Search
Scripture Reading: Acts 1:2-3; Matt. 28:16-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:32-36; 5:30-32; 22:15; 1:8
The content of this chapter is much more difficult than that of the foregoing ones. Many in the past have used the term the great commission to describe the Lord’s charge to His disciples before He ascended. But in this chapter we want to pick up a deeper understanding and application of this term. The great commission of Christ is in resurrection. In resurrection is a critical phrase. Christ’s commission is found nowhere else except in resurrection. Outside of His resurrection He has no commission. The Christ who gave the great commission is the One in resurrection. He is not only in resurrection; He Himself is resurrection. In John 11:25 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
In order to see what resurrection is, we need to see that the Lord’s ministry in its history has three stages. This is new light to us from the Lord. We call these three stages the three is: incarnation, inclusion, and intensification. The first stage is the stage of incarnation, from His human birth to His death. In that stage the Lord was in the flesh, but He worked and moved by the leading of the Spirit. First, He was conceived in Mary’s womb by and with the Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20). Then Matthew 4:1 says that Christ was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Matthew 12:28 reveals that He cast out demons by the Spirit of God. Hebrews 9:14 says that He offered Himself to God on the cross through the eternal Spirit. This shows that when Christ was in the flesh, He was also in resurrection.
Christ did everything in resurrection. In John 5:19 and 30 He said that He did not do anything from Himself. Instead, He lived by the One who sent Him (6:57a). This is resurrection. In John 14:10 the Lord Jesus said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works.” The One who works when the Son speaks is resurrection. In our crystallization-study of John we pointed out that not only His resurrecting of Lazarus but also everything that Christ did was the exercise of Himself as resurrection. When He was in the flesh, He had a human part of His being that was not resurrection. Whatever is human is not resurrection, but whatever is divine is resurrection. He was in the flesh, and at the same time He was also in resurrection. He lived in the flesh, but He did not live by the flesh. He lived by another factor, another source, that is, by the One who sent Him. The One who sent Him was the Father, who is divine. That Divine One is resurrection.
Then when Christ passed through death and entered into resurrection, He uplifted His human part into divinity. Romans 1:3 and 4 say that Christ as the seed of David in the flesh was designated the Son of God in resurrection. To designate is to uplift His human part into divinity. In resurrection He was born to be the firstborn Son of God; as the seed of David, He was designated to be the Son of God. Also, through His resurrection we were regenerated, begotten of God, to be the many sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29). In regeneration God begets gods, who are His children in His life and nature but not in His Godhead (John 1:12-13). This is because our humanity has been uplifted, resurrected. Ephesians 2:5 and 6 reveal that we were made alive and resurrected together with Christ. Resurrection means to uplift our humanity into divinity, from the level of humanity to the level of divinity.
Resurrection means divinity. Incarnation means humanity. Christ becoming a man was His entering into the stage of incarnation by bringing divinity into humanity. This is to bring God into man, making God and man one, as one entity, one person, one God-man. This was unprecedented in human history. There was no one before Christ who was one entity of divinity and humanity.
Christ lived in humanity to express God, especially to express the attributes of God in His human virtues. Although He was in humanity, He did not express humanity. He expressed divinity. He especially expressed the attributes of God. God’s attributes are what God is. God is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. When these attributes were expressed in Christ’s humanity, they became His human virtues.
Christ accomplished an all-terminating and an all-redeeming death to close His ministry in His incarnation. His one death terminated all negative things. Whatever God created became fallen and was terminated by Christ’s death. Also, whatever was terminated by Christ’s death was redeemed, so His death is all-terminating and all-redeeming. His ministry in His incarnation was closed by His death.
Through His death Christ entered into His resurrection to carry out His ministry in the stage of His inclusion. Before Christ became a man, He was God and the Son of God. At that time there was nothing of humanity in Him. But when He was brought into resurrection through His death, He became all-inclusive. Now in Him there is not only divinity but also humanity. In Him there is also His death with its effectiveness and His resurrection with its power. Now Christ is not simple; He is all-inclusive. Through His death He entered into His resurrection to carry out His ministry in another stage, the stage of inclusion. This is the stage of Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b).
Christ carries out His ministry in the stage of His inclusion through all the believers in Him as His Body to accomplish God’s eternal economy. Many use the term the great commission, but they do not see that the great commission of Christ is to carry out God’s eternal economy. Most think that the great commission is just to save sinners, to carry out soul-winning. Soul-winning is the meaning of their great commission. But the great commission to us revealed in the Bible is not soul-winning, to save sinners, but to carry out God’s eternal economy. The goal of this eternal economy is the New Jerusalem, which is a divine-human constitution of the processed and consummated Triune God with His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect.
After Christ entered into His resurrection from the stage of His incarnation into the stage of His inclusion, He remained among His apostles for forty days to prepare them for carrying out His heavenly ministry in His resurrection (Acts 1:2-3).
At the close of His forty days’ preparation of the apostles, He gave them His great commission.
This commission was given by Christ as the One who had been given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18).
We may think that Christ’s great commission was given only to the eleven apostles and not to us. But the eleven apostles received the great commission of Christ not only as apostles but also as disciples (v. 16). When the apostles received this great commission, they were not in their status as apostles. They were in their status as disciples, which is our status. We do not have the apostolic status, but we do have the disciples’ status. As disciples, we are qualified to receive Christ’s great commission.
The great commission that the Lord gave us is for us to disciple the nations and teach them the teachings of Christ (vv. 19-20). I have been under this discipling for about seventy years, and I am still being discipled by the Lord.
In Mark 16:15 the Lord said, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all the creation.” Colossians 1:20 says that Christ reconciled all things to Himself through His death. All things, whether on earth or in the heavens, were reconciled to God, and the gospel should be proclaimed to all creation under heaven (v. 23).
Christ commissioned us to proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47). We must have the proper experience of this if we are going to proclaim it. Everyone who is seeking after the Lord needs to have a full repentance and make a thorough confession of his sins to the Lord. In 1935 Brother Nee was in my hometown holding a conference on living Christ as our victorious life. One day during that conference, I went to the meeting hall when no one was there to spend some time with the Lord. I had a thorough repentance and made a thorough confession of my sins to the Lord for more than two hours. After that confession I felt that I was fully released and buoyant. If we do not confess our past sins to receive the cleansing of the Lord’s blood with His forgiveness, we will be heavily burdened. The way to be released from this burden is to make a thorough confession of our sins to the Lord. When we experience such a repentance for the forgiveness of our sins, we will be able to effectively proclaim this to others.
The Lord has also charged us to witness a resurrected Christ appointed by God to be the Lord and Christ (Messiah), the anointed One of God, and to be the Leader and Savior (Acts 2:32-36; 5:30-32).
To witness Christ is to magnify Christ, to display Christ (22:15). When people saw Paul, they saw Christ. Paul says that it was no longer he who lived, but it was Christ who lived in him (Gal. 2:20a). To him, to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21a). When Paul lived, he was Christ. Our witnessing is to witness that we are the very Christ whom we minister to others. When we are living Christ, all the negative things are gone, and all that people see is Christ. This is a life lived in humanity but expressing a divine Christ. This is to live Christ, to magnify Christ, to display Christ, to show people Christ.
The Lord commissioned the disciples to save and gather in all of God’s chosen people from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth—all the world, all the nations (Acts 1:8; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47). Today’s Jerusalem to us is all our close acquaintances. We have to save them, gather them in, and reap them. Those who are laboring for the Lord’s interests in Russia are Christ’s witnesses at the uttermost part of the earth. The object of our commission is eventually to gain all the nations, the whole earth.
To carry out the great commission of Christ in resurrection, we must live the divine life in our human life. We live in the human life, but we do not live the human life. Instead, we live the divine life in the human life. Resurrection means that our natural life has been crucified, has been conformed to the death of Christ. Now we live in the human life, but we do not live the human life. We live the divine life, and this divine life is resurrection. Resurrection means that our natural life is crucified. We have to deny ourselves, to have our natural man, our human life, crucified with Christ. Then we let Christ live in us to be the divine life. Resurrection means not to live our natural life but to live the divine life. Our humanity is then uplifted to the divine life through and in resurrection.
