Chapter V (iii) — The Resurrection of Christ
1. Christ rose in the same body in which He was crucified. It is sin alone that brings corruption to the body and makes it unfit for entering heaven. But Christ's body was without fault and spotless, and after He had conquered death it was changed into a glorious body; and, in that glorious body, He is seated with God on His throne (Revelation iii. 21). The wounds on the Cross in glorified form are engraved on that glorious body, that when the saved see them they may always call to mind His boundless love, and realise how He has suffered on the Cross to save them, and to give them the right to share in His eternal glory.
2. God is a Spirit. Beside spirits He created lifeless matter. (Because He created matter, i.e. a thing indifferent to His nature, it does not mean that He also is matter, or like it.) But if God, being a Spirit, could by His perfection of power create matter, which is not spirit, then why by the same power could He not make alive His avatar (that is, Christ's physical body), and make it into a Spiritual and glorious body? He surely could, and in truth He has done so.
As we sleep for our awakening, so we die for our rising again. As night closes down we sleep in weariness and weakness, but in the morning we rise fresh and vigorous. In this way we die in weakness and corruption, but we rise again in life and glory (1 Cor. xv. 42), and enter that life where there will be neither death nor sin any more.
3. Some put forward this objection. If God is a Spirit, then how could He be clothed in a material body? But they forget this, that man has also a spirit, and how can a human spirit be clothed in a body? If a created spirit can be clothed in a human body, then why is it impossible for a Creator to clothe Himself in a body? We may say that this is possible for a human soul because it is limited, but not for God who is Infinite. This is true of God, but we must remember that an Infinite God has infinite power and infinite possibilities, which are beyond the range of human intellects.
This is the object of the incarnation: that He might bring again, through physical death and resurrection, into glorified bodies like His own, those whom He had made in His own image, and who, because of their sin, have fallen from their original state; and also that He might honour them with admission into His fellowship and eternal kingdom.