Does Jesus have a physical body in heaven?

That Christ is in heaven, a real living man, raised up from the dead, is fundamental to our faith and must be maintained and proclaimed. The Scriptures are so definite about it, that it may seem needless to stress it, but the fact is that multitudes have no knowledge of it at all, they think of Him as a spirit, and not as a man having flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). A young man, a true but unstable Christian, said to me after we had listened to an address on the exaltation of the Lord, “I never knew that Christ was a real, living man in heaven before, I always thought that He was a spirit.” I need not say that the knowledge he gained that day changed his life. I think it would be right to say that even as the disciples of the Lord during His life with them thought only of the glory, and in spite of His own words had no thought of the sufferings, for they were “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken; so now many sincere Christians think only of the sufferings and do not realise the glory to which Christ has been exalted; they sing, “Simply to Thy cross I cling,” and have a very feeble conception of Christ “crowned with glory and honour” at the right hand of the Majesty on high. But our faith is not complete without this, it is the crown of it, and a full, robust and joyful Christian life is impossible if it is not known.

Ans.—Yes, surely, though in a glorified state. He is as truly a Man in heaven where He is now as when He was here upon earth in a state of humiliation. After His resurrection, He remained on earth forty days, appearing to His disciples again and again. See in Luke 24:38-43 how the Lord convinces them, even by eating before them and showing them the wounds in His body, that He was the very same Man that suffered on the cross, and with whom they had companied for three years.

When He finally left them, to return to heaven, they saw Him taken up bodily from among them on the Mount of Olives. As their eyes remained fastened heavenward, while He had passed out of their vision, angels were sent then to say, “This same Jesus (His human name) which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9-11). Meanwhile He is declared by Scripture, in a special manner in Hebrews 7, to be a Man in heaven, filling there His office as High Priest of His people. When the time of judgment comes, it will be “by that Man whom He (God) hath ordained” (Acts 17:31). When He takes in hand the ruling of the world, it will be as the One of whom it is written: “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given,” etc. (Isa.9:6,7). When the Son of God became a Man it was forever and ever. He will no more cease to be Son of Man than He will cease to be the Son of God. If He did, we would lose Christ, for Christ is both God and Man; and if we could be without Christ in heaven, it would cease to be the heaven promised by our Lord in John 14:2,3.

How clear this chapter makes it that the Lord Jesus is to-day a Man in glory. His resurrection did not involve His discarding the Manhood He had assumed in incarnation, as some seem to think. It involved rather the coming forth of His holy body, which never saw corruption, in new and spiritual conditions. His body is now altogether beyond the possibility of death, a body which, according to our chapter and Philippians 3:21, is the glorious pattern to which our risen bodies are to be conformed; a body, therefore, in which He abides for ever.

He was received up gloriously, or in glory, as well as into glory. He entered the light of the highest heavens; but He entered it glorious Himself: and there He now is, a glorious body, the pattern of what ours is to be. The real manhood is there, in the highest heavens; but it is glorified. And though thus glorified, yet it is the real human nature still. "Jesus is in the same body in heaven wherein He conversed here on earth. This is that 'Holy Thing' which was framed immediately by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin. This is that 'Holy One' which, when He was in the grave, saw no corruption. This is that 'body' which was offered for us, and wherein He bare our sins on the tree. That individual nature wherein He suffered all sorts of reproaches, contempts, and miseries, is now unchangeably seated in incomprehensible glory. The body which was pierced is that which all eyes shall see, and no other. That tabernacle shall never be folded up. The person of Christ, and therein His human nature, shall be the eternal object of divine glory, praise, and worship."

The Lord Jesus Christ corporeally is at the right hand of God (Acts 2:33). It is obvious that, at the present time, He does not present Himself in His body to His own, as He did to His disciples before He ascended to the Father's right hand (Acts 1:3-4). When bodily on earth He could speak of Himself as "The Son of Man who is in heaven" (John 3:13). Though now bodily in heaven He is in Spirit in the midst of those who are gathered unto His Name (John 4:24; Matt. 18:20). On our side it is by the omnipresent Holy Spirit that the presence of the Lord Jesus is known. He is the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7, J.N.D. trans.). The Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19). The Spirit of His Son (Gal. 4:6). Because of who He is the Holy Spirit enables believers in Christ to know and enjoy the presence and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is with the Christians and in the Christians to the end of the dispensation. He may be grieved or quenched but He remains in His omnipresence to maintain what is due to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).

True our Lord carried Manhood to the throne of God. He became Man when the Word became flesh. The body in which He lived His earthly life was laid down in His sacrificial death, that body was raised from the dead. In that risen body He ascended to glory, and in that both He will come again, and for all eternity He will be God and Man, one blessed adorable Person. We know Him as the glorified Son of God in heavenly glory.

On the resurrection day He came forth from the grave a real Man in a human body, not a body of flesh and blood as He had before the Cross, but of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39); a body in which He could eat (Luke 24:43); a body which bore the marks of His suffering and which could be handled by Thomas (John 20:27).

In that same body He was "carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:51). "A cloud received Him out of their sight " (Acts 1:9). A spirit could not be said to be carried up nor are clouds necessary to receive such out of human sight. He was still a Man.

Later still Paul writes of Him as "The Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). He does not speak of Him as the One who once was the Man Christ Jesus. He is a Man to-day.

But it is not the attendant angels who are spoken of here. Our Lord, after being justified in Spirit, is presented next where the angels are what we may call indigenous inhabitants, and where men have no natural place. Earth is given to the children of men, but heaven is filled with myriads of angels; there too is the risen Lord gone. He has passed out of this world and entered on a condition suited to heaven, where He is "seen of angels." Men who had the far nearer interest no longer see Him, angels do. This was a fact outside the expectation of Israel as to the Messiah. They ought to have known that the Son of man would come with the clouds of heaven, and be invested with everlasting dominion over all peoples, nations, and languages. But there was no intimation that the Lord would be rejected by the Jew while the church was being formed in union with Him on earth. Besides, and in order to this, the Lord has a body now, just as much as when upon earth. Thus the resurrection and ascension are capital truths of Christianity. "Seen of angels" falls in with His seat on high, where we know Him no longer according to flesh. When He comes to reign over the earth, of which the prophets chiefly speak to Israel, "every eye shall see Him."

The blessed Lord is a real Man in glory. When He rose from the dead, He said to His disciples: "Handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me have"; and He ate and drank with them. But it is also important to remember that we do not know Him after the flesh, but in a spiritual state and in a glorified body, head of the new creation. Nevertheless it is not another Jesus, nor has he taken another body, for he showed to the disciples His hands and His side, and said to Thomas: "Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing."