When he had said this—i.e. when he had uttered all that was involved in his Divine salutation—he showed them his hands and his side. Luke says "his hands and his feet;" John calls attention to the special wound in his sacred side, the making of which he had so closely described and verified (John 19:33-35).
Igor was this vision of the Lord restricted to the ocular testimony, to the bare fact of the Resurrection, but it was a solemn assurance that he, though risen, had died for them. He is the Living One that was dead, and is alive for evermore.
He is in the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain. In his greatest glory neither does he nor can his people forget his sacrificial death. "He showed them his hands and his side." Some have argued, from John's silence about his" feet," that he intended to correct a general impression which the synoptic narrative had produced, viz.
that our Lord's feet had been nailed to the cross. There is no reason whatever for any such hypothesis. The evangelist simply emphasizes the ghastly proof of his Lord's actual death, with its supernatural accompaniments, as a more vivid evidence of identity than the piercing of the feet: moreover, it was a fact to which he had borne special testimony.
Some conception is given in both the Gospels of the marks and vestiges of the earthly pilgrimage which will survive death and pass on into the eternal world. The disciples, therefore, were glad when they saw the Lord.
In Luke 24:41 we read that they were incredulous from the excess of their joy, and surcharged with wonder. In the bewilderment of their rapture he added to their assurance, and transformed their joy into faith by publicly and before them all participating in food.
Extreme dejection is transformed into triumphant conviction of the truth. A new revelation had been made to them of the very nature of life, while the veil that had from the beginning of time concealed the abode of the blessed dead, had at length been rent in twain.
They heard, they saw, they handled, the Word of life. They felt that in their Lord they too were now at home in both worlds. Their fellowship was with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.