounds are constantly visable to the father as a reminder that He is our rightousness and our advocate. He may have the ability to transform between Spiritual and physical....I wouldn't beat yourself up about what you could never possibly understand.

Answer 4

He told Thomas to touch Him & see He was flesh. But immortal flesh is different from what we know, though obviously from this story we know it looks the same. That's why we'll receive a new flesh at the end because our current flesh is so frail & sinful it can't come before the Lord's presence & live.

As for where He is the Word says He continually stands before God as a mediator between God & man. Heaven could possibly just be beyond our ability to see in the cosmos or even a black hole. I personally believe it's w/i another dimension we are unaware of YET. Since we'll be able to stand before God in the flesh later on why couldn't Jesus.

If you read Matthew 27 it says that He went into Hell to preach the gospel those who accepted Him were raised as well & seen by others. If they were in the spirit form the masses couldn't have seen them.

The Holy Spirit is what lives inside & guides us. The Spirit has access to both heaven, earth & men's hearts & minds. Look at it this way. The Holy Spirit is like the town gossip. He knows everything going on both here & there & relays the information back & forth. God makes the judgement & Jesus intercedes & says my death paid it in full in the case of sin. If we need direction they tell the Spirit & He relays it to us.

Answer 5

I can see why this is confusing, it is confusing because with one or two exceptions, nothing remotely like this was known before the resurrection.
When Jesus completed his creation, he rested from creating any more, (Gen2v2). If you find it strange that I attribute the creation directly to Jesus, consider how Peter calls him, 'The Author of Life' in Acts 3v15.
When he became incarnate, Jesus put on a body, more or less as we would put on a coat, (John1v14, original text).
When his body died on the cross, his body was buried. But it was not possible to kill God who was in the body.
But three days after his death on the cross, Jesus started to create again and he made himself a new body, somehow incorporating his old one. Peter explains this as an interpretation of Psalm2v7, see Acts13v33 and as Paul also explains, see the verses around 1Corinthians15v44.
This 'resumption of the creation' theme is little studied, but it is a theme in the New Testament which deserves more attention. I have only ever heard one other scholar talk about it.
So, there is indeed a Man in heaven. Although transformed by his own creative power, his present body is at least partly the same one our Creator wore and walked around in, 2000 years ago. John even tells us that his resurrected body still bears the marks of his sufferings, (see John20v26~27).
As you say, he is also a Spirit, in fact he is a Life-giving Spirit, see 1Corinthians15v45. He is called a Life-giving Spirit, because he is making people spiritually alive today and he will complete that work later when he creates new bodies for us, similar to his own.

Martin, you do not need to take me seriously. You're entitled to a different theological view, just as I am to mine.

Answer 6

He is both Spirit and flesh. Yes, His literal body ascended. Heaven is full of the spirits of man and angels but it is a real place with real things like homes and rives and trees and streets and fruits and thrones and such.

He is the first born from the dead. Col. 1:18
18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

In other words we too will someday have both bodies and spirits in heaven. He was the first one to have both after resurrection and because we believe in Him we too shall have bodies and they will be so much better than the ones we currently have! No more worries about calories! No more afflictions and pains! No more limitations! But bodies full of the glory of God!! Wow! I can't wait!!

Some good books on the subject -

Heaven: Close encounters of the God kind by Jesse Duplantis
We saw heaven by Roberts Liardon
Within the Gates by Rebecca Springer
Stories from the Front lines by Jane Rumph

Answer 7

1 Peter 3:18 says it all. When 1 Tim 2:5 refers to "...Jesus, the man," it means that he had to become a man (Although not like a man as we understand one, but a perfect man like Adam), not a god-man and certtainly not a god in order to sacrifice his life and buy back what the man Adam lost. When he was resurrected, his disciples didn't recognise him, this indicates that he was a spirit and could materialise a body of any description, he could even materrialise with a body which had wounds in it like the wounds of the body that was sacrificed. This would also explain why Jesus was able to enter a locked room.

This website may well interest you

Answer 8

Yes, you are correct. Jesus is a spirit in heaven. Even God said "No man may see God and yet live." (Genesis 33:20)

“It is sown a physical body, it is raised up a spiritual body,” wrote Paul. No fleshly bodies will be taken to heaven, for “flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom.”(1 Corinthians 15:43-53)

Answer 9

Althought it is true Jesus was a real man, his ascending as Christ was a psychic event and was intended as a metaphor.

Consider it a parable of sorts in that Jesus, the Truth, was dispellled of and "came back". The idea was to convey the truth cannot be hidden from anyone.

This symbolic interpretation is what All the Bible is about; the symbolism shows a Very Revealing blueprint to mankinds reality and mankinds Spiritual nature.

Answer 10

Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, certainly we now know him so no more.” (2 Corinthians 5:16) Those who ‘knew Christ according to the flesh’ were not just the humans who saw Jesus while he was on earth. Even if some hoping in the Messiah once looked at Christ on the basis of his flesh, they were no longer to do so. He gave his body as a ransom and was resurrected as a life-giving spirit. Others raised to heavenly life would give up their fleshly bodies without ever having seen Jesus Christ in the flesh.—1 Corinthians 15:45, 50; 2 Corinthians 5:1-5