I believe that Jesus Christ rose again; and was seen by the apostles, and touched, and witness by 500 hundred others.
I am kind of still confused about Jesus Christ to and what happened to Him.
I do know the scripture does say 1 Corinthians 15:50 Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Why is it that Paul makes these distinction even being as an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God?
That Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; Is Apostle Paul lying here? Is what He saying not true at all? Might as well throw out the whole bible.
@ViaCrucis
I believe in the Gospel of Christ but I also would like to know more about what Happened to Jesus because it is confusing sometimes when it comes to the Ascension of Christ Jesus and also that 1 Corinthians does talk about going on to obtain spiritual bodies and I do not know what that is like but I also do believe Jesus Christ came, died, and was risen again from the dead in the body He lived in.
It is just confusing and I can honestly admit that.
@Davy you did a good job explaining what you do know by using scriptures thank you for that I do apperciate it.
The trouble usually happens when we try to imagine a "three-deckered universe" with heaven above, the earth below, and that other "place" even further below.
Let's consider the Tabernacle and the Temple of old, the Holy of Holies, the Mercy Seat atop the Ark of the Covenant, etc, all spoke of God's Divine Presence on earth. When the high priest stepped behind the veil into the Holy of Holies, it was as though the priest had passed through the veil into heaven. That is why the language the author of the Hebrews uses to speak of Christ as our Great High Priest is to speak of Him having entered the inner sanctuary making atonement with His own blood.
The Ascension is, in this sense, a High Priestly entrance into the Heavenly Sanctuary. Not as though there is some celestial temple somewhere out there in the unyielding depths of the universe; but because heaven and earth really are not that far apart at all. Indeed, what does Paul say when quoting the Greek poets, "He is not very far from each of us". Indeed time and again we are reminded throughout Scripture of God's immediacy, "Where can I go to flee from Your presence?" asks the Psalmist.
Our Lord's Ascension, His going away, was not to leave us nor forsake us, as He says, "I am with you always, even until the end of the age." We know from elsewhere that He speaks of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, who was given on Pentecost, through which Christ and His Father are present with us and in us. But it is also important to understand that the Ascension is not Jesus going from one physical location to another.
It is noteworthy, for example, that a visual description of the Ascension only occurs in Luke-Acts, and we see described the very thing which Daniel beheld in his vision, the Son of Man taken up on the clouds before the Ancient of Days given dominion, all authority, and everlasting kingdom. Elsewhere the fingerprints of the Ascension are clearly there, but do not receive explicit mention. I very much doubt that if one asked the Apostles what happened to Jesus they would say that He is no located somewhere outside of the stratosphere up in outer space (not least of course because such language and thinking about the world was unknown to them).
Rather, the Ascension is Jesus taking the reigns of the kingdom, for "Heaven must keep Him until the restoration of all things" as St. Peter says in Acts chapter 3. And likewise St. Paul tells us that we have a "citizenship in heaven" in Philippians 3, likewise we are told in Ephesians ch. 2 that we are, already even, seated with Christ in heavenly places.
King Jesus the Messiah is in charge, "All power and authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Me" He says in Matthew 28, just before charging to His Church the commission to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit".
We should also see what the Apostle says in Colossians, that Christ "fills all things". This language of "filling all things" seems very bizarre when thinking of Christ's physical body. Which is why it has often been common in the Reformed Protestant tradition to insist that Christ is bodily constrained but spiritually present everywhere. This is in distinction to the Lutheran view: Christ is, even in His very real, very physical (and very glorified!), very human body, everywhere present. So when we confess that Christ is really, truly, bodily present in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Eucharist, we aren't just using pretty metaphors--Jesus really is there, that bread and wine is literally Jesus.
How this can be is total mystery. But when we loose the shackles of our preconceptions about what the universe is supposed to look like, and see what Scripture is saying, we are seeing in the Ascension not a description of Jesus zipping away from the world and all its problems. Rather we are seeing Jesus, the Risen and Victorious Lord, as King Messiah, taking the throne that was promised to David so long ago, not over a temporal kingdom; but the eternal kingdom of God. The kingdom of God which is inaugurated in Christ, into which Christ has called us as disciples and servants, by being born anew of God by Baptism--through which we are joined to and share in His death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life--being nourished by His Table, the Eucharist. And now, calling us, in our vocations as Christians in the world, to be the salt and light of the world.
The kingdom, as our Lord Himself declared, was at hand--and He was not joking. For this kingdom "does not come with observation" because the kingdom is found in the authority of its King--who was there in the midst of sinners, tax-collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and hypocrites--eating, drinking, calling, loving, serving. So we are living in the tension of the now-and-not-yet kingdom: It is now, by the grace and promise of God which is ours in Christ; and it is yet when Christ returns in the end and God sets all things to rights, new heavens and new earth.
He's the same Jesus that was cradled in Mary's arms and suckled at her breast. That Jesus, that same Jesus, is at the right hand of God the Father, He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Seated on the throne. And He is preeminent in all things.
So when we look ahead to what God has in store, we look not to the end of all creation, but the renewal of all creation, "Behold! I make all things new!". For St. Paul writes in Romans 8 that all creation groans in futility--the futility of death, and sin, and all the labors of this present, fallen, sinful age. But as it groans, it groans in hopeful expectation of what is to come, when God raises the dead, "the redemption of your bodies".
Heaven is not so far away, it's right next to us. Christ is, as the New Temple of God--and we with Christ built up as that Temple as the Body of Christ--is the center of God's activity in the cosmos. For "all things were made through Him and for Him" as Paul says in Colossians.
I'm not suggesting that this remains anything more than a mystery, or that we can fully understand or properly imagine it. Only that when we are listening to Scripture speak, we hear this: Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord from heaven, in heaven, at the right hand of the Father, not as a distant ruler, but as a present and now ruler, He is
the Lord, "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist." (1 Corinthians 8:6)
-CryptoLutheran