JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the disciples on one occasion made the mistake of
regarding the resurrected Christ as only a spirit-being. The Bible explains that when Jesus
appeared they supposed they were seeing a spirit (Lk. 24:37). But Jesus calmed their fears by
showing them His hands and feet, announcing that "a spirit does not have flesh and bones as
you see I have" (v. 39).
Jesus specifically prophecies the nature of His resurrection:
"Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.'
The Jews replied, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and You are
going to raise it in three days?' But the temple He had spoken of was His body.
After He was raised from the dead, His disciples recalled what He had said.
Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken" (vv. 19-21).
This passage clearly establishes that Jesus' resurrection was physical, since the same
temple (body) that His enemies would destroy is the one He promised to raise up.
The response of the Jehovah's Witnesses to the above passages is:
"Jesus evidently materialized bodies on these occasions as angels had done in
the past when appearing to humans . . . to strengthen the conviction of the
disciples that Jesus had actually been raised."8
Nowhere in Scripture are there any references to angels having a "body." While they can
manifest themselves in "bodily form," they do not possess bodies. Furthermore, to claim that
Jesus "materialized bodies" on various occasions as angels had done makes no sense whatsoever
since His resurrection, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses, was not supposed to be bodily.
Why would a physical body be proof of a predicted immaterial resurrection? Such an
explanation makes Jesus out to be a deliberate deceiver by indulging, and even encouraging, His
disciples to hold an erroneous idea of a material body proving an immaterial resurrection.
Paul makes it clear that Christ, now in heaven, still possesses a body since he stated
concerning Jesus Christ:
". . . in Him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily" (Col 2:9).
It was at least twenty years after the resurrection that Paul was writing his epistle to the
Christians at Colossae. Yet he uses the present tense of the word "dwell" indicating that deity "is
dwelling" bodily in Jesus even then as he writes. If this is so, then deity is also dwelling in
heaven now and forever. This is the clear meaning of the present tense.
While Paul says little about the nature of our life in the Eschaton (the Age to Come)
when Christ has finally abolished all enemies, he does make it clear that redemption includes
the physical creation: