Scripture Reading: Acts 26:16-19; 1 Tim. 1:4, 11
Ⅰ
The Lord appeared to Paul to make him a minister and a witness both of the things in which Paul had seen Him and of the things in which He would appear to Paul—Acts 26:16; cf. 1:8; 23:11; 20:20, 31:
A
In all the visions that Paul saw, he saw Christ; the things in which we have seen Christ and the things in which He will appear to us are the things that we must minister to others—Gal. 1:15-16; Acts 22:14-15.
B
Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision of Christ as the mystery of God, of the church as the Body of Christ, the mystery of Christ, and of man as a vessel to contain and express the processed and consummated Triune God—26:19; 9:4-5, 15.
C
When we see a vision of God's plan and have been converted from everything to Christ Himself, He will be the inner operating God to us, energizing us to carry out His plan—Gal. 1:15-16; Rom. 15:16; 1 Cor. 15:10; Phil. 2:13; cf. Jer. 1:1, 4-10, 18-19.
D
Paul was an ambassador of Christ, "an ambassador in a chain," a prisoner of and in the Lord, who was allied with God and who realized God's assistance in this alliance—2 Cor. 5:20; Eph. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20; Acts 26:22:
１
In order to represent Christ as His ambassadors, we must not live by what we are or can do but by the immortal life, which is Christ Himself—2 Cor. 5:4.
２
In order to represent Christ as His ambassadors, we must be determined to gain the honor of being well pleasing to Him—v. 9.
３
In order to represent Christ as His ambassadors, we must be constrained by the love of Christ to live to Him—vv. 14-15.
４
In order to represent Christ as His ambassadors, we must not know people according to the flesh but according to Christ in the spirit—v. 16.
Ⅱ
Acts 26:18 unveils the all-inclusive contents of our divine commission according to the heavenly vision of the jubilee; we need to pray over these contents, asking the Lord to make them our experience and reality so that we can bring others into this experience and reality—1 Tim. 1:4, 11; Eph. 3:9a:
A
"To open their eyes":
１
We cannot go on without new knowledge of the Lord and a new vision of Him— Acts 26:16; Phil. 3:8b, 10a, 13; Eph. 3:9; cf. Deut. 4:25.
２
We need to continually pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that the eyes of our heart are enlightened to see more of Christ, the Body of Christ, and the divine dispensing for the divine economy—Eph. 1:17-18a; 3:5; cf. Matt. 6:6.
３
We need such a spirit to see the hope of God's calling, the riches of the glory of God's inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of God's resurrecting, ascending, subjecting, and heading-up power—Eph. 1:17-23.
４
We all must exercise to retreat to our spirit; the only place where we can see things clearly is our spirit—Rev. 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:9-10; cf. 1 Cor. 2:11a.
５
When we exercise our spirit and live in the church, God's way becomes clear to us; in our spirit and in the church, we receive divine revelation and the explanation to all our problems—Psa. 77:13; 73:17.
B
"To turn them from darkness to light":
１
The more we are willing to be restricted and ruled by the loving and lovable Lord Jesus out of our love for Him, the more we shall grow in life and be filled with light; the more we tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him, the more we are freed from the authority of darkness and are restricted and ruled by light—Col. 1:13.
２
In the divine thought the golden lampstand portrays the Triune God embodied in Christ as a living golden tree of resurrection—growing, branching, budding, and blossoming in us and out of us as the fruit of the light, which is good in nature, righteous in procedure, and real in expression, that God may be expressed as reality in our daily walk—Exo. 25:31-35; Eph. 5:8-9.
３
The beating of the gold to form a stand signifies the believers' participation in Christ's sufferings; everything that goes on in our environment is for the producing of the beaten and shining lampstand—Exo. 25:31; Col. 1:24:
ａ
If we set our mind on knowing God, submitting to the inward working of the Spirit and to the outward environment, every circumstance will become an opportunity for us to know Him—Hosea 6:1-3; Phil. 3:10a.
ｂ
If a man does not know God in his lifetime, he has wasted his whole life; may the Lord make us willing to accept His dealings in our circumstances so that we may know and gain Him more—2 Cor. 4:16-18.
ｃ
The crux of the matter is whether or not one encounters the Lord as the great light in the midst of difficulties and trials; suffering can make us understand what we otherwise could not understand—1:8-9.
ｄ
There is only one kind of person in this world who will consecrate himself to God—it is one who knows Him as love; there is only one kind of person in this world who is qualified to sacrifice his own joy—it is one who knows Him as grace—Isa. 7:14-15; 2 Cor. 12:7-9; 5:14-15.
ｅ
The reason why anyone can give something up, deny himself, or choose the difficult thing is that behind him there is the great power of the enjoyment of Christ as the richest grace and the sweetest love—John 1:16; Eph. 3:19.
C
"To turn them…from the authority of Satan to God":
１
The highest point in our spiritual experience is to have a clear sky with the throne above it—Ezek. 1:22, 26:
ａ
To have the throne above a clear sky is to give the Lord the preeminence in our being and the highest and most prominent position in our life—Col. 1:18; cf. Ezek. 14:3.
ｂ
The clearer our sky is, the more we are under the throne, under God's authority; for God to have the throne in us means that He has the position to reign in us—Acts 24:16; cf. Rom. 5:17.
ｃ
If we are under a clear sky with the throne above it, genuine authority will be with us to bring others under God's authority—2 Cor. 10:4-5, 8; 13:3, 10.
２
To love the Lord Jesus with the first love is to give Him the first place, the preeminence, in all things; the first works are works that issue from and express our first love for the Lord—Rev. 2:4-5.
３
Our uttermost love for the Lord qualifies, perfects, and equips us to speak for the Lord with His authority—John 21:15-17.
D
"That they may receive forgiveness of sins":
１
Forgiveness means that God causes the sins that we have committed to depart from us and sends them away—Eph. 1:7; John 1:29; Isa. 53:6; 1 Pet. 2:24; Lev. 16:7-10, 15-17, 20-22; cf. Psa. 103:1-3, 12.
２
God's forgiveness of our sins results in His forgetting our sins—Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12; Isa. 43:25.
３
We must go to the Lord to receive a thorough forgiveness of all our sins; David begged God to blot out his transgressions, wash him thoroughly from his iniquity, cleanse him from his sin, and purge his sin with hyssop—1 John 1:7, 9; Psa. 51:1-2, 7, 9:
ａ
Hyssop typifies Christ in His humble and humiliated human nature (1 Kings 4:33a; Exo. 12:22a), implying Christ as our Mediator and sacrifice (Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 10:9-10).
ｂ
Like David we need to stay in the presence of God to have a thorough and genuine repentance and confession to receive a full forgiveness from God.
ｃ
If we confess our sins to receive God's forgiveness, we will have the gladness of God's salvation and be sustained with a willing spirit; then we can teach transgressors His ways, and sinners will turn back to Him—Psa. 51:12-13.
E
"That they may receive…an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me":
１
This inheritance is the Triune God Himself with all He has, all He has done, and all He will do for His redeemed people.
２
The Triune God is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ, who is the portion allotted to the saints as their inheritance—Col. 2:9; 1:12.
３
We enjoy the pneumatic Christ as the pledge of our inheritance (Eph. 1:14) "among those," that is, in the church life (cf. 2 Tim. 2:22).
４
We need to bring people into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ in the church life so that they may enjoy Christ as we do and so that they may be sanctified dispositionally with the holy nature of God by the sealing Spirit through the exercise of their spirit—Heb. 2:10-11; 1 Cor. 1:9; Eph. 4:30; 2 Cor. 4:13.
Ⅲ
We need to pray desperately to the Lord that we want to experience Him as the content of the full, complete, and thorough gospel that He revealed to Paul in Acts 26:18; when we pray in this way, the Lord Jesus will appear to us, His appearing will give us a vision, we will live in the reality of the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, and we will spread this good news of God's economy unto the uttermost part of the earth—vv. 16-19; 1 Tim. 1:11; Acts 1:8.