Scripture Reading: Acts 1:3, 11-12; 2:22-36; 3:13-15; 10:36
Ⅰ
We may experience and enjoy Christ as the One in resurrection—Acts 1:3; 2:24; 3:13-15:
A
Christ our Savior is wholly in resurrection, the Spirit is Christ in resurrection, and now we need to know Christ in the power, sphere, and element of His resurrection—1 Cor. 15:45b; Phil. 3:10.
B
In Acts 1:3 we see Christ as the One in resurrection appearing to the disciples for the purpose of training them to realize, practice, and enjoy His invisible presence, which is more available, prevailing, precious, rich, and real than His visible presence—Matt. 28:20:
１
The Lord's invisible presence is simply the Spirit in His resurrection, whom He breathed into the disciples and who would be with them all the time—John 7:39; 20:22.
２
Wherever we are, the Lord's invisible presence is with us; actually, His invisible presence is not merely with us—it is within us—14:20.
３
Through His invisible presence, the invisible Christ became the element and essence of His disciples; He was one with them intrinsically and essentially—Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 6:17:
ａ
His presence was always there inside their being; it even became their intrinsic essence and their thought—Gal. 2:20.
ｂ
The Lord trained the disciples to know their new being, to know that His essence had become their essence, to know that He had entered into them and had become them, and to know that He had brought them into God—John 14:16-17, 20; Col. 1:27; 3:10-11.
ｃ
Christ as the resurrected One helped the disciples to realize that they were mingled with the Triune God, that they were no longer merely human but divinely human, that they were God with the Triune God as their intrinsic essence to become their divine being, and that they could now live a life in which they were one with the processed Triune God—John 14:20; Rom. 8:10; Eph. 3:16-17.
Ⅱ
We may experience and enjoy Christ as the One in ascension—Acts 1:11-12; 2:33, 36:
A
Christ's ascension brought Him into a new stage—the stage of a resurrected man living in the heavens to execute the things God determined to accomplish on earth; this resurrected One is now sitting in the heavens to execute God's administration—v. 36; Heb. 1:3; 12:2.
B
In order for the disciples, who had become God-men, to be qualified to carry out God's economy, 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—Acts 1:11-12; 2:33, 36; Eph. 1:20-23; Matt. 28:18.
C
As the One in ascension, Christ poured out the Holy Spirit upon all flesh to baptize all His believers into one Body—Acts 1:5; 2:17a, 33; 1 Cor. 12:13:
１
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—John 20:22; Acts 1:5; 2:17a, 33.
２
The Spirit is the sphere and element of our spiritual baptism; in such a Spirit we were all baptized into one organic entity, the Body of Christ— 1 Cor. 12:13.
D
As the One in ascension, Christ has been made the Lord and Christ—Acts 2:36:
１
The ascended Christ has been made the Lord of all to possess all—10:36:
ａ
As God, the Lord was the Lord all the time, but as man, He was made Lord in ascension after He brought His humanity into God in His resurrection—Luke 1:43; John 11:21; 20:28; Rom. 1:3-4; Acts 2:36.
ｂ
After Jesus was crucified and buried, God resurrected Him and set Him at His right hand, making this Jesus, a Nazarene, the Lord of the universe— vv. 22-36; Phil. 2:9-11.
ｃ
Now the Lord of the universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, is a real man whose name is Jesus—Acts 9:5.
ｄ
Since the lordship of Christ was fully established in His ascension, we—the members of His Body identified with Christ the Head—need to realize this heavenly fact and apply it, especially in our prayer—Eph. 1:20-23; Matt. 18:18-19; 28:18-19.
２
The ascended Christ has been made the Christ of God to work out the spreading of the gospel and the building up of the church so that God's chosen people may be saved and perfected for the constitution of the New Jerusalem to be His eternal habitation and manifestation according to God's New Testament economy for His eternal satisfaction—Acts 2:36; Eph. 4:11-16; Rev. 21:2, 10-11:
ａ
He was Christ in eternity and from the time He was born 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—Dan. 9:26; Luke 2:11; John 1:41; Matt. 1:16.
ｂ
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 building up of the church by His heavenly ministry—Acts 2:36; Heb. 4:14; 7:25; 8:1-2.