The first four sections of God’s New Testament economy are the incarnation of the Triune God, the all-inclusive death of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ascension of Christ. The fifth section is the most complicated and the most complicating section. Many of the disputes and divisions are centered on this section.
The first four sections of God’s New Testament economy are altogether concerning Christ. Christ is God incarnated. The incarnation includes Christ’s human living. The next three sections of God’s New Testament economy—the all-inclusive death of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ascension of Christ—also concern Christ Himself. The next section, the fifth, concerns the church. In the past, many saints have declared that they are for Christ and the church. This may have become a slogan to many of us. If we say that we are for Christ and the church, we must know what Christ is, and we must know what the church is. The sixth and seventh sections of God’s New Testament economy concern the kingdom and the New Jerusalem, respectively.
In this message we shall begin to consider the apostles’ teaching concerning the church. After the ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit was poured out for the baptizing of all the believers into one Body (Acts 2:1-4, 17a, 18a, 33; 1:5b, 8a; 10:44-46; 11:15-16; 1 Cor. 12:13), making the believers the Body of Christ, having Christ as the Head (Eph. 1:22-23; 5:23b), and making them the bride of Christ (Rev. 19:7, 9) and the universal new man (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24).
The first page of the New Testament begins with the incarnation of God. The last page of Revelation is concerned with the New Jerusalem. The incarnation of God includes Christ’s human living. Human living is a prolonged section of incarnation. After the incarnation of God are the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the baptizing of all the believers into one Body, the church. The sixth section of God’s New Testament economy is the kingdom, and the final section is the New Jerusalem. God’s New Testament economy consummates with the New Jerusalem. This is all that the New Testament teaches. The New Testament is the apostles’ teaching. The apostles’ teaching is the entire speaking of God in the New Testament, and this speaking concerns God’s New Testament economy from the incarnation of the Triune God to the consummation of the New Jerusalem. Between these two ends are Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the kingdom.
In the incarnation of the Triune God, God was born in a virgin (Matt. 1:18, 20) so that He could partake of man’s blood and flesh in order to bring God into man that He might mingle Himself with man and pass through human living. This is incarnation.
The all-inclusive death of Christ solved all the problems between man and God and accomplished God’s eternal redemption, signified by the blood flowing out of the crucified Jesus (Heb. 9:12; John 19:34). This all-inclusive death also released the divine life as the eternal life, signified by the water flowing out of the crucified Christ (John 19:34).
First, the resurrection of Christ testifies that God is satisfied with His death for us and that we are justified by God in Him and with Him (Rom. 4:25b). Second, the resurrection begot Jesus the man as the Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4). Third, the resurrection imparted the divine life into the believers of Jesus Christ and begot them as the many sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29; John 12:24b). Fourth, the resurrection made Christ the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Finally, the resurrection consummated the Triune God and made the Spirit of God the ultimate consummation of the Triune God as the Spirit (Matt. 28:19; John 7:39; Rev. 22:17).
The ascension of Christ had a secret part and an open part. The secret part was for Christ to be presented to God as the firstfruit of the harvest and for God to taste His freshness in resurrection (Lev. 23:10-11). The open part of the ascension was for Christ to be crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:7), to be made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36), to be made a Leader and Savior (Acts 5:31), and to be made Head over all things to the church (Eph. 1:22). This is the consummation of Christ as the Savior.
God was incarnated, lived on the earth, and experienced human living. He went to the cross to die an all-inclusive death, solving all the problems between man and God. He resurrected to be the life-giving Spirit and to be the firstborn Son of God, generating us to be the many sons of God. In the morning of the day of His resurrection, He ascended secretly, and forty days later He ascended openly. All the things concerning God’s plan and redemption were fully accomplished. After such a marvelous accomplishment, there should have been a great celebration. Ephesians 4:8 gives us a hint concerning such a celebration: “Wherefore He says, Having ascended to the height, He led captive those taken captive and gave gifts to men.” This is a small window through which we can see a parade, a celebrating procession, celebrating Christ’s victory, which He accomplished in His death and in His resurrection. In Christ’s ascension He led a procession celebrating His victory.
Furthermore, in His ascension He reached the heavens as the consummated God. After the ascension the Triune God was altogether consummated. Before the creation of the world, in eternity past, God had only His divinity. He did not yet have the human nature or the experience of human living. He had not yet gone through an all-inclusive death. He did not yet have the element of humanity or the element of death, and although He was resurrection (John 11:25), He had never experienced resurrection. Furthermore, there had been no ascension, because there had been no descension. After Christ’s ascension, the Triune God became full of many elements. He now has the divine element, the human element, the element of death, the element of resurrection, and the element of ascension.
If you compare God before His process and God after His process, you will find that there is quite a difference. Before His process He was the “raw” God. To say that God in eternity past was “raw” is not heresy but the truth. God was “raw” because He was not yet “cooked,” He was not yet processed. The cooking of a raw fish adds many elements to it. For example, in Spanish cooking a number of spices might be added to the fish. Instead of going into an oven, God went into the womb of a virgin. He did not stay there for two hours; rather, He stayed there for nine months. What a long process He passed through! He lived more than thirty years on this earth. Even in His death, the process lasted six hours, from nine o’clock in the morning to three o’clock in the afternoon. Then He entered into resurrection, and He ascended. This was quite a procedure composed of several long processes. God is now in His ascension. He is now the consummated God. He was the “raw” God, but after being “cooked,” He became the consummated God.
This consummated God is not divided into three separate persons. Acts 2:33 says, “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He poured out this which you both see and hear.” It may seem that on the day of Pentecost only the Holy Spirit was poured out, but we must not forget that Christ received the Holy Spirit from the Father. The New Testament principle is that when the Spirit comes from the Father, the Father comes with Him. If we were to be sent by the Lord Jesus to Africa, would we go alone? When the Lord sends us to knock on people’s doors, do we go alone? Does the Lord Jesus remain in the heavens as we go out? We must believe that as we go, He goes as well. When Christ received the Holy Spirit from the Father, the Father came with the Holy Spirit. Christ poured out the Spirit with the Father.
When He poured out the Spirit with the Father, He did not remain in the heavens. When the Lord Jesus received the Spirit from the Father, the Father was with the Spirit. When the Lord poured out this Spirit, the Lord was with the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit, the Son, and the Father—the entire Triune God—were poured out. The Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost was the consummated Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God.
When I was a young person in Christianity, I learned their theology, which taught that the Father was sitting on the throne, and the Son came down to the earth. I was taught, further, that the Father gave the Spirit to the Son and that the Spirit alone was poured out, the Father remaining on the throne and Christ remaining in the heavens. This is the teaching of Christianity, but it is not the teaching of the New Testament. According to the New Testament, when Christ ascended to the heavens, He received the Holy Spirit from the Father and with the Father. The Holy Spirit comes from the Father, and the Father comes with the Holy Spirit. The Father is one with the Spirit (Matt. 10:20). The Lord Jesus poured out this Spirit, who is one with the Father, in such a way that the Lord was one with the Spirit and with the Father. Eventually the One who poured out was the One who was poured out, and this One is the Triune God in His consummation. That which was poured out on the day of Pentecost was the consummated God in His consummation. He poured Himself out as the Triune God upon all His believers, including the Jews, the Gentiles, the believers in ancient times, and the believers in the present time. We all were baptized in that consummated Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God, and we all were baptized into one Body.
Acts 2:1-4 records the accomplishment of the outpouring of the Spirit: “And when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, they were all together in the same place. And suddenly there came a noise out of heaven like a rushing violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which were divided and sat on each one of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in different tongues, even as the Spirit gave them to speak out.” A few verses later, Acts explains clearly that what occurred there was definitely the outpouring of the Spirit: “And it shall be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh” (2:17a). The next verse continues: “And upon My slaves, both men and women, I will pour out of My Spirit in those days” (v. 18a). Verse 33 tells us that what was poured out was not just the Spirit alone, but the complete Triune God, the Spirit with the Father and with the Son. This is the fulfillment of Acts 1:5, where the Lord prophesied, “You shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Then in verse 8 the Lord said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the remotest part of the earth.”
The accomplishment of the Lord’s prophecy took place first with the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, and later, as revealed in Acts 10:44-46 and 11:15-17, with the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. These passages in Acts 2 and in Acts 10 and 11 show a complete baptism, with all the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers through all the generations being baptized together into one Body. Paul confirmed this in 1 Corinthians 12:13: “For also in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit.” This is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of all the believers into one Body for the formation of the one Body.
The baptizing of all the believers into one Body universally is the corporate aspect of baptism. In addition to this aspect, there is an individual aspect, which is the application and realization of, and participation in, the corporate baptism (Acts 10:47-48; 2:38, 41; 16:33; 19:5; Matt. 28:19; Gal. 3:27-28). Every believer should be baptized. In Matthew 28:19 the Lord Jesus said, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We must be baptized into the Triune God. To be baptized into the Triune God is to be baptized into Christ, because Christ is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9). One cannot be baptized into Christ and say that he has not yet been baptized into the Father and the Spirit. As long as one is baptized into Christ, he is baptized into the Father and into the Spirit as well.
The corporate baptism of all the believers into the one Body was applied to us at the time we believed into Christ. A Jew who believes into Christ receives the application of the baptism that occurred on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, and a Gentile believer receives the application of the baptism that occurred in Cornelius’ house. The application of the corporate baptism is through our believing. As such, it is the realization that we have been baptized, and it becomes a participation in the corporate baptism that took place two thousand years ago.
Most Christians have never seen this, even though it has been in print for over nineteen hundred years. Thank the Lord that He has given us the light to see these things in these days. Approximately sixty years ago, I read some writing that said that our baptism is the application of what took place in Acts, but at that time I did not have as much comprehension of the meaning as I have today. Whenever we immerse someone, that immersion is the application and realization of what occurred two thousand years ago, and it is the participation in that corporate baptism. Hallelujah, we have been baptized in the Holy Spirit! We were baptized in the consummated Triune God two thousand years ago. Our individual baptism is the application and realization of, and participation in, that baptism. This is the apostles’ teaching.
To insist on certain practices such as tongue-speaking is to go beyond the apostles’ teaching. Such insistence becomes a different teaching (1 Tim. 1:3) and a wind of teaching (Eph. 4:14) that blows the saints away from the Body of Christ, thus causing division.