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Scripture Reading: Eph. 5:23a, 26-27, 29; Heb. 8:6; 7:22, 7:25-26; 9:16; 4:14-15; Phil. 3:10; Rom. 8:2; 1 John 2:1b; Heb. 8:2; Eph. 1:22; Rev. 1:5a; 5:1, 6-7
In the last chapter we saw Christ’s position in His ascension and the offices of Christ in His ascension. We also saw that the heavenly ministry of Christ is the continuation and complement of His earthly ministry. In this chapter we want to see the practice of His heavenly ministry. In this practice are His responsibilities. Because He has such a wonderful position in the heavenlies with many offices, He bears many responsibilities.
Now in the heavens, Christ is ministering, and His ministry in the heavens today is for His church and His believers. He is doing something there for you and me. His ministry in the heavens is the continuation of His earthly ministry. Christ’s former ministry on this earth started from His being baptized in water and anointed with the Holy Spirit. When Christ came out of the water of baptism, the Spirit descended upon Him. Humanly speaking, His baptism in water was carried out by John the Baptist. At the same time, God the Father anointed Him with the Holy Spirit. That was the start of Christ’s former ministry on this earth.
During the course of His human living in His earthly ministry, He did much visiting and teaching. We have stressed that we have to visit people for the preaching of the gospel to get them to believe and be baptized. Then we have to feed them. We also have to perfect them. Finally, we have to bring them into prophesying so that the Body of Christ can be built up. After Christ was baptized and anointed, He began to preach, to reach people. This was the first step of His ministry. He also fed people through His speaking and teaching. Furthermore, He perfected others. At least, He perfected the apostles who were with Him. At the time of His baptism He was anointed with the economical Spirit for His ministry. In His ministry He spoke for God and spoke forth God; that is, He prophesied. But His disciples had not yet received the economical Spirit. After they received the economical Spirit on the day of Pentecost, they began to prophesy.
While Jesus was on earth, He practiced preaching, feeding, perfecting, and prophesying. He carried these things out through His human living. Then He entered into His all-inclusive death, which consummated in His resurrection. That ended His earthly ministry. Then He entered into His ascension. His ascension may be likened to a boundary line between His earthly ministry and His heavenly ministry. Before His ascension was His earthly ministry; after His ascension is His heavenly ministry. Now we want to see the responsibilities that He bears in His heavenly ministry.
In His ministry in ascension, Christ bears the responsibility to take care of His church and His believers. Not many Christians realize that today Christ is working in the heavens to take care of the churches and His believers. Do we believe that even today He is taking care of us? He is in the heavens working for us. Without Christ’s working in the heavens, we could not live the Christian life and the church life.
In His ascension Christ is the Head of the church to take care of the church (Eph. 5:23a). He takes care of the church by nourishing and cherishing it (v. 29) to sanctify it (v. 26). Christ today is doing a sanctifying work. The Lord’s sanctifying work in us separates us from the world. When the sisters are looking for sales in the newspaper in the way of self-indulgence, they are out of Christ’s sanctification. They are making themselves common, worldly. By the sisters’ looking in the newspaper for sales to satisfy their lust, they become contaminated. Today Christ is carrying out a work to sanctify the church. The purpose of Christ in giving Himself to the church is to sanctify her, not only separating her to Himself from anything common but also saturating her with Himself that she may be His counterpart.
He sanctifies the church by cleansing her through the washing of the water in the word (v. 26). In the word is the flowing life of God typified by flowing water. When we read the Bible with a heart seeking after Christ, the word of the Bible washes us. The more we read the Bible, the more we get washed with the water in the word. Whether or not we remember what we have read, we still receive the washing. When a housewife washes dishes, she may rinse them again and again. This makes the dishes absolutely clean. In His sanctifying work, Christ “rinses” us again and again by the washing of the water in the word.
He sanctifies the church to make it a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle (v. 27). Spots are of the natural life, and wrinkles are a matter of oldness. Only the water of life can metabolically wash away such defects by the transformation of life. Eventually, Christ’s sanctifying work will make the church glorious. Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God’s expression. Eventually, the church presented to Christ will be a God-expressing one.
In His ascension Christ is the Mediator, the Executor, of the new covenant (Heb. 8:6). In Greek the same word is used for both covenant and testament. A covenant is an agreement with some promises to accomplish certain things for the covenanted people. It can be an agreement signed by two parties, in which the first party promises what he will do for the second party. A testament is a will. When a person prepares to leave this earth, he makes a will, bequeathing all his possessions to people. A testament is a will with certain accomplished things bequeathed to the inheritor (see 9:16, footnote 1, Recovery Version).
Christ is the Mediator, the Executor, of the new covenant to guarantee the effectiveness of the new covenant as its surety (7:22). He enacted the new covenant by His death, but who is going to bear the responsibility to guarantee that whatever is in this covenant is effective? The resurrected and ascended Christ in the heavens guarantees the effectiveness of this covenant. By His death He enacted, formed, and made this covenant. Then in His resurrection and ascension, He is the guarantee, the surety, of this covenant to guarantee that whatever is mentioned in this covenant is effective.
He also executes the new testament as a will bequeathed to us by His death (9:16). When the Lord died, He bequeathed a testament to us. The Bible is a testament to us. The believers in Christ have a New Testament. It is a will full of items. One item of this will is that he who believes into the Son will have eternal life. Another item is that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Every page of our New Testament, our will, is full of items that Christ has bequeathed to us. Every item is a bequest. Christ acts as the Mediator, the Executor, of the new testament.
In His heavenly ministry Christ is the High Priest in His humanity and by His divine life (2:14, 17; 4:14-15; 7:16, 26). If Christ were merely God, He could not be our High Priest. His humanity qualifies Him to be such a High Priest because He can sympathize with us in the things related to our human life. He lived as a man for thirty-three and a half years, passing through all the human sufferings. Today He surely knows our environment and understands all the sufferings through which we are passing. As such a God-man, He can sympathize with us. His humanity qualifies Him for this.
Besides being a man, our High Priest is the very God. We may be able to sympathize with others’ sufferings as human beings, but what can we do for them? While Jesus was on earth, He sympathized with the suffering ones, but He was also able to help them because of His divine life. He resurrected some who were dead, telling them to rise up (Luke 7:14-15; John 11:43-44). In His word there was the omnipotent divine life. He can sympathize with us because He is a man, and He can do everything that is needed for us because He is God. His humanity qualifies Him, and His divinity empowers Him. He is a High Priest in His humanity and by His divine life.
As such a High Priest, He intercedes for His redeemed (Heb. 7:25b). Today He is praying for us, interceding for us. Whatever our God-man Intercessor prays for will be fulfilled. His intercession is based upon His redemption, which was accomplished by His death. He undertakes our case by interceding for us. He appears before God on our behalf, praying for us that we may be saved and brought fully into God’s eternal purpose.
He saves those who come forward to God through Him (v. 25a). Christ died for all mankind, but not everyone will be saved. This is because not everyone comes forward to God through Him. Although we may have been saved in the sense of being regenerated, we still need more saving. If we do not come forward, we cannot receive His saving. It may be raining, but a vessel cannot receive this rain if its opening is not toward the heavens. Many real Christians today do not receive Christ’s saving because they do not come forward to God. Christ’s saving in His priesthood will not reach the ones who will not come forward.
Hebrews 7:25 says that He saves to the uttermost those who come forward to God through Him. Sometimes we may be saved from our temper only to a certain extent and not to the uttermost. A sister may be about to lose her temper, so she turns to Christ and is stopped from losing her temper. She may be saved from her temper but not to the uttermost. If she were saved from her temper to the uttermost, she would be rejoicing in the Lord. For the Lord’s sake, we may forgive others’ mistakes. But to be saved from remembering others’ mistakes is to be saved to the uttermost. We may forgive others and yet still remember their mistakes. We may even tell others, “This brother offended me in a certain matter, but I have forgiven him.” This shows that we forgive, but we still remember the offense. The Bible tells us that when God forgives us, He forgets (8:12). This is why some have said that to forgive is to forget. If our forgiving does not equal forgetting, we are not saved to the uttermost. C. H. Spurgeon said that often our forgiving can be likened to burying a dead dog while leaving its tail sticking out above the earth. After we forgive, we may invite people to see the “tail” of what we supposedly have forgiven. If we have really forgiven someone, we should also forget the offense. We have to be saved to the uttermost in our forgiving of others and from all our daily troubles. When we come forward to God through Christ, our High Priest, He saves us in the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10) and by the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2).
First John 2:1b reveals that Christ is our Advocate to take care of our case before God. An advocate is a lawyer, an attorney. Christ is our Advocate in the law court in the heavens. The Greek word for advocate is parakletos, which refers to one who is called to another’s side to help him, one who offers legal aid, or one who intercedes on behalf of someone else. The word denotes consoling and consolation; hence, it can be translated “Comforter,” as it is in the Gospel of John (14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). In 1 John 2:1 the Lord Jesus is our Advocate with the Father, caring for our case, interceding (Rom. 8:34) and pleading for us if we sin, based upon His propitiation.
In the heavens today, Christ is a minister to minister heaven with the heavenly blessings to us (Heb. 8:2). Christ, as a Minister of the true (heavenly) tabernacle, ministers heaven (which is not only a place but also a condition of life) into us, that we may have the heavenly life and power to live a heavenly life on earth as He did while He was here.
The ministry of Christ in His ascension is the heavenly ministry of Christ for the universe also. Christ as the embodiment of God is the Administrator of the universe today. He is the Head over all things to rule the entire universe (Eph. 1:22). According to 1 Corinthians 11:3, God is the head of Christ. Christ administrates the universe under the headship of God because God has given Christ to be the Head over all things.
Christ is also the Ruler of the kings of the earth to administrate God’s plan for man. Revelation 1 and 5 tell us that Christ is the Ruler of the kings of the earth (1:5a; 5:1, 6-7), and Revelation 17 and 19 say that He is the King of kings (17:14; 19:16). Today He is the Ruler of the kings. When He comes again to the earth with His kingdom, He will be the King of kings. He is not yet the King of kings because He has not come to the earth to possess it for His kingdom. But today He is the Ruler of all the kings of the earth to administrate God’s plan for man.
According to Acts 5:31, Christ is a Leader and a Savior. His being a Leader is related to His authority as a Ruler, and His being a Savior is related to His salvation. He rules over our environment in order to save us. Jesus sovereignly rules over our environment to save us and to administrate God’s plan for us. I am happy that in God’s sovereignty, I was born in a city on the coast of mainland China. There were many missionaries there, so I eventually was saved. After I entered into the Lord’s work, I intended to go to Mongolia. But because of the Second World War, I am now in the United States. Jesus brought me here. He managed it. He administrated the entire world situation to bring me from China to the United States to minister to the Lord’s children here. Jesus Christ today is the Ruler of all the authorities to manage the world affairs. We have to worship Him for all His sovereign arrangement.
Today in His heavenly ministry He takes care of His church and His believers. Also, as the Head of all things to rule the entire universe, He is managing the environment on this earth for us. Whatever is going on in the world situation is for the church. Thank the Lord that we can receive the benefit of Christ’s heavenly administration.
