We Have Seen the Lord

Segment transcript on How Jesus Must Now ‘Make Himself Known’

He did not, on his resurrection, return to his earthly, bodily existence. There is a difference. Had he returned to his earthly, bodily existence, he would have come to the door, knocked the door and asked to come in. But he has appeared to them. There is something different. There is a dimensional difference. There is something unusual that the writer, John, and those who were there as eye-witnesses, are struggling to get their heads around. There is something different. Something has changed. It’s still him but there’s something different. His earthly body has been raised from the dead, but it’s also been transformed. It has been
made suitable for eternal purposes. To use the language of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3:21, it’s the ‘body of his glory’. The body of his glory, his glorified body. And it’s on the basis now of his glorified status, that he now has to make himself known to his people. He makes himself known to Mary, you remember, by calling her name – “Mary!” He makes himself known here, in this incident, by showing them his tell-tale wounds. He makes himself known
to a bunch of disciples, a couple disciples, on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. As he walks with them by the way and gets to their place in Emmaus, and they sit down to eat food. And he makes himself known to them by breaking bread. He has to make himself known. And finally, by taking a public leave of them, at his ascension into heaven. “He’s not as accessible as he was before the cross. He’s no longer a participant in the normal routine of ordinary human experience as he had been before the cross.”