These three messages on the Apostle Paul’s completing ministry are not common. In the two previous messages we considered God and Christ, and in this message we shall consider the church. These terms themselves—God, Christ, and the church—are all too familiar. But to speak of God as our contents, Christ as God’s mystery, and the church as Christ’s mystery, surely is to speak in a way unfamiliar to most Christians.
How could the almighty God, our Creator, be our contents? Even the expression is strange! For Him to be our contents He has to enter into us and take full possession of us, making our entire being His vessel. This may sound simple. We may think that if God wants to do something, He simply does it. Such is not the case. God had to be triune in order to work Himself into our being. There was a procedure He had to pass through in order to have a way to enter into us. This is a most profound matter. It explains why the almighty God became incarnate.
God was born into man. He was born of humanity to be a man. The very God lived on this earth in a poor carpenter’s home for thirty years. Then day after day He stayed with His disciples to pass on the divine economy to those earthly human beings. His way of teaching was altogether different from that of Socrates, Plato, or Confucius.
After He had stayed with them more than three years, He suddenly told them He was going away (John 13:33). This troubled them. He went on to say that He would not leave them for good, or even for a long period of time. He would not desert them by leaving them orphans; He would be gone just for a short period of three days. He would go through the process of being crucified, buried, and resurrected, so that He might be changed into another form, that of the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). By this means He could not only come back to be with them; He would be able to enter into them that He might abide in them and they in Him. He told the disciples clearly that He was going away to prepare a place, to pave a way, to gain the ground, for them to be brought into the Father.
These words that He spoke to the disciples in John 14 have been altogether misinterpreted. The common explanation is that the Lord Jesus told His disciples He was going to leave them, to die and go to heaven, and there He would prepare heavenly mansions for them. When they were finished, He would come back for the disciples and receive them into those mansions. What a tragedy to interpret the Lord’s word in this way!
Actually His going was His coming back. His leaving them was His walking into them. By taking a few steps He entered into them. What were these steps? His death, burial, and resurrection. He returned to them on the third day, not in His original form, but like breath, in the form of the Spirit. What we are saying is elusive and mysterious. Christ is a mystery. Do you think He came back physically after His resurrection? If so, how could He enter the room where the disciples were meeting with the doors shut? He did not knock on the door and ask them to let Him in. While they were meeting together, sorrowful and grieving, wondering what to do, wondering where His body had been taken, He Himself came and stood in their midst. If you believe His coming here was spiritual, how could He have asked Thomas to touch His hands and put his hand into His side (John 20:27)? Theologians, were these appearances spiritual or physical? There is no way to come to a conclusion.
He may have been standing there for quite a while, listening to the words of those pitiful, frightened disciples. In any case, suddenly He became visible to them. He said, “Peace be to you” (John 20:19); there was no need for them to be troubled. Then He breathed into them and said, “Receive the holy pneuma.” Pneuma means both breath and spirit. By inhaling His breath, the disciples received Him as the Spirit. They had no choice. They were in the same room. They had to keep breathing to stay alive. By inhaling what He breathed out, the disciples experienced His entering into them.
Did He leave after that? No! There is the record of His appearing among them, but nothing is said as to His leaving. He remained with them. Where? He was in them. Once the Lord Jesus entered into them, He never left. If you read John 20 and 21 carefully, you will see that the disciples, including Peter, did not realize this. When He disappeared from sight, He was still with them.
After some time Peter evidently felt he could not tolerate this way of living; he decided to go fishing. The others followed him, since he was their leader. They were not the only ones following; the Lord Himself was following too in each one of them. They fished and fished, but their efforts were futile. Not one fish did they catch. Then the Lord Jesus said to them from the shore, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat” (21:6), and when they did, they had more fish than they could handle. Then they recognized who it was who had spoken to them from the shore.
This story shows how the Lord trained the disciples to appreciate His invisible presence within them more than His external presence among them before His death. This Jesus was now within them.