R.C. Sproul

when we deduce certain things from the Bible, from one passage of scripture, that then brings us into direct conflict

with something that the scripture teaches elsewhere very clearly and very plainly.

That's what we're trying to avoid, being careful with how we deal with implications.

Now, I'd like to take a few minutes to spell out the broad problem of drawing implications from scripture and then focus our attention on what happens when indeed we bring them into conflict with explicit teaching.

I remember when I was in graduate school, one of my friends was doing a doctoral dissertation on the nature of the resurrection body of Jesus.

He was interested in this question.

We are told that when we are raised from the dead, we will be like Jesus and that we will have a glorified body, that our bodies are sown in mortality and raised in immortality.

They're sown corrupt and raised in incorruption.

And the question is, what will that resurrection body be like?

It's a very difficult question to answer.

And so my friend, trying to track this down, said, well, one thing we know, and that is that our glorified bodies will be like Jesus' glorified bodies.

So if we can understand what Jesus' glorified body was like, that will answer a lot of questions about what our glorified bodies will be like in heaven.

And so he undertook to investigate everything he could about the New Testament teaching

of the nature of Christ's glorified body.

And one of the conclusions he reached was that the molecular structure of Jesus' resurrection body was so different from what we experience in this physical world in which we live now, that Jesus' glorified body would have the ability to pass through solid objects.

Of course, he had to have a biblical proof text for that, and he used, as I've seen many others do, a passage from John's Gospel.

Well, we read in the 20th chapter of John's Gospel the following passage in verse 26.

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them.

Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be unto you.

Now, that's the passage that becomes the proof text for arguing that Jesus' body in his resurrected state has the ability to pass through solid objects like doors.