After Jesus was resurrected, He went out of His way to demonstrate that He had a physical body. “Handle me, and see,” He said to a group of disciples, “for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). In case that weren’t enough, He asked if they had any food. “And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them” (Luke 24:42-43).
Shortly after, He provided similar evidence to a group of people on the American continent:
Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world.
3 Nephi 11:14
Amulek testified, “The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form…never to be divided; thus the whole becoming spiritual and immortal, that they can no more see corruption” (Alma 11:43-45). And Joseph Smith taught, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22).
So resurrected bodies are similar in many ways to mortal bodies. We can touch them. They can eat. They look like us. But they are also different in some ways. Here are some characteristics of the Savior’s resurrected body:
- He was not constrained by walls. The evening of His resurrection, “when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst” (John 20:19). Eight days later, “his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you” (John 20:26).
- He wasn’t always recognizable to the people who knew Him. Mary Magdalene “saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus” (John 20:14). Two disciples walked with him on the road to Emmaus, but “their eyes were holden that they should not know him” (Luke 24:16) until after He was gone. And when Jesus stood on the shore of Galilee, Peter and the other apostles in a boat barely 100 yards away didn’t recognize Him at first (John 21:4).
- He was able to ascend to heaven. After Jesus ministered to His disciples for forty days, “he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). On the other side of the world, a group of believers saw Him “descending out of heaven;… and he came down and stood in the midst of them” (3 Nephi 11:8). At the end of the first day of His visit, “there came a cloud and overshadowed the multitude that they could not see Jesus. And while they were overshadowed he departed from them, and ascended into heaven. And the disciples saw and did bear record that he ascended again into heaven” (3 Nephi 18:38-39).
Today, I will be grateful for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which made possible the resurrection of all people. I will be grateful for the assurance that we will all live again, with bodies similar to the ones we have now but glorified and perfected.