Driving home from picking up Josh from school I was asked an interesting question. It was one that I had never heard before, but one that got to the nub of a wonderful issue. We somehow got onto talking about the second coming of Christ and Josh asked, "when Jesus comes back what clothes will he wear?"
Jesus was and is the word of God, God's exact likeness and perfect representation. Jesus was and is also a first-century Jew and therefore God's absolute revelation was mediated to us via language and custom. God's word had a Jewish accent, an Aramaic vocabulary and was dressed in first century clothes.
After Jesus rose from the dead his human body remained 'ordinary' in that he could be seen and touched and he seemed to need to eat. But his body was also extraordinary, he could appear and disappear and he ascended back to heaven. Ordinary yet extraordinary, human yet devine, flesh yet spirit, the same as us yet also different to us
This is the wonder of the incarnation, God became man and was therefore clothed in humanity to ensure that we could know what God is like. When Jesus ascended into heaven he did not leave his flesh behind, he was glorified as the God Man and skin and hair and bone remains at the right hand of the Father. 'One of our kind' now represents us before God and interceeds on our behalf
So how does a human live in heaven? How does Jesus' human nature impacts his life with his Father? Does Jesus have any physical needs in heaven? Jesus had physical needs when he was on earth - he needed oxygen, water, food, shelter etc but does that mean that he still has those needs? But how could Jesus have any needs, if he does would that suggest that he was not the self-sufficient God? Jesus becoming human did not diminish his nature, Jesus becoming human did not enhance his nature. The incarnation was not about the eternal Godhead morphing into a new kind of deity but rather the eternal Word being expressed in a new way, in a new cultural context
To return to Josh's simple question, like many 'simple' questions they can provoke the mind to look at things in a fresh way. 'When Jesus comes back what clothes will he wear?' is not a deep theological question but one that can lead to other questions that will help in our understanding of the incarnation
Time to get a drink and think about this further
