It was necessary that the man Christ Jesus should die but just as necessary that the man Christ Jesus should never live again, should remain dead, should remain our ransom-price to all eternity. After all, if Jesus took up his body again, he would not be giving up his life as a ransom.1 Thus the man Jesus is dead—
forever.2 We deny that He was raised in the flesh, and challenge any statement to that effect as being unscriptural.3 Jesus’ fleshly body was disposed of by Jehovah God—dissolved into its constitutive elements or atoms,4 or perhaps it was dissolved into gas or preserved somewhere as a memorial to God’s love, perhaps to be exhibited to the people of the millennial age.5 After he rose, he used a body with wound holes in order to convince Thomas of who he was.6 Only because Thomas would not believe did Jesus appear in a body like that in which he had died.7 He was recreated by Jehovah God as an invisible spirit creature.8 The Bible agrees that he was “put to death in the flesh, but . . . made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). The Scriptures do not reveal what became of that body, except that it did not decay or corrupt (Acts 2:27–31).
Few teachings of the Watchtower are hidden from the prospective convert as much as this one. Some Witnesses are even unaware that the Watchtower actually teaches this. It is understandable that it is not given much attention, since Scripture testifies so clearly against it.
While Jesus was passing through the temple in Jerusalem, some Jewish people asked him for a sign. He replied, “Break down this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”
(John 2:19). They understood him to be speaking of the temple building, but John clarifies that Jesus had something else in mind: “He was talking about the temple of his body” (John 2:21; emphasis added). The Greek here is sōmatos autou, “the body of himself.” Jesus unequivocally teaches that he will raise up his body after three days.
There is no suggestion—as the Witnesses maintain—that the ransom he paid for the sin of the world would be revoked if his body were to rise again. It was the raising of his body that conquered death and completed the redemption of mankind. If all that was needed to redeem man was the sacrifice of the body of Christ, the Resurrection was superfluous.
After he had risen, Jesus showed that his promise had been fulfilled, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; feel me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones just as you behold that I have. . . . Do you have something there to eat?” (Luke 24:39, 41; emphasis added). Jesus also insisted that Thomas place his finger into his wounded side, to prove that he had indeed risen from the dead (John 20:27). But why would Jesus offer a body to prove that his spirit had risen? In Matthew 28:6, why would
the angel offer the empty tomb as proof that Jesus rose if his body is forever dead?
Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that since “flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom”
(1 Cor. 15:50), Jesus could not have been resurrected in the flesh. What does Paul have in mind, though? In 1 Corinthians 15, St. Paul is speaking about the resurrection of the
For this which is corruptible must put on incorruption, and this which is mortal must put on immortality. But when [this which is corruptible puts on incorruption] this which is mortal puts on immortality, then the saying will take place that is written:
“Death is swallowed up forever.” “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” The sting producing death is sin. . . . But thanks to God, for he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Cor 15:53–57; brackets in original, emphases added)
Because Christ’s body rose, death was conquered and “the Lord Jesus Christ . . . will refashion our humiliated body to be conformed to his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). Paul reiterates this when he declares that “he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also make YOUR mortal bodies alive through his spirit that resides in you” (Rom. 8:11).
Witnesses also call attention to 1 Corinthians 15:45, which explains that Christ has become “a life-giving spirit,” and conclude from this that he could not have a glorified human body. While there are purely spiritual beings that have no bodies (e.g., angels), it does not follow that Jesus was one of them, since the resurrected Christ emphasized to the disciples that “a spirit does not have flesh and bones just as you behold that I have”
(Luke 24:39). So, Jesus does have a glorified body that is not mere spirit. If it were mere spirit, it could not be called a body. That would be a contradiction in terms. Rather, he has a glorified body with spiritual powers.
Certain details in the Gospels’ Resurrection accounts are seized upon by the Watchtower to promote the idea that Jesus was merely a spirit. For example, they argue that Jesus was unrecognizable after the Resurrection, because his spirit assumed various bodies. However, in the one instance in which the disciples failed to recognize Jesus, the Bible explains that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:15–16).
Scripture is clear that the disciples were supernaturally prevented from recognizing Jesus, not that there was something inherently unrecognizable about Jesus’ body.
Witnesses also argue that he must have been a spirit if he was able to pass through a door to enter the upper room (John 20:26). First, the text does not say that he passed through the doors, merely that he “came, although the doors were locked.”9 Second, a glorified human body does not have the same limitations as a non-glorified body. And third, if Enoch and Elijah could be taken up into heaven bodily (Gen. 5:24; 2 Kgs. 2:1–
13; Heb. 11:5), Jesus could surely appear in a room without needing to open a door. If Jesus was able to defy the laws of nature by walking on water in a mortal body (Mark
6:48), the glorified body of Christ should surely have still further abilities.
There is no question that Jesus’ body had truly risen from the dead. No Christian was under the impression that he was invisibly raised as Michael the archangel while God the Father supposedly dissolved his natural body into atoms—as the Watchtower has claimed. Can you imagine Mary Magdalene running to the apostles across the hills of Jerusalem, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, thrilled with the good news that Jehovah God had dissolved Jesus into constitutive elements and raised him as an invisible spirit creature, Michael? For the Witnesses’ own spiritual good, the joy of the bodily risen Christ must be brought to them, for “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17; NAB).