Is Jesus still in the flesh?

REPLY:

Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven with his glorified human body. When Christ rose from the dead, that is, resurrected His human body, He appeared to the Apostles. While He rose from the dead, the tomb was still sealed; when He entered the room where the Apostles were, the doors were closed and locked, so that the Apostles thought He was only a spirit (John 20:19, 27). Again, when He appeared at the Sea of Galilee, the Apostles thought that they were seeing a spirit. For this reason, Christ went to some lengths to assure them and demonstrate that He was truly flesh and blood and bones (John 21:5ff, e.g.). Being still a human body, how did Christ pass through the stone that sealed the tomb and enter the room with the doors closed? This is a mystery of the glorification of the whole person - body and soul together. The body of Christ was changed to a spiritual body, and yet it was fully the material, human body in which He had preached the Gospel, suffered and died. Thomas could touch Him and feel the nail and spear wounds on His body, and Christ would also eat broiled fish with the Apostles to demonstrate that His body was real. Let us say that His body was immaterial material. This is difficult to explain because; on the one hand it is a mystery, and on the other hand, it is comprehensible when we understand the nature of matter and energy. I do not want to enter into a discussion of that since, first of all, we are dealing with a mystery of the will and power of God, and secondly, it is far too complex. When St. Simeon the New Theologian says that the resurrected body will be immaterial or that Christ's resurrected body was immaterial (e.g., in his First Ethical Homily), he means that the glorified body is no longer subject to material constraints, not that the body is no longer a real, physical body, and not that it is not the same body which is now in this life an integral part of our person. The fact is, Christ ascended in the flesh - flesh and bone, and He will return in that same body - that perfect and glorified body - at the second coming. We have a sure promise of everlasting life in that there is now one fully human body, immortal and glorified, seated at the right hand of the glory of God. We participate in that glory and in all the victory over death that was wrought for us in that body when we partake of Holy Communion and receive of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

It is notable that the early Gnostics and many neo-Platonists did not want to accept that the physical body is an integral part of our person, and did not want to accept the idea of an actual bodily resurrection because they believed that matter in general and the human body in particular were either evil or at best, negative hindrances. It is for this reason that they attempted to make marriage "semi-sinful."