Luke 24:39
Luke 24:3939Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
The Watchtower teaches that Jesus was not bodily resurrected but was raised as a spirit creature — Michael the Archangel returned to spirit form. When confronted with , where Jesus explicitly says "a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have," the Watchtower explains that Jesus materialised a temporary physical body to appear to the disciples, just as angels had done in the Old Testament. On this reading, the flesh-and-bones body was a prop — created for the occasion and discarded afterwards. The Watchtower's Studies in the Scriptures (Vol. 5, p. 454) states bluntly, "The man Jesus is dead, forever dead." The organisation therefore treats Jesus' post-resurrection appearances as a spirit creature putting on a disguise, not as evidence of bodily resurrection.
Protestants take as the decisive proof-text for the bodily resurrection. Jesus goes out of his way to demonstrate physical continuity: he invites the disciples to touch him, shows his hands and feet (bearing the marks of crucifixion), and explicitly denies being a spirit. He then eats broiled fish in their presence (v. 42-43) to remove any lingering doubt. The Reformed reading ties this to , where Jesus predicted he would raise "this temple" — meaning his own body — and to , where Thomas touches the nail marks in the same body that was crucified. If Jesus materialised a temporary body, then his words "it is I myself" were deceptive — he would have been saying "this is me" while inhabiting a body that was not his. The strategy centres on the fact that Jesus did not merely appear; he proved he was the same person in the same body, deliberately contrasting himself with a spirit.