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In this message we will begin to consider the aspects of the experience and enjoyment of Christ revealed in Acts.
Christ today is in resurrection. One day, as the One who existed in eternity, Christ became a man by incarnation. Eventually, He was crucified and buried. Through death He entered into another realm, the realm of resurrection. In His preexistence, Christ was God and was with God in eternity; by incarnation, He became a man in the flesh; then, through crucifixion and burial, He entered into resurrection. On the day of His resurrection angels told the women that Christ could not be found in the tomb, for He had risen from the dead (Luke 24:1-6). This indicates that Christ is in resurrection.
Christ is now our Savior in resurrection, and the Spirit is Christ in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45b). After Christ was resurrected, He became a person wholly in resurrection. Today some Christians know Christ in His incarnation and crucifixion. But like Paul we should aspire not only to know Christ in His death but even the more to know Him in His resurrection (Phil. 3:10). We need to know Him in the power, sphere, and element of His resurrection.
In Acts 1:3 we see Christ as the One in resurrection appearing to the disciples and speaking to them the things concerning the kingdom of God: “To whom also He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many irrefutable proofs, appearing to them through a period of forty days and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
The Lord’s presenting Himself alive was for the purpose of training the disciples to practice and enjoy His invisible presence. In the Gospel of John there is no word or hint indicating that the Lord left the disciples after breathing Himself into them. Actually He stayed with them, although they were unconscious of His presence. The Lord’s further appearing to them was His manifestation. Before His death the Lord’s presence was visible in the flesh. After His resurrection His presence was invisible in the Spirit. His manifestations, or appearings, after His resurrection were to train the disciples to realize, enjoy, and practice His invisible presence, which is more available, prevailing, precious, rich, and real than His visible presence. The Lord’s invisible presence is just the Spirit in His resurrection, whom He breathed into the disciples and who would be with them all the time.
After the Lord breathed Himself into the disciples, He never left them essentially. However, economically He would appear and then disappear. The Lord appeared and disappeared economically in order to train the disciples. Regarding this we should not speak of His going and coming but of His appearing and disappearing. The disciples had become accustomed to the visible presence of Christ. For three and a half years He had been with them visibly in the flesh. Suddenly His visible presence was taken away. Then the Lord came back to the disciples to breathe Himself into them. From that time onward the Lord’s presence with the disciples became invisible. It was no longer a physical presence but a spiritual presence. From the time that He breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples on the day of His resurrection, the resurrected Christ dwelt in them. His appearing spoken of in Acts 1:3 does not mean that He had ever left the disciples. Rather, it means that He made His presence visible to them, training them to realize and continually enjoy His invisible presence.
Although the Lord’s spiritual presence is invisible, it is more real and vital than His visible presence. The Lord’s visible presence involved the elements of space and time. But with His invisible presence there is neither the element of space nor the element of time. His invisible presence is everywhere. Wherever we are, the Lord’s invisible presence is with us. Actually, His invisible presence is not merely with us — it is within us. When the Lord was with the disciples in the flesh, His presence with them was outward and visible. But after He breathed Himself into them as the life-giving Spirit, His presence became inward and invisible.
Through such an invisible presence, this invisible Christ became His disciples’ element and essence. He was one with His disciples intrinsically and essentially, but the disciples were not used to such an invisible presence. They were used to visible things. Because of their weakness, He appeared to them and disappeared in order to train them to realize His invisible presence. He wanted them to know that even though they did not see Him or feel His presence, He was still with them all the time (Matt. 28:20). His presence was always there inside their being; it even became their intrinsic essence and their thought. In Galatians 2:20 the apostle Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This is the invisible presence of the pneumatic Christ.
In these forty days, the Lord trained the disciples to know their new being, to know that His essence had become their essence. He trained them to know that He had become them, that He had entered into them, and that He had brought them into Him. He also trained them to realize that He was in the Father, that they were in Him, and that He was in them (John 14:20). Ultimately, this kind of training was to help the disciples realize that they were mingled with the Triune God, that they were no longer merely human but divinely human, even “Jesusly” human. They were no longer separate from the Triune God, but they could now live a life in which they were one with the processed Triune God. They were no longer merely men, but God-men, divine men, with the Triune God as their intrinsic essence to become their divine being. The Lord was training them to live and behave in this life and to be persons in this life, the divine persons on this earth. The Lord created the entire universe in six days, but He spent forty days to train the disciples. The training of the disciples was a much bigger task than the creation of the universe.
The Lord Jesus appeared to the disciples for a period of forty days. In the Bible forty days are a period of trial and testing (Deut. 9:9, 18; 1 Kings 19:8). When the Lord Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, He fasted forty days and forty nights (Matt. 4:1-2). Also, the children of Israel were tested, educated, by God in the wilderness for forty years. Forty, therefore, is the number of testing, proving, trying, and educating. In Acts 1 the Lord appeared and disappeared during a period of forty days in order to test and train His disciples.
During these forty days, Christ as the One in resurrection also spoke to the disciples the things concerning the kingdom of God. Although we are not told in Acts what the Lord spoke concerning the kingdom, we may infer what He said by considering other portions of the Word. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus taught the disciples much concerning the kingdom. It is not likely that during the forty days after His resurrection, He gave the disciples something new concerning the kingdom. Rather, He may have repeated what He taught them in the Gospels. When the Lord spoke regarding the kingdom in the Gospels, the disciples were not able to understand what He was teaching them. They did not have the spiritual insight to understand the kingdom of God, because the Lord was not yet in them. But in John 20 they received the wonderful person of the resurrected Christ into them as the life-giving Spirit. As a result, in Acts 1 they were very different, for Christ, the life-giving Spirit, was now within them as their life and person. Because they had the life-giving Spirit within them, they were able to understand the Lord’s speaking concerning the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not a material kingdom visible to human sight; it is a kingdom of the divine life. The kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life into His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The kingdom of God is the ruling, the reigning, of God with all its blessing and enjoyment. It is the goal of the gospel of God and of Jesus Christ. To enter into this kingdom, people need to repent of their sins and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15) so that their sins may be forgiven and that they may be regenerated by God to have the divine life, which matches the divine nature of this kingdom (John 3:3, 5).
The kingdom of God is actually Christ Himself (Luke 17:21) as the seed of life sown into His believers, God’s chosen people (Mark 4:3, 26), and developing into a realm in which God may rule as His kingdom in His divine life. Regeneration is its entrance (John 3:5), and the growth of the divine life within the believers is its development (2 Pet. 1:3-11). The kingdom of God is the church life today, in which the faithful believers live (Rom. 14:17), and it will develop into the coming kingdom as an inheritance reward (Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5) to the overcoming saints in the millennium. Eventually, it will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal kingdom of God and the eternal realm of the eternal blessing of God’s eternal life for all God’s redeemed to enjoy in the new heaven and new earth.
In Acts 1:3 the Lord Jesus as the One in resurrection must have helped the disciples to have such a proper realization concerning the kingdom of God. The disciples must have begun to see that the kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life to His believers, that it is the propagation of Christ as life to His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The disciples certainly must have understood that they were now part of the propagation, the spreading, of Christ, and thereby were part of the kingdom of God.
After the resurrected Lord finished the forty-day training, He had the peace to leave the disciples. Thus, He brought them all to the Mount of Olives where He was carried up into heaven (vv. 11-12). His ascension brought Him into a new stage — the stage of a resurrected man living in the heavens to execute the things God determined on this earth. This resurrected One is now sitting in the heavens to execute God’s administration (2:36; Heb. 12:2).
After the resurrected Christ breathed the life-giving Spirit into the disciples as life, life supply, and everything related to their inner man, they all became God-men, men who had been mingled with God. They were filled with the divine life essentially, but they were not yet qualified to carry out God’s economy. Therefore, the resurrected Christ had to ascend to the heavens to be exalted by God and to be given the kingship, the lordship, and the headship over all things. He also obtained the throne, the glory, and all the authority in the universe. While the one hundred twenty were praying on the earth for ten days, God was making the exalted Christ to be the King, the Lord, and the Head of all things. God was giving the authority, the throne, and glory to His exalted One — Christ as the One in ascension.
As the One in ascension, Christ poured out the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33) upon all flesh (2:17a) to baptize all His believers into one Body (1:5; 1 Cor. 12:13). In Acts 2:33 Peter declared, “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He has poured out this which you both see and hear.” The exalted Christ’s receiving of the promise of the Holy Spirit was actually the receiving of the Holy Spirit Himself. Christ was conceived of the Spirit essentially for His being in humanity, and He was anointed with the Spirit economically for His ministry among men. After His resurrection and ascension, He still needed to receive the Spirit economically again so that He might pour out this Spirit upon His Body to carry out on earth His heavenly ministry for the accomplishment of God’s New Testament economy. The same Spirit who was breathed into the believers essentially as life in Christ’s resurrection was poured out upon them economically by Christ in His ascension. In and after His ascension Christ received the all-inclusive Spirit from the Father economically and poured Him out upon the believers for their ministry and work.
Christ poured out the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, that is, all fallen human beings, without distinction of sex, age, or status, in order to baptize all His believers into one Body (2:17a; 1:5). It was through the Spirit that Christ as the Head of the Body baptized all His believers into His Body (Matt. 3:11; Acts 1:5; 11:15-16; 1 Cor. 12:13). The New Testament reveals that Christ is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). Concerning the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus said in Acts 1:5, “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” This was accomplished in two steps, in two instances. First, on the day of Pentecost, Christ, the Head of the Body, having received the Spirit economically once again in ascension, baptized the Jewish believers into the Spirit. That was the first step, the first instance, of Christ baptizing the Body into the Spirit. Then in the house of Cornelius, Christ, the Head, baptized all the Gentile believers into the Spirit (10:44-47; 11:15-17). That was the second step, the second instance. By these two steps, these two instances, Christ the Head of the Body, baptized His entire Body into the Spirit once for all.
Because Christ has baptized all His believers into His Body by means of the Spirit, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body.” The Spirit is the sphere and element of our spiritual baptism, and in such a Spirit we were all baptized into one organic entity, the Body of Christ. Therefore, we should all, regardless of our races, nationalities, and social ranks, be this one Body. Christ is the life and constituent of this Body, and the Spirit is the reality of Christ. In this one Spirit we were all baptized by Christ into this one living Body to express Christ.
In this way the baptism in the Holy Spirit was accomplished once for all. Now what we need is not to be baptized in the Holy Spirit again, but simply to experience the baptism already accomplished in the Holy Spirit. Even as we need not be crucified again because of the finished work of Christ on the cross, so also we need not be baptized in the Holy Spirit again. Christ the Head has already baptized the whole Body in the Holy Spirit. We need only experience what the Head has already done to the Body.
If we would experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we must first realize that the Lord has ascended, establishing His lordship and His headship (Acts 2:36). Because Christ was established as the Lord and Head, He poured down the Holy Spirit upon His Body (v. 33). Second, we must have a right relationship with the Body. Thus, we may tell the Lord as the Head that we know His Body, that we are regenerated members of His Body and are rightly related to it, and that on this standing we claim the baptism in the Holy Spirit already accomplished upon His Body. Then we will indeed experience the wonderful baptism in the Holy Spirit. If we do not understand the ascension of Christ or do not have a right standing with the Body, no matter how much we pray and tarry, it will be difficult to have the experience. Therefore, if we would experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we must realize that Christ today is ascended and is the Lord and Head of all to the church, and we must stand in a right position in respect to the Body.
As the One in ascension, He was made Lord — the Lord of all to possess all (10:36) — and Christ — God’s Anointed to carry out God’s commission (Heb. 1:9). In fact, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is a proof that God has exalted the Lord Jesus and has made Him both Lord and Christ.
Acts 2:36 says, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you have crucified.” As God, the Lord was the Lord all the time (Luke 1:43; John 11:21; 20:28). But as man, He was made the Lord in His ascension after He brought His humanity into God in His resurrection. God has always been the Lord, but now a man is on the throne as the Lord. After Jesus was crucified and buried, God resurrected Him and set Him at His right hand, making this Jesus, a Nazarene, the Lord of all the universe. For God to be the Lord, there is no need of any kind of inauguration. But for a small man from a lowly town in a despised country to be made the Lord requires a real inauguration. Now this man from Nazareth was inaugurated to be the Lord of all. By the ascension Peter realized that the very man Jesus, whom he had been following for three and a half years, was inaugurated to be Lord of all. Now the Lord of the universe, the Lord of heaven and of earth, is a real man whose name is Jesus. This is why we declare, “Jesus is Lord,” and why we call, “O Lord Jesus.”
Christ in His ascension was inaugurated as Lord of all, not only of all men, but also of all things (Acts 10:36). As the Lord, Christ now possesses the whole universe, God’s chosen people, and all positive things, matters, and persons. Christ is the Lord not only of God’s chosen people, but also of the angels and of all those who will be in the millennium and in the new heaven and the new earth. Therefore, He is the Lord of the heavens, the earth, and everything and everyone He has redeemed. In ascension He is the Lord of all to possess all.
The lordship of Christ is one of the most important aspects of what He has obtained in His ascension. Since the lordship of Christ was fully established in His ascension, we — the members of His Body identified with Christ the Head — only need to realize this heavenly fact (Eph. 1:20-23). Once we realize that Christ has obtained the lordship, we, the church as His Body, have to apply it. We may exercise His lordship through our prayer for believers and sinners who are in a poor condition (Matt. 16:18-19; 28:18-19). In our prayer for them, we should take the ground of His ascension, proclaim His lordship, and tell Him that His lordship must be exercised over them. In this kind of bold and extraordinary prayer, we claim what the Lord has obtained in His ascension — His lordship. Instead of begging the Lord to do something for us, we need to learn to pray by claiming what the Lord has obtained in His ascension.
Christ in His ascension has not only been made the Lord of all but also the Christ of God to work out the spreading of the gospel and the building up of the church that God’s chosen people may be saved and perfected for the constitution of the New Jerusalem to be God’s eternal habitation and manifestation according to God’s New Testament economy for God’s eternal satisfaction. As God’s sent and anointed One, He was Christ in eternity and from the time that He was born (Dan. 9:26; John 1:41; Luke 2:11; Matt. 1:16). He was called Christ from His birth, was anointed at His baptism (3:13-17), and was called the Christ by Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:16). This was for Him to accomplish the first part of God’s economy for the accomplishment of God’s redemption and the release of the divine life by His earthly ministry. But in His ascension He was officially inaugurated into the position of God’s Christ, God’s appointed One, to carry out the second part of God’s economy for the producing and the building up of the church by His heavenly ministry.
Although He was anointed in His divinity in eternity and was anointed at His baptism, He was not officially inaugurated as the Christ until His ascension. When Jesus ascended on high, God made the appointment official. Christ has been not only chosen, appointed, and anointed by God, but also inaugurated by God into His office. In this way God declared to the whole universe that this is the very One whom He appointed to accomplish His eternal plan, which is to build up His temple, the New Jerusalem. Therefore, as the One in ascension, Christ was made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36) that He might possess all and that He might carry out God’s commission through His heavenly ministry to accomplish God’s plan (10:36; Heb. 1:9).
