Inside your body, even if it is broken or failing, is the blueprint for your resurrection body. You may not be satisfied with your current body or mind—but you’ll be forever thrilled with your resurrection upgrade.

We can know a lot about our resurrection bodies. Why? Because we’re told a great deal about Christ’s resurrected body, and we’re told that our bodies will be like his.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
(1 John 3:2, RSV)

“Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”
(1 Corinthians 15:49)

Though Jesus in His resurrected body proclaimed that he was not a ghost (Luke 24:39, NLT), countless Christians think they will be ghosts in the eternal Heaven. I know this because I’ve talked with many of them. They think they’ll be disembodied spirits, or wraiths. The magnificent, cosmos-shaking victory of Christ’s resurrection—by definition a physical triumph over physical death in a physical world—escapes them.

If Jesus had become a ghost, there would have been no resurrection, and redemption would not have been accomplished. But Jesus was not a ghost; He walked the earth in His resurrection body for forty days, showing us how we would live as resurrected human beings. In effect, He also demonstrated where we would live as resurrected human beings—on Earth. Christ’s resurrection body was suited for life on Earth. As Jesus was raised to come back to live on Earth, we, too, will be raised to come back to live on Earth (1 Thessalonians 4:14; Revelation 21:1-3).

The risen Jesus walked and talked with two disciples on the Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-35). They asked Him questions; He taught them and guided them in their understanding of Scripture. Though they didn’t know it was Jesus until “their eyes were opened” (v. 31), suggesting that God prevented them from recognizing Christ, they saw nothing different enough in His appearance to suggest that His resurrected body looked any different from a normal human body. In other words, they perceived nothing amiss. They saw the resurrected Jesus as a normal, everyday human being. The soles of His feet—didn’t hover above the road—they walked on it.

We know that the resurrected Christ looked like a man because Mary called Him “sir” when she assumed He was the gardener at the tomb (John 20:15). Jesus spent remarkably normal times with His disciples after His resurrection. Early one morning, He “stood on the shore” at a distance (John 21:4). He didn’t hover or float—or even walk on water, though He could have. He called to the disciples (v. 5). He started a fire, and He was already cooking fish that He’d presumably caught Himself. He cooked them, which means He didn’t just snap His fingers and materialize a finished meal. He invited the disciples to add their fish to His and said, “Come and have breakfast” (John 21:12).

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