`When it pleased God ... to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him

among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood'

(Gal. 1:15,16).

When speaking of the resurrection, and answering the question `with what

body do they come?' he says in 1 Corinthians 15:

`Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the

kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption' (1 Cor.

In the two other places where the A.V. used the phrase `flesh and blood',

namely in Ephesians 6:12 and Hebrews 2:14, the order of the words is reversed

in the original `blood and flesh'.  It has been hastily assumed by some that

the phrase `flesh and blood' is the common and accepted formula in the

Scriptures to represent human nature, but when we turn to the Old Testament we

discover that where the expression `flesh and blood' would come naturally to

our lips, the language of the Old Testament differs; there the usual form is

`flesh and bones'.  When Adam beheld his wife, and realized her most intimate

oneness with himself, he did not say `she is of my flesh and blood' but `this

is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh' (Gen. 2:23).  What should we do

with any attempt to reason from the absence of reference to the word `blood'

here, that Adam purposely intended to affirm that his wife was a bloodless

creature? We should reject it as unworthy of serious consideration.  When Jacob

arrived at the home of his mother's brother, Laban said to him, `surely thou

art my bone and my flesh' (Gen. 29:14), and he would have been astonished had

Jacob interposed by saying -- surely I am of the same blood also! Or yet once

again, when David would remind certain that they were his brethren, he said `ye

are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh' (2 Sam. 19:12).

We hesitate to bring the most sacred Person of the Saviour into an

atmosphere of ridicule, but in the light of these passages, what can we do but

reject that interpretation of the words of the risen Christ, as recorded in

Luke 24:39, `a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have', that argues

from the absence of the word `blood' that the Lord intended us to understand

that His risen body was bloodless.  One might just as reasonably argue from

Hebrews 2:14 and the absence of the word `bones' that He had no bony skeleton.

All that the Lord intended was to establish His identity, and invited the

disciples to `see' and to `handle' and one would not so readily `see' the blood

of a person as his erect human form, and `handling' would reveal the hidden

bony structure.  The human body is an organized whole.  Where there is no

blood, no oxygen is required, and where no oxygen is needed, nostrils would be

Further, the slightest acquaintance with the process of digestion demands

the blood stream as its goal, and the Lord demonstrated the reality of His

risen humanity, by eating some broiled fish and a portion of honeycomb.  We do

not know the nature of `heavenly' or `spiritual' bodies, and all speculation is

cut short by the apostle in 1 Corinthians 15.  It is unwise to argue from the

Lord's risen body to our own, for He saw no corruption.  All that we hope to

have accomplished by this short note is to call the reader's attention to a

shallow yet dangerous form of argument, which not only vitiates the teaching of

the particular passage, Luke 24:39, but is applied with equally harmful results

to other subjects which are presented to us in similar figurative ways.  For

fuller details see Resurrection4,7 and Hope (p. 132).