Question: Do we gather from Scripture that the Lord rose from the grave with His body unchanged? Do we not gather from the Word that He went into the grave with a natural body, and rose with a spiritual body?
We believe the wonderful mystery of the Lord of life and glory gone into death. We know He walked a true man here on earth, and that He is now the risen glorified Man to whom we are united by the Spirit. We know His body saw no corruption (Psa. 16; Acts 2). We know He was the seed of the woman, that holy thing which shall be born of thee (the woman) shall be called the Son of God. And that was miraculous. It brought a clean thing out of the unclean. “In Him was no sin.” No mortality in him. When “He tasted death” it was by “the grace of God,” for death had no claim on Him. He could say (John 10:17-1817Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:17‑18)),
We must avoid scrutinizing His person. Let us bow before Him and worship Him as one
“Fairer than all the earth-born race,
Perfect in comliness Thou art;
Replenished are Thy lips with grace,
And full of love Thy tender heart.
God ever blest! We bow the knee,
And own all fullness dwells in Thee.”
“Our precious Saviour was Man, as truly as I am, as regards the simple, abstract idea of humanity, but without sin, miraculously born by divine power, and more than this, He was ‘God manifest in the flesh.’ Now, having said so much, I entreat you with all my heart, not to try to define, and to discuss the Person of our precious Saviour. You will lose the savor of Christ in your thoughts, and you will get in its place only the barrenness of the human mind in the things of Christ, and in the affections, which belong to them. It is a labyrinth for man, because he works from his own resources. It is as if one were to dissect the body of one’s friend, instead of delighting in his affections and his character. In the church it is one of the worst signs I have met with. It is very sad to get into this way—very sad that this should be shown in such a light before the church of God, and before the world.
“I would add that so deep is my conviction of man’s incapacity in this matter, and that it is outside the teaching of the Spirit to wish to define the manner of the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus, that I am quite ready to suppose that even while desiring to avoid it, I may have fallen into it, and thus may have spoken in a mistaken way in something which I have said to you. That He was truly Man, Son of Man, dependent on God as such, and without sin in that condition of dependence—truly God in all His ineffable perfection—this I hold, I trust, dearer than life. To define everything is what I do not presume to do. ‘No man knoweth the Son, but the Father.’ If I find anything which weakens one or other of these truths, or which dishonors Him who is their subject, I will oppose it with all my might, as God may call me to do so. May God grant you to believe all which the Word teaches with regard to Him, Jesus. It is our food and sustenance to understand all which the Spirit has given us to understand, and not to seek to define that which God does not call upon us to define, but to adore on the one hand, and to feed upon the other, and to live in every way according to the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
J. N. D.