Anonymous Asks (420)

“Will we eat food in our glorified bodies?”

The glorified human body is very much on my mind these days. My mother is in her mid-nineties after decades of serving the Lord Jesus, and her mind and body are in the process of demonstrating the truth of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: things fall apart. Her inexorable deterioration may plateau, but it will not cease until the Lord returns for his Church.

When I’m praying for Mom, I sometimes wonder what that glorified body will look like.

What age will she appear to be? Will we recognize her instantly? How does a glorified body work exactly? And, yes, will we eat in our glorified bodies?

My answer to the last one is a definite yes, for several reasons:

1/ The Lord Jesus Did

The “template” for the glorified human experience is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. With nothing else to go on but the accounts in the gospels, I see no compelling reason to imagine our own glorified bodies will behave substantially differently than the Lord’s. He most definitely ate after his resurrection.

In the most unambiguous case, it’s likely he ate to prove to his disciples that he was a physical being and not merely an apparition (“he took it and ate before them”). In two other incidents (John 21 and Luke 24), he sat down to a meal with his disciples, probably as an act of fellowship. Neither account specifically confirms that he ate, but he invited his disciples to eat, and it seems improbable he would not have participated if he were able. It may be one or both of these latter two incidents to which Peter referred in the household of Cornelius: “God made him to appear to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

That should settle the matter. The Lord Jesus ate and drank after he rose from the dead. Why wouldn’t we do so as well?

2/ The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is a Meal

Revelation 19 announces the “marriage of the Lamb”, in which the Lord Jesus is bridegroom and his people the bride. “Fine linen” (her wedding attire) “is the righteous deeds of the saints.” The Greek text that informs our English translations includes the word deipnon, which means “supper”. It’s a meal. It would be peculiar to have a celebratory meal that involved no actual eating, though I understand that the spiritual significance of the marriage supper (the eternal joining of Christ to his people) transcends any literal act by which the union will be formalized. Since we know glorified bodies can eat, I have no difficulty conceiving of the marriage supper as a literal feast with a powerful figurative meaning.

3/ The Tree of Life

The book of Revelation three times makes reference to the “tree of life” in the paradise of God. In the first instance, Jesus promises its fruit to the “one who conquers”. The second describes the tree of life growing either side of the river and down the middle of the street in the New Jerusalem, bearing twelve kinds of fruit. The final reference confirms that “those who wash their robes” and enter the city by the gates have “the right to the tree of life”.

Fruit exists to be eaten, not stared at approvingly. Again, the primary significance of the tree of life is as a spiritual allegory for eternal knowledge of Christ, but the spiritual does not preclude the literal. The two work together to complete the picture. Just as eating bread and wine in remembrance of the Lord Jesus until he comes for his people is a literal action taking place in the material world that serves as an allegory for a greater spiritual truth, so partaking of the tree of life speaks of eternal fellowship with our Lord sustained by his person and work.

4/ Glorified Humanity has a Physical Aspect

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection body, comparing the dead human body to a seed and resurrection bodies to a harvest of wheat sheaves. The latter is definitely greater than the former, yet both have physical aspects: both type of bodies can be handled and touched. The spiritual is always greater than that which is merely physical, and the man of heaven greater than the man of dust, but it seems evident from scripture that glorified humanity has an eternally physical aspect as well as a spiritual aspect. Some think that a low thing. I tend to think of it as Christ redeeming all aspects of humanity. He leaves nothing untransformed or unglorified.

This being the case, I cannot see why eating would suddenly cease in the eternal state. Our bodies will certainly have the capacity for it, as does the Lord’s own resurrection body.